Newspapers / The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, … / March 11, 1909, edition 1 / Page 13
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Thursday, March'll, 1909. THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER. IS "WhatVThe News?" Congress Adjourns. ONGRESS has adjourned, hut our breathing spell .will be brief, as the Sixty-first Con - gresi is called to meet in special session March 15th, This short session did very little but plan how to spend the people's money. Time was and not so long ago eitherwhen "a billion dollar Congress" startled the Nations; now we have billion dollar sessions two-billion dollar Congresses. And how the people would howl if fundamental law, the policy of Southern leg islation must and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes of the States meet the test of this Amendment, and are not other wise in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States it Is not the dispo sition or within the province of the Federal Government to interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs." Going further and taking up the direct question of the appointment of negroes to office, President Taf t declares that men of ability among the ne groes should be recognized by the Government; still (as a result of stirring up race feeling) the negro is likely to get more harm than good from to force a Crum upon a community like Charles ton and it is interesting to speculate upon what course he would have taken had not the negro collector voluntarily resigned last week to save Taf t this embarrassment. ' j " . The Tariff and the Farmer. O OTHER public question is likely to be so much1 discussed this month as the tariff. The present Dingley rates are acknowl edged by alt parties and all Interests to be vicious and indefensible, and the burden of them has fall en most heavily on the farmer. A good example of how it has worked is afforded by this statement of Mr. H. E.j Miles, President of the National As sociation of Implement and Vehicle Manufactur- m ers: 'I have the money came through direct taxation instead of appointments in communities especially hostile to heine secretlv abstracted from their pockets in the negro officials. Evidently, Mr. Taft would dislike shape of a thousand noiseless tariff and revenue taxes: "pulling teeth without pain" is an old art among the men who raise our National revenues. Congress spent most of the time fussing with Roosevelt, when it was not considering ap propriation bills, and mtanwhile a great many measures affetcing the public welfare Were neglected the postal savings bamk, the child labor bill, the parcels post, tht1 plan for protecting the people against the exploitation of water rights, tariff revision, forest preservation, measures against gambling in cotton futures, etc The bill providing for the admission of New Mexico and Arizona as States also failed, but we do not think this a misfortune. The long wrangle about the Brownsville negroes ended at last in the passage of a resolution authorizing their re-enlistment where they prove their innocence. This at least may comfort Senator Foraker In his enforced retirement from the Senate. President Taf t's Inaugural Address. . RESIDENT TAFT S inaugural address is a plain, business-like, common-sense docu ment -not brilliant or sensational, nor yet disappointing. The new President declares un equivocally for carrying out the policies of the Roosevelt administration, for a proper regulation of trusts, a prompt and reasonable revision of the tariff, a strong navy, the policy of conserving our natural resources, for postal savings banks and an inheritance tax. free trade with the Philippines, ship subsidies (we are sorry to say), protection of aliens, and against curtailing the power of injunc tion in labor disputes. Concerning the tariff, President Taft declares for a law which will "afford to labor and to all industries in this country, whether of the farm, mine or factory, protection by tariff equal to the difference be tween the cost of production abroad and the cost of production here, and have a provision which shall put into force, upon executive de termination of certain facts, a higher or maxi mum tariff against those countries whose trade policy toward us equitably requires such discrimination." J Taft and the South. m made money every year out of the tariff graft not much, but still a little. "The tariff barons raised their price $50, 000 to mei I made a charge against tne job ber of $60,000, and I know that he charged more than ,$70,000 for the $60,000 he paid me. Before reaching the consumer the $50, 000 charge became about $100,000 to be paid by the agricultural consumer. "The manufacturer who would prosper must make a double profit one by the shrewd management of his business, and an other by still shrewder manipulation in Washington. "When Congress gave us 45 per cent, we needing only 20 per cent, they gave us a Congressional permit, if not an invitation, to consolidate, form one great trust, and ad vance prices 25 per cent, being the difference between the 20 per cent needed and the 46 per cent given." .:.;''. ' The Legislature Adjourns. HE North Carolina Legislature has ad journed after a rather uneventful session. There is little, either good or bad. to make it memorable. One of its most meritorious acts .was the passage Saturday night of the bill enlarging the powers, and the appropriations, of the State Board of Health, whicb means that North Carolina will now start on a great cam paign against the preventable diseases which have heretofore taken such heavy toll in human life. The new law for the inspection of kerosene oils will insure the people a better quality, but this inspection tax should not be made a source of revenue , since it must , come from the poorest class of bur people. The new drainage law is a wise one, and will insure the reclamation of valuable lands in Eastern North Carolina. The failure of the Senate to pass the child labor bill, mild as it was a compromise agreed upon by representatives of the manufacturers themselves was a shameful truckling to money as against human rights. For the roads and the forests practically nothing was done, the Senate defeat ing the j highway commission bill by a tie vote. Appropriations are large, but for good purposes: our A. & M. College gets increased help, the pub lic schools $25,000 morepensions $50,000 more, and the charitable institutions quite large in creases.! The movement to put all State and county officers on a salary basis made little prog ress, chiefly because the voters at home have not been aroused to its importance, but the Legisla ture ought to have ended the fee system for solicitors. In the matter of anti-trust legislation nothing was done partly, no doubt, because of trust influence, but largely, too, because of the feeling that these corporations of National scope can be properly regulated only by National laws. The Prohibition law was not touched, and a bill was passed making it the duty of sheriffs, depu-. ties and public officers to search for blockade stills, a fee of $20 being allowed for each cap Cotton From Planting to Picking : A Pen Picture. 10 O every boy born and bred in the Southern States! it is a magical word from the time he is blg'enough to roll in its billowy heaps in the "cotton house" or go out into the June cot ton field to find the first white bloom for his fath er, or ride to the gin on the big two-horse wagon bed which the hands have packed with the snowy fleece new-gathered from the autumn fields. White or black, if his fatker is not of unusual wealth, he early begins to labor with his own hands in making the crop; and the entire process of cultivation Is familiar to him. Long before he leaves off knee-pants he learns to plow the cool fresh earth in early spring helps haul out the great loads of manure from the barn; R TAFT gives no inconsiderable part of his I brings in the malodorous loads of fertilizer from Message to a very carefully-worded discus- the nearest village; helps roil tne planting seea m . ah wet ashes, so that the dry lint may not hold them sion or tne negro quesuuu aim u, ouu..-. together Jn Duncnes. For planting time is now at "My chief purpose," he says, "is not to effect a nand.stne dogwoods are blossoming; the first tur- change in the electoral vote of the Southern tie-dove has been heard; the fisherman has begun States " but "an Increase In the tolerance of politi- to tell of satisfactory catches In nearby streams; cal views of all kinds and their advocacy, and the "Uncle Isaac" Sand "Black Bob" dispute wisely as cai views or an kiuqs auu vueir a j, whether this phase of the moon portends warm existence of a respectable political opposition in weath wet or dry. every State; even more than this, to an increased For tne cottonseed must be ready to "come up" art of all the neonle in the South as soon as all dancer of frost is nassed; and now J CvllUg V - " - I ; - ... I I XL. Ma nnvArnrafiiit is tneir liovernmeni, ana me iuwb, nugcu VUAM v v 1 that and waiting, are opened, ana fertilizer arid seed distributed. Then the long . , . 1 A 1 i-J IVn green lines or two-ieavea piants uursuug iuc .that its officers in their States are their officers. Without violating the Fifteenth Amendment, hard gejed-covering they have pushed above ground he points out, it is possible to exclude the Ignorant and the grass that will not let them be and that or otherwise objectionable of both races from the we have always with us. Chopping then white f.a,MA a because of this ! feeling. South- and black, old and young, everybody strong enough era interest in the negro has grown more kindly.' Of the Fifteenth Amendment, he says further: "If It had not been passed, it might be difficult now to adopt it; but with it in our to "handle a hoe. And the plants nourrsn unaer the summer sun; now hoe-hands report that some Dlants have "seven leaves," then that limbs have come, and squares and finally the anxiety as to which farmer in the neighborhood shall report the first bloom, or which one In the county shall send the first one to the editor of the county paper. f; Weeks, then, of budding and blooming and growing,' the thrifty branches bedecked with white blooms that opened this morning and red blooms of yesterday and becoming heavy now with green and growing bolls. Then on the lowest stalks the bolls begin to open- and now who will gin the first bale? The women in the towns begin to tremble for their negro cooks, and employers of colored men also begin to scent danger. For the coronation of King Cotton Is at hand; and all the sons and daughters of Ham must dance attendance. Cotton-picking has an irresistible attraction for; all negroes, especially when the picking is done in- groups, and though they stay in town even through the watermelon season, cotton-picking is likely to lure them back to the farms. J"The real depth of feeling," as some one has said, "the sheer abandon and proper stage setting. does not come until September has touched the cotton fields and the great hearts of the maturing bolls burst with-Joy. That is the supreme mo mentand the beautifully blended voices of the negro cotton-pickers of the South is a sound once heard never to be forgotten. One cannot find any adjective to express the wild untutored beauty of It.; It is a chant of Inexpressible rhythm, with a note of sadness and mingled hope and regret, and one cannot stop without burdening it with that indefinable qualification and callng it weird . . these days and nights filled with song and laughter; and the nimble plying of fingers set to music that is perhaps a lone relic of a long forgot ten Congo." From "Cotton: Its Cultivation, Marketing Manufacture, and the Problems of the Cotton World," by Clarence H. Poe and C. W. Bur kett. (Published by Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.) ( ';.
The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, N.C.)
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March 11, 1909, edition 1
13
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