Newspapers / The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, … / Dec. 2, 1909, edition 1 / Page 1
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V Title Registered I J rjj) )('. CfV . rj(j) I in U. a Patent ( J 'f l - V P A Farm and Home Weekly fco ne Carolines, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. ? P CONSOLIDATED, 1909, WITH u M Q D ER N FA R M IN G." Vol. XXIV. No. 43. ; RALEIGH, II. C, DECEL1BER 2, 1S09. ; Weekly : $1 a Year. SAVING THE RURAL 7 J;, .. SOUTH TO' THE WHITE RACE .3 .. E HOPE; WE HAVE seen about the last of Southern white farmers leaving the farm to take- work in cotton mills. We are anxious to see the manufacturing enterprises of the South build up, but we are more anxious to see the farm lands of the South held by prosperous small white farmers,' and to see these small white farmers have their part in the great agricultural awakening now going on. r-. - Someone has wisely said that in all ages and all; countries the men-or the classes who own the land sooner or later make them selves the aristocracy of that country. We have not come to this condition so. rapidly in America as in other countries, because of the. abundance of cheap ' land resulting from the newness of the settle ment and the sparseness of population as yet; but in the long run the history of other countries must be repeated here." r -n These thoughts came very forcibly to mind as we rode through a cotton mill village the other day and saw its hundreds of white employes men, women and children who have left the, farm t to become the homeless hirelings of . the. cotton manufacturers. ' The negroes, finding no place in manufacturing for - themrare Ief t - on the farm and are becoming landtholders In rapi Jncreasmg nmnbers. Prof W. "E- DuBOis, a prominent Georgia negro educator, has just published a map' showing that since 1000 Georgia negroes have in creased their land-holdings., from 3 850,000 to "1,500,000 acres, and now own within the State of Georgia alone an area larger than the entire State of Delaware. Not only this, but the negro' children are going to school and de veloping healthy bodies in the open air and healthy surroundings of country life instead of being shut up in the cotton mill, overworked, under-educated, and poorly developed physically, as the tendency must be in all cotton mills so long as the legislatures of the South are too subservient to the less humane mill owners to enact needed laws or restricting child labor in the mills -the less humane mill owners, we say, because there are many thoughtful and far-seeing mill owners who heartily favor stricter regulations. . . Remember, we have no ill will toward the cotton manufacturers; we hare no ill will toward the negro. We do realize very strongly however, that the ' safety of the South depends upon the presence of a large white rural population. The drift from the farms to the cot ton mills not only affects this directly, but also indirectly, because when once the population of a community ; becomes predominantly negro, the small number of white people2 left may be forced to move ont in Order to find sufficient numbers for a .society of their own. It was a wise saying of James Oliver's, "Happy is the land that is tilled by the man who owns it," and the great need of the South to-day is to encourage the holding of small farms by white farmers. We repeat, that we say this in no ill will to the negro, in fact, it should not be necessary for us to say. this, because no one else in the South has preached more persistently than we the doctrine that it is. the intelligent, prosperous negro who helps, and the Ignorant, poverty-breeding negro who makes us all poorer, but we say this for the good of white and black alike because the best interests of both races demand that the rural South maintain its large white : popula tion. Unless this is done the negro himself will not progress as rap idly as he will -with white guidance, and unless this is done the cities of the South must also inevitably go backward. We urge every white tenant-farmer, and especially every white man who for any reason is thinking of becoming somebody's hired man in town instead of owning his home in the country, to buy land. 'The great plantations of the South, for the. good of our section as a whole, must be broken up. We must encourage the spirit of home owning, with every man sitting under bis own vine and fig tree, and we must especially encourage the development of a great class of "small white farmers. - . - " The saving of the rural South to the white race is one of the most important problems now before the people of the Cotton Belt. J, . In this connection, there is another thing that ought to be men tioned,' and that' is the problem of immigration.' The Farmers Union and other farmers, organizations are right in protesting against the coming of large numbers of Italians, Russians, Hungarians, Poles, . etc. This would only make a bad matter worse, and complicate matters still further. What would help, however, is the coming ' of a large number of wide-awake Northern and Western farmers, buy ing small farms among us and making their farms object lessons in stock raising and other lines of diversified agriculture. These North ern and .Western farmers will also set a good example for our. South ern people in that they are ready to do any and all kinds of work with their own hands, entirely independent of hired labor. As a Southerner,' reared on the farm and a descendant of generations of Southern farmers, we must confess the need of our people at this point, and the help that we would get here from an increased., num ber of wide-awake Western settlers beside the aid they would ren der in keeping up the balance of population between the two races in ' the " South and preventing ttie' predominance of a colored farming population, which, we repeat, would ' be undesirable for both : whites and blacks and ruinous, to our section as a whole, r t,i l . -: : ( " i . -. it I 'J V:-T. - t - -! -..-.r r.c- '-3 INDEX TO THIS ISSUE. AGRIOUITURAIi BOOKS WORTH READING . . ......... . ....... 6 BEAUTIFYING THE HOME WITH VINES ...... . ... .... . B COMMON MISTAKES OF THE FARM POULTRYMAN. . ... . . . . 16 DO WE WANT LOW PRICES FOR FARM PRODUCTS? . V . 10 FARM WORK FOR DECEMBER. . . . . . . . ... . . ... ...... .... 2 $500 MORE A YEAR FARMING: BY GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE COTTONSEED 8 LET. THE CREAMERY PROMOTER ALONE . . . . . . ; . . . . . ; . . . . . ia MEETING OF SOUTHERN COMMISSIONERS OF AGRICUITURTJ ... 19 NOW IS THE TIME TO PLANT PECAN TREES ... . , . .17 SOME EVILS OF THE CROP SYSTEM . . . . . . . ..... . .'. ... ...... 5 SHORT TALKS ABOUT FERTILIZERS H. WHAT THE PLANT r-rrj: FEEDS ON; 7 . . ; . '.. .-V ;V. ;'.' ."V. ; . . I . .- '4 SOUTH CAROLINA'S BANNER CORN YIELD' AND HO W IT WAS MADE . . ...... .......................... . . 7 TWELVE THINGS TO DO THIS MONTH ... A. ............. 0 THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF LAND-RENTING ................... 4
The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Dec. 2, 1909, edition 1
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