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THE CAROLINA UNION FARMER
Thursday, January 25, 19
The Carolina Union Farmer
Pablithad every Thareday
BY THE UNION FARMER PUBLISHiNB COMPANY
Offieial Organ of The North Cmrmlinu Farmere' Union
Subscription Price: $ 1 .OO a Year
All subscriptions are payable in advance, and the paper will
S e discontinued when the time expires, unless renewed. The
ate on the tng: which bears the name of the subscriber indicates
the time to which the subscription has been paid.
J. Z. Green, Marshvllle, N. C., Editor.
C. E. Clark, Charlotte, N. C., Agricultural Dept.
Mrs. E. O. Nall, 8andford, N. C., Home Dept.
C. A. Eury, General Manager. —
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ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES
JOHN D. ROSS, 812 Hartford-Building, Chicago
L. E. WHITE, Tribune Building, New York
Butered as second class matter, August 17, 1911, at the post
office at Gastonia, North Carolina, under the act of
March 3, lt!79.
Gastonia, North Carolina, January 25, 1912
EDITORIAL COMMENT
H
OW MANY members of your Local
Union are going in debt this year?
One of the purposes of the Farmers’
Union is to discourage the credit and
mortgage system. The credit system is the
greatest curse Southern farmers have to con
tend with. The only practical way to dis
courage it is to appeal to the individual mem
bers to stay out of debt. A debt contracted
for supplies (which ought^0 be produced at
home) means bondage—industrial slavery.
Why not plant for a living at home this year
and get in the independent way? There is no
other road that leads to it except the Farmers’
Union Live-at-Home route. If you are in
debt the best way to get out of debt is to plant
for a living at home. If you are in debt,
planting too much cotton or tobacco has put
you there, and it’s the worst kind of folly to
depend upon getting out of debt by planting
the very thing which has put you in debt!
N ANSON COUNTY there lives an
independent farmer. On sandy soil,
which everybody says isn’t suitable for
the production* of wheat, this farmer
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averages about twenty bushels of wheat per
acre, and he doesn’t sow but a half bushel of
seed wheat per acre. About twenty-five years
ago this Anson county farmer didn’t own a
foot of land. The first year after his marriage
he went to the time merchant and gave him
a crop lien (on a crop about to be planted, a
system of security that is a disgrace to civiliza
tion), and after the bondage papers had been
duly signed up and witnessed, this young
farmer said to the time merchant: “I belong
to you, body and soul. I want you to tell me
what to plant.” The merchant replied: “You
plant whatever you please. I leave that entire
ly with you.” With a young wife, and
bonyant with the vigor of young life and with
ambition backed by good judgment, these
folks went to house-keeping and farming.
Notwithstanding the fact that they were
wrapped up in debt, secured by a crop liien,
this young couple went to work and planted
for a living at home the first year. Hundreds
of others would have said, and did say: “I am
in debt, and I must plant cotton to get out
of debt,” and many of them are in debt yet—
nothing more than industrial slaves living
from hand to mouth. But this Anson county
farmer never had to sign but one crop lien
and he has never been in debt for “supplies”
but one year, and that was the first year. The
very simple reason he has not been in debt
for supplies exists in the fact that he has
raised practically all his supplies at home and
in that way he gets them at first cost, with no
tolls added.
❖ ❖ ❖
T HAS been three years since the
writer spent a night in the home of
this Live-at-Home Anson county
farmer, being there for the purpose of
organizing a Local Union in his school dis
trict. The air of independence in that home.
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with a table loaded down witih home products,
and the recital of early struggles under ad
verse circumstances that would have caused
the faint-hearted to relax efforts and surrend-
^er, impressed us forcibly with the economic
value of his experience as it relates to the gen
eral farming interests of this country. No
railroad or middleman got any tolls out of the
meat, the bread, the molasses, the fruits and
vegetables that went on his table. Instead of
buying these things, he was a seller of tkem,
and the local markets were anxious for his
products.
over the price of cotton. Live-at-Home is a
part of his religion and he nevep permits him
self to worry from it, it matters not how high
the price of cotton may soar temporarily.
Live-at-Home with him is an economic prin
ciple from which he allows nothing to influence
him. It’s the solid rock of independence upon
which he is permanently fixed and nothing
can move him from that strong and safe posi
tion.
4* + ♦
N THIS connection we want to say
that we have been ably and amusingly
entertained during the past week by
editorials in Charlotte dailies telling
how farmers can get rich raising hogs and
chickens. While the average city editor
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could not make as much net profit in the hog
or poultry business in a year as he gets for.
one month’s salary which he receives for
writing those brilliant editorials on the pos
sible income from “brains mixed with the
soil,” it is timely for him to spread out on
subjects of this kind when poultry associa
tions and Berkshire breeders hold sessions in
his city.
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YY" N FORTUNATELY, there is just one
^ little oversight which our enthusiastic
city editorial writers have failed to
observe, and that is, that poultry asso-
4* 4* 4*
HERE is another point we want to
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make in this connection in regard to
the real independent Live-at-Home
net, Berkshire breeders were getting twenty
cents a pound gross—for the “pedigree” and
hog mixed up together. And it’s the same way
with poultry. The only folks who are making
easy money in poultry are those who are
selling “pedigrees”—not plain chickens.
4* 4* 4*
HE WRITER has a long well-written
letter from a pedigree poultry man,
giving detailed description of ‘t
chicken which is worth fifty cents on
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the market That is, the meat in that chicken
is supposed to be worth 50 cents. A pag^
letter is written to show that the said chicken is
a bargain at $7.50. That means fifty cents for
the chicken and seven dollars for the “pedi
gree.” When the editors of the Charlotte
papers were exploiting the men -who sell Berk
shire pigs and “pedigrees” at twenty cents a
pound, they thought they were rendering the
country a great service, and they were doing
that very thing, but the service simply costs too
much for the “pedigree.” We are fully aware
that pedigree has its value, but the value is
measured by the nerve of the fellow who fixes
the price, and a man who can boldly charge
twenty dollars for a five-dollar pig, or $7-5®
for a fifty-cent chicken has his nerve with him
all right.
4* 4* 4*
ND THIS reminds us of so-called
“successful” farmers who sell twenty-
five cent cotton seed for a dollar a
bushel and dollar-a-bushel corn foi"
$2.50. They get their reputation up by mak
ing maximum yields on an acre or two of
land and get the papers to exploit them by fi*^^
publicity, and then they sell their seed at ex
tortionate prices to farmers who could get f^^
better results by intelligent selection of seed
from their own fields. So-called “successfii^
farmers” of this kind are not only exploited
by metropolitan daily papers, but technical
agricultural papers “puff” them under ^
guarantee of honesty of purpose and square
dealing. And it all comes at the expense of
the illiterate farmer who gets caught as
a
sucker.
♦ ♦ ♦
W
fall
HERE our city editorial writers
down hard is in the attempt to show
that farming is a money-making
cupation. No farmer has ever mad^
ciations and Berkshire associations do not sell
the plain chicken and plain pork, but they sell
pedigrees, and pedigrees bear a close resem
blance to “watered stock.” Farmers in the
peanut section of North Carolina can raise
pork on the waste product of the peanut farms.
And while pork packers of Suffolk, Va., were
refusing to take pork at cents per pound.
a fortune except at the expense of ignor^^^^^
labor. By his own labor no farmer has cve
accummulated a fortune. By good manag^^
ment a farmer can make a living at home a^^
put himself in an independent position, but
can not get rich unless he does it at the eX
pense of somebody else. If our benefactor
(?) who spin out free advice to
would stop their foolish talk about farming
a “money-making” occupation, and
as an occupation where men can make a h'''^
and be independent, the result would be
for the fundamental idea of farming is not
make money but to make a living.
4* 4* 4*
TVE-AT-HOME should be stressed 1
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your Local Unions with more
phasis this spring than ever
It’s the solid rock upon which So^^
to
ern farmers must stay if they expect
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