Page Six
THE CAROLINA UNION FARMER
I: a
p J
The Possibilities of
the Farmer
W. H. Faust, President Oglethrope (Ga.) County Union in Farmers Union News.
The Committee on Topics at the
meeting at Shawnee, Oklahoma, last
September was peculiarly happy and
wise in its selection for discussion
during the present year. Our leaders
have recognized for a long time that
the crucial period in the history of
a local union was when first enthusi
asm was beginning to wane, and for
lack of interest the membership was
beginning to drop out. The trouble
was that no program had been made
beforehand, no speakers came pre
pared to discuss entertainingly and
instructively tjie questions of vital
interest before the people. Now this
has been remedied and new life and
enthusiasm as well as information is
received by one who attends the lo
cals in their various meetings. The
first subject for February is appro
priate and should invoke much
thought, and induce many qualified to
go to the meetings ready by previous
study to dispense information of an
exceedingly helpful nature. The pos
sibilities of the farmer to-day are al
most Innumerable, and one scarcely
knows where to begin, inasmuch as
the subject is so broad. Many causes
continue to make the present day pe
culiarly the Farmers’ Day. Among
them might be mentioned:
1.—The R. F. D. System.
No greater benefit was ever con
ferred upon the rural section than to
have them traversed by the mail car
riers daily,' leaving the best of books
and papers and magazines at the dis
posal of the country people. They are
to the minds of the world the most
susceptible to knowledge. In the quiet
of their homes, without the thousand
and one distractions of city life, they
can read and ruminate, digest and
store away in their minds the many
splendid things they read. President
Elliott has given to the world his fa
mous" 5-foot book-case. The contents
of which, if digested, will, according
to his claims, make one a life-time
member of the educated class. For
years the fellows who till the soil have
used their hands to work and make
a living with, and about all the need
they had for heads was to hang hats
on, and for the purpose of washing
in the cool water when the bell rang
for dinner. Slowly but surely the
daily mail and the advent of papers
bearing on their technical needs have
entered into the homes, and like snow
before the morning’s sun, ignorance
and aversion to new and scientific
methods are disappearing. Men who
four years ago scoffed at the idea of
making one hundred bushels of corn
per acre are to-day making that much
or more. Boys are making from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred
bushels of corn per acre. “Paper and
book farming’’ does pay. This has
now been practically demonstrated in
every community in every county in
every State in the Union.
2.—The Rural School.
Gradually the percentage of iliter
acy is being pushed down by the
splendidly equipped schools in our
rural sections. Teachers of the first
grade are being placed in every
school-house, on nearly every hill,
and Hunnicutt’s Agriculture, Physi
ology, Hygiene, Scientific Cooking
Housekeeping are by no means un
usual in the school curriculum. Our
normal schools have put their ear
to the ground and heard the
ground-swell rumblings and prepared
their curriculum accordingly, until
after a careful examination of schools
and colleges and newspapers, one
would think that the farmer is the
biggest man in all the community.
Possibly the most potent of all agen
cies that go to making the farmer
what he ought to be is the present
educational system.
3.—^Fertilizers and Deep Plowing.
By degrees, though slowly, Geor
gia farmers are commencing to re
discover,—or better, should one say
discover?—a new America. Few of
us have ever tickled the ground more
than three or four inches with a one-
mule plow until the last few years.
Now two- and four-mule plows and
harrows and steam plows and dyna
mite are used, and it is no uncom
mon thing to break land from twelve
to fifteen inches. I can remember
when a boy that we put about one
hundred pounds of guano per acre
so thinly distributed that if a cotton
plant were to set out in search for a
dust of the fertilizer it would mature
and open before it found it. To-day
a ton of high-grade fertilizer is used
per acre, and in the next decade there
is no end to the amount that will be
used. We have spent entirely too
much of our valuable time in cutting
down grass and weeds and briers
around stumps in addition to knock
ing down and bruising cotton and
corn plants. It is wisdom to use a
few sticks of dynamite and remove
the stumps and rocks and let live
stalks of cotton and corn and sor
ghum stand where stumps and rocks
now occupy space. In almost every
community one sees land that will
rent for ten dollars per acre that
could have been bought twenty-five
years ago for two dollars per acre.
The readers, I’m sure, will pardon a
personal reference. I was never much
of a farmer, was brought up in a cot
ton raising section and taught that
grain couldn’t be raised at a profit.
Yet last year I raised, on one acre of
volunteer oats, sixty-five bushels at a
total cost of six dollars, and In addi
tion cut two tons of hay off the same
acre, which was worth forty-five dol
lars. Our soil is tremendously fer
tile. Yearly we are producing more
and more corn, grain, hay, and cot
ton per acre, and the end is not yet
in sight, though some yields are al
most fabulous.
4.—The Ability to be Happy Belongs
to the Farmer Peculiarly.
For a long period of time the drudg
eary of farming made it especilaly un
pleasant. Now we have guano dis
tributors, grain drills, wheat sepa
rators, manure spreaders, pea thresh
ers, mowing machines, rakes, cream
separators, gasoline engines, wood
saws, automobiles, telephones, and
goodness knows what else to add to
his pleasure. He can raise practical
ly all he needs on his home farm.
Hogs, turkeys, chickens, cows to fur
nish his meat, wheat, corn, rice, to
make bread, potatoes, vegetables,
fruits ad infinitum. He can of all
men rest under his own vine and fig
tree with none to make him afraid.
No tin horn labor day to bother, no
boss to go to ask if he can take an
afternoon off. Picnics, barbecues, po
litical speakings, he can go to it he
desires. His own boss, and time
these long winter evenings and cold
days to read an^ improve the mind.
The clerk standing on his feet all
day and driven by the whims of a
hard-to-please public comes to his
room at the close of his day tired and
worried almost past the limit of en
durance. Not so the man who has
spent a half day possibly in feeding
his stock and a little light farm work
in the fresh atmosphere. He can
study for a period of three or four
hours, and that is one reason why so
many of our great men come from the
country home.
5.—The Political Possibilities.
A mercantile journal recently went
1 on to enumerate how the drummers
and retailers could carry any political
measure by standing together and
getting a few farmers among their
customers to advocate their pet meas
ure. It was mistaken. True, a few
farmers are just such fools as was
suggested, but the vast majority are
on to their jobs and can be induced
to do only those things that will be
to their best interest. The parcels
post will go as soon as the rural
dwellers write their Representatives
in Congress what they want. It is
glorious to think of a rural parcels
post that will permit the farmer to
get packages weighing twenty-five
pounds for ten cents. That will mean
that a man will not^have to stop his
plow in the busiest of grass-growing
season and ride to town and lose a
half day to get some coffee and sugar
or other groceries, but can have his
local merchant send them out by his
R. F. D. carrier.
Everything, from the farmer’s
viewpoint, is optimistic. In the words
of Hunnicutt: “Still the corn tassels
are fanned by the breezes and the
cotton blooms are made fruitful by
the busy bees, wheat and oats raise
their heads to the sunshine, and
their roots and stems add vegetable
matter to the soil. The cowpea gath
ers nitrogen from the air while it
gives peas to mankind and hay to
stock. Sweet potatoes crack the
ground, and peanuts send their ten
drils into the sand to grow food for
our hogs. Hay grows uncultivated,
i and melons turn water into juice bet
ter than wine. The peach tree gath
ers nectar from the clay, and straw
berries turn sap from the soil into a
flavor sweeter than the sugar. The
apple blossoms dispense their frag
ranee over the hills, while the pecan
gathers delightfully nutritious food
from the sands of the plains further
south. Why lose heart? There is
absolutely no sufficient reason for
despondency.’’
The dawn of a brighter day throws
its sunbeams across the farmer’s
horizon. All things are his inasmuch
as the Lord has called him unto the
Kingdom for just such an hour as
this. The eyes of the world are up
on us. We can but make good and
press forward to occupy still higher
and better places. Men, to-day is
our day; let us use it wisely like men,
and future generations will rise to
call us blessed.
BRAIN LEAKS.
There are some judges we do not
care to recall.
Idle dollars, like idle men, help de
press the market.
The man always looking for the
worst of it doesn’t have to look far.
The best part of life isn’t what
you get out of it, but what you put
into It.
If all of us got what was really
coming to us, most of us would be
complaining worse than we are.
The owl has acquired a reputation
for wisdom by looking solemn and
saying little. But who wants to be
an owl?
When a man has done his level best
—really his level best—he gets cred
it for doing all. But not from his fel
low-men.
This is time of year when we’re
thankful we have outgrown the sas
safras tea and sulphur and molasses
stage of boyhood.—Will Maupin, in
the Commoner.
[Thursday, May 9, 1912.
WE MUST QUIT SPLICING.
Editor Beasley Defines Action of the
Protective Tariff as Uncle Sam
Works It.
Our good friend Beasley of The
Monroe Journal is not only one of the
best writers in the State, but is one
of the soundest men in the State on
the tariff question. In writing of
the present policy of tariff patching.
Editor Beasley has the following to
say:
“Two machinists were once engag
ed in trying to make improvements
on a very delicate and valuable ma
chine before it was brought to its
present state of perfection—the won
derful Mergenthaler linotype. For a
long time they followed the plan of
putting on additional pieces here and
there to control some other part that
didn’t work right. By and by it be
came apparent that the machine
would be spliced over and over with
this thing and that to correct some
fault, and one of the workmen, see
ing the futility of this, said: ‘Stop
right here; we will go back and begin
over and make the machine so it
won’t do these things, instead of try
ing to put on more parts to keep it
from doing them.’ The result was
an important advancement towards
the wonderful simplicity and perfec
tion of the present machine.
“For forty years the Government
of this country has been operated on
the splicing system: coddle some one
here, another there, and then another
in order that the others shall not get
more than their share. Help the
manufacturers, then help the farm
ers, then some one else, and finally,
in order to balance off, help every
body who has got strong enough pull
to demand help. This idea is the
root of the evil, not only because it
is impossible to help all by burdening
all, as Governor Aycock pointed out,
but what is worse, only the strong
will be able to get their share when
the distribution is going on. The only
hope of the average, every-day man
who works, is to combine for the de
struction of all privilege, and to de
mand that the Government shall re
turn to its rightful function of seeing
that equality of opportunity is main
tained. The first citadel of privilege
that must be stricken down is the
protective tariff. That is the mudsill
of the fabric of patches, and Gover
nor Aycock, Woodrow Wilson, and
other eminent Democrats are right
when they say that this is the year
for attacking the beginning of evil.
Temporizing on this question means
the negation of any possible reform
in all the other things where splicing
has been done. Those who cannot
see this are in very much the frame
of mind of the Irishman when he said
that if a thing were too short he
could splice it, but if it were too
long he didn’t know what to do with
it. Till protection is destroyed other
reforms are merely saving at the
spigot and losing at the bung.
“You can never get where you want
to go till you start on the right road.’’
Despise not the day of the one-
horse farmer, for it leads to a two-
horse team.
SMALL LOCAL, BEAUFORT
COUNTY.
Am glad to note the progress the
Union is making, although must con
fess that our local is not doing much.
We have done some business through
the Union Agency and have saved
money on every article purchased.
Would that we could get every mem
ber to read The Carolina Union Far
mer. It is, in my judgment, by far
the best paper published in the State.
Hurrah for the warehouse system!
The farmer is fast coming to the
front. Let’s everybody join hand
and push the Union to greater suc
cess.
SMITH LEE,
Secretary-Treasurer Small Local, Au
rora, N. C.