Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / Oct. 31, 1912, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page Two THE CAROLINA UNION FARMER [Thursday, October 31, 1912- 'TENNESSEE DEEA.1RX1VIENX. OFFICIAL ORGAN OF TENNESSEE FARMERS’ UNION L. M. RHODES, Pres., Huntingdon, Tenn. C. v% . BROOKS, Sec., Atwood, Tenn. A FEW FACTS THAT PAR3IERS SHOULD REMEMBER. By C. W. Brooks, It appears that the human race had its birth in what is now known as Central Asia, somewhere near the Caspian Sea. Man, for many years, had no organized society, no rule of conduct or institutions of any kind. He lived the most simple life possi ble, taking shelter in caves and clefts of rocks or dwelling among the hills and mountains with the primeval forest for a shelter. By what records we have and by the aids that nature afford us, we are taught that in the infancy of the race individualism ruled. Every man was for himself and against every other man. Food, shelter and a feeling of security from the attacks of his fel low-man was man’s highest ambition. For this he strove and with this he was content. Out of this struggle for food, shel ter and safety grew the first forms of social organizations. Even to the primitive mind, it was clear that man could better provide food, shel ter and defense by joining with those near him than by standing alone and fighting, each for himself. Years before man had the ability to make records of his thoughts and achievements his mutual dependence made it necessary for him to form agreements or compacts in order to defend himself from the encroach ments of enemies. Nothing is more logical or natural than that society would be the result of such agree ments or compacts. From these agree ments came the clan or colony with its leader or chieftain. These clans scattered out into different parts of the wilderness and formed colonies, and slowly they and their successors developed higher and higher stand ards of thought and living. From the clan and its chieftain to our present-day civilization is a far cry and much of the intervening space is red with human blood, deep with human carnage and strewn with the shattered wrecks of monarchies and republics whose rulers lost sight of the history-proven truth that no government can long exist that is founded on slavery and ruled by big otry. Although we are now, perhaps, liv ing in the most enlightened and most highly cultured age of the world’s history, a close and impartial study of present conditions and the general trend of social and commercial affairs in the United States must convince the fair-minded man that slavery with its degradation and suffering and bigotry with its short-sightedness and heartlessness is not altogether a thing of remote antiquity. The clan with its chieftain has passed into history and human so ciety has long ago taken on a more pretentious form of government. But through all the ages, and through all the manifold variations of human society and government, there has ever been present a class whose god was Greed and whose ruling ambition was to “lord it’’ over their fellow- man. The ruled, in exact conformity with their degree of intelligence, have objected, protested, rebelled, fought, and millions of them have died in struggles to obtain and main tain their freedom. Rulers and kings have been denounced, kingdoms have been pulled down and republics put up where kingdoms were before, strong-willed, broad-minded, noble- hearted men have spent their lives trying to establish a government anc lay down a code of laws that will measure out justice to all still the masses of the people in all na tions are ruled—and robbed. Power changes its name and its methods of collecting tribute but it persists and exists and continues to levy tribute despite of all the thousands of years of protest and spasmodic rebellion. In ages past the king owned a nation. His dukes, barons and lords owned vast tracts of land. They also owned the people on the land, and all the people and the land might pro duce. Our present-day kings do not own nations. They would scorn such ownership. They lay no claim to ownership to land or men. They have learned that such ownership is full of troublesome details and that sooner or later it ends in rebellion, worry and war. So, the present-day king lays claim to one or more of the products of the farm, mine, or fac tory. For his kingdom, he lays claim to all of one or more of the necessi ties of life that the land, mine or factory, combined with the brain and brawn of man, can produce. For sol diers he uses dollars, his generals are law-makers, lawyers, and judges. Thus, we have Morgan, King of Iron and Steel; Rockefeller, King of Oil; Armour, King of Meat; and on and on down the line of the “lesser lights.’’ The masses work and pro duce, the kings divide the products among themselves—giving to the producers enough to keep them liv ing that they may produce more. These modern American kings have managed to gain title to re sources and industries to the enor mous value of $32,000,000,000. Hu man intellect can scarcely grasp the immensity of this vast sum. In the United States there are somewhere near 12,000,000 people engaged in agricultural pursuits, and in the last two years they have startled the world by producing, each year, more than $8,000,000,000 worth of farm products. But it would take the en tire gross earnings of these 12,000,- 000 workers on their 6,000,000 farms for four such years to equal the holding of a mere handful of our modern kings. The total wealth of the United States is estimated at $128,000,000,- 000. The bank deposits of the Unit ed States are estimated at $14,000,- 000,000. And the annual bank clear ances reach $150,000,000,000. The cotton growers of the United States produce more cotton than all the rest of the world combined. There is no other nation that pro duces as much wheat, oats, or tobac co. There are more horses, mules, cows, and hogs in this country than in any other country on earth. These facts prove beyond question that the farmers of the United States are not laggards. That they do not only produce enough to feed and clothe themselves, but that they an nually send millions, yoa, billions, of dollars’ worth of farm products to other countries to feed and clothe their teeming millions. If the farm ers of the United States are not inde pendent of want, if poverty exists among them to any great extent if they, as a class, are not provided with the comforts and conveniences, yea, the luxuries of life, you will have to look to something other than a lack of energy for an explanation. Bearing in mind the above facts, consider the following: More than one-sixth of the homes of this country are mortgaged. More than one-half are rented. Only a lit tle more than one-third are owned free from debt. When this government was organ ized the farmer owned ninetenths of the wealth of the nation. At the breaking out of the Civil War the farmer owned one-half of the coun try’s wealth. In 1910 he owned one- fifth. And the end is not yet. Each year the farmer loses more and more of his proportion of the wealth of the country. Is this country to be come a nation of homeless renters? Already 175,000,000 acres of the lands of the United States is held by sixty-three owners. It is estimat ed that our money kings have invest ed the enormous sum of $9,000,000,- 000 in United States land in the last five years. The same kings that own the great cotton mills of this country and of Europe are now using their millions of dollars they have coined from the sweat and blood of women and little children to buy up the finest cotton lands in the South. Not satisfied with the rich harvest they have gathered in passing the South’s great staple from the pro ducer to the consumer, they now propose to become both producer and manufacturer. It is their purpose to have these lands worked by negroes and ignorant, degraded foreigners who demand nothing more than the plainest food and the minimum of coarse clothes. And you, Mr. South ern farmer, will have to compete with this class of labor. Yet, you are sitting still and allowing this to go on without so much as taking notice of it, much less making an effort to stop it. One English earl now owns 30,000 acres of Southern land and declares his intentions of owning 100,000. This means that there will be added to the South 4,000 miser able, poverty-stricken, tenant homes, whose inmates are shiftless, ignor ant, immoral families from Southern Europe and Western Asia, who will wear their lives away working for an English lord who lives in idle luxury 6,000 miles away. Is it not time the farmers of this country were awak ing to dangers that lieth in land mon opoly and demanding that laws be enacted that will prevent a few men from becoming owners of the earth? We, as individual farmers, may complain, lament, regret, grieve and deplore, but it will accomplish us nothing. Greed is as relentless as death. It laughs at pity, defies the laws of man and disregards the law of God. If we would cope with this monster we must meet him with a force he cannot overcome. The far mer has this power at his command He only needs to organize his forces and put them into action. But the farmer does not yet realize that he has the population of the earth so completely at his mercy. It is only a lack of the realization of this pow er, coupled with a certain littleness and narrowness of mind, that brings about bickerings, strife, jealousies and petty spite that keeps the rural population from dictating the laws of our States and Nation. We point with just pride to the more than $8,000,000,000 worth of farm products that we gather from our fields each year, but we forget that producing is only a part of the farmer’s business. If we hold our own in the business world we must be managers as well as workers; must be marketers of grain as well as harvesters of grain; we must not only till our Southern fields and gather the fieecy staple from the open bolls, but we must set ourselves to the task of solving the problem of placing this, the South’s greatest commodity, on the market in the most economical and advantageous way. It is essen tial that the farmers of this country produce enormous crops, but it is no less essential that the farmer sha receive just and remunerative re turns for his labor. There is no better or nobler worK in which a man can engage than ti ing the soil. To produce the things that humanity most needs’ and mus have—food and clothes—should cer tainly be a noble occupation. But i farm life ever becomes what it shoui be, one of the most dignified and de sirable ways of earning a living, i will be brought about by a unite > persistent and continued effort on t ® part of the farmers themselves. Th® farmer must take advantage of a the agricultural knowledge he can obtain. He must manage his Ian better. He must plant better see He must cultivate and fertilize more wisely. He must diversify and rota e his crops. He must make a deter mined effort to bring about a system of farming. Corn nubbin and bumble-bee cotton must ed- on as pests to be classed' the boll weevil and the cattle tie ^ The man who owns galled and gulh®^ hillsides must be looked on as slothful and unprogressive feB® ' The minds of the young men be so trained that they will ta^ more pride in growing a good cro than in standing behind a coun measuring off ginghams and of selling tobacco, side meat, and co’ oil at a cross-roads store. ^ The productive possibilities of well cared for and well farm are almost beyond belief, the other hand, the amount produced on many of our South® ^ farms is so small that one can wonder how the ones who them manage to provide food ^ raiment for themselves and It is pitiful, it is heart-sickening> see so many plodding along, year ter year, putting into their enough energy and effort, if it ^ ^ rightly directed, to bring tbein bountiful living, but on accoun their haphazard methods it is ^ closest rub that they keep the wolf of hunger from their door. j It is well enough to educate advise the farmer that he XT ~ ~ • ~ ctOP^ er yields, but the man who there has done but little for ^ j^e the traih mer. It is profits he wants, must receive something above cost of production if he is to - and educate his children, long as the marketing of farm P ucts is left entirely with an organized dealers or middlemen half of whom are not needed)* they controlled by quotations .g out from institutions whose pv^ uuu xiwxxx fice business is to gamble on tn ^g), of farm products (the excha it matters little to the farmers* ing them as a class, whether is great or small. The stap’® of the United States may be -ofit but the farmers would cos‘ thereby unless they decrease ^ ^jjd of production on the one eliminate useless waste in mar on the other. ^fil The big cotton crop of goU^^ bring to the farmers of the $150,000,000 less than smaller crop of 1910. This in price must have been of about by artifice, because it all proportion to the increase Re considered from a standpoin g^^pl® mand, and the price of gect ° commodities. The blightinS co^^^ this reduction in the price ° th is not apparent iratil we .g is fact that cotton in its raw s -gfot ' consumed by the farmer, ^ ® the real economic value of -uot cotton is measured by the a other things it will .^at* petent statisticians tell us nomically, the farmer rec -j i per bale for the 1911 any crop in the last t"
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 31, 1912, edition 1
2
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