Newspaper Page Text
V FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1921. V .3 THE INDEPENDENT, ELIZABETH CITY, N. C PAGE FIVE LIVE MEN WILL Jump at This Offer A few live salesmen will profit by answering this ad. Others will wait and wish they had. Willys Light Junior is a new power and v light plant selling for $295.00, other" sizes for every need at pre war prices. Every one in your vi cinity without central station cur- - rent a good prospect. Greatly re duced prices and an easy payment plan makes this an unusually at tractive proposition. Dealers backed by national organization. This is a great opportunity for a few live salesmen who will act quickly. H. E. CROOK CO., INC. Willys Light Division . I No. 28 Light St. Baltimore, Md. "And There Wasn't the Slightest Smell from Dead Rats." Writes John Simpkins, farmer of Annandale, N. J.: "Eats were costing uie hundreds yearly; tried dogs, ferrets, iioison, could not get rid of them. Bought $1.23 pkg. of RAT-SNAP (5 cakes.) "Used half, not a live rat since. Dead ones a plenty. I like RAT-SNAP because after killing rats it dries them p leaves no' smell." Three sizes, 35c, &c, $1.25. Sold and guaranteed by Culpepper Hardware Store, City Drug Store,- G. -re T-ariAHv. -Trhn C! Rnnd. Edenton: W. A." Leggett, Edenton; Sawyer's General Store, iamaen. THE FARMERlfi) HIS PROBLEMS Some Interesting Facts' About Farms, Farmers and Farming. V; "- .' ' ' - 4 ' Tt is a Tlitiful rnmmpnfurr nn Vo mte. dom of mankind that when America has greater crops than ever before known there are almost sure to be twice as many people in the land in need of food as there are when the crops are email. This has worked out after this fashion so many times that one United States congressman has made the statement in Drint that he does not know how the farmers of the country would get along n it were not ior tne pests tnat rum portions, of the crops every year. , , '-vThe'. production of food in the United States is not decreasing: it is increas ing. The average grain, potato, peach, pear and apple production per year from 1911 to 1915 inclusive was 3.820.510.- 000 bushels, while for 1919 it was 6,- 183,171,000 bushels. In .1920 the pro duction was unnrecedented. the com bined yield of the ten principal crops running thirteen per cent above the average for the five years preceding; and the corn crop was so large that it did not pay "to N gather it, and yet in Connecticut hundreds of school children are starving. Since 1916 the value of the agricul tural output of the United States, ex pressed in terms of that wobbling thing which we call the dollar, has each year exceeded twenty billion dollars. In 1919 the total was nearly twenty-five bil- STUDEBAKER SOLD DURING THE FIRST; QUARTER OF 1921 more cars than any other company' (except Ford) in number and value. To be exact 9,850 more than the AVERAGE company. Only one company coming within 5,200 cars of its sales. ' AND NOW in order to put its product practically be yond competition, it has further-improved all models in many particulars and materially reduced prices to the fol lowing pre-war level: LIGHT SIX Roadster, $1,450; Touring, $1,485; Coupe, 1.850; Sedan, $200. SPECIAL SIX Roadster, $1,750; Touring, $1,800; Coupe, $2,650; Sedan, $2,750. BIG SIX Touring, $2,185; Coupe, $3,100; Delivered to the owner. Sedan, $3,200. J. H. McMullap Jr, EXCLUSIVE DEALER. All Northeastern North Carolina. s in V T&sl Special. During the month of June we will give a free tube with every purchase of a PENNSYLVANIA VACUUM CUP TIRE. "v 'These tubes are Pennsylvania Vacuum Cup Tubes of the same high quality as the tires themselves. Tire prices as good as you carl get. D. M. Jones Co. . ELIZABETH CITY, NORTH CAROLINA lion dollars ; but in j.920, with larger crops, the value was . estimated at, $19,-. 856,000,000 or $5,105,000,000 below the total for the preceding year.. In the month of May, 1920, a general scare was sent out through, ail tne pa pers of the country that owing to the shortage nf farm labor there was a, prac tical certainty that the whole counrty would be faced with a food shortage. As late as June 15th the publisher of Farm, Stock and Home, of Minneapo lis, was ureins the conscription of farm labor, so that the food supply of the country should not be menaced; and on the same date the then governor of New York . tate appointed a Farm Labor Committee having as part of its mission "the economic nroblem confronting the farmer, iin order that there may be a fuller production of food stuffs." "Within a few weeks from that' time farmers all over the country were com- nlainine that they had lost money on their season's work, and if they had been able to secure all the help desired their losses would have been greter. In Alabama the farmers in 1920 har vested four hundred thousand tons more of the commodities which feed and clothe the world than they did the previous year, and received ?128,43t5,UUO less tor their work. y Farm Values and Incomes. Uncle Sam's farmers own one-third of the nation's total wealth. The value of farm oroDerty is now estimated as in excess of eighty billion dollars, which is five times the value of all the rail roads, twenty times the value of the iron and ' steel industry, and forty times the value of the textile industry. This farm value has increased sixty-five per rent in the nast five years and five fold in twenty years, expressed in terms of the dollar, which .wobbles . witn every wobble of the stock market. It is generally conceded that, barring fire or other calamity, the farmer is more sure of his home, food, clothing and reasonable comfort than any other worker; and yet the farmers themselves, nri manvother on their behalf, do not regard farmers as properly paid, when the investment and the labor are tasen siderntion. The averaee returns on the farmer s investments increased, from four per cent in 1913 to seven per cent in 191S, which, was the farmer's banner, year; and the farmer's cash reward, over and tho farm used auuvy me vuwv.i.w - by his family, was less than five hundred dollars per year for the period. Xhis about- equalled the average annual in come" of the industrial workers for the same neriod. Government figures for 1918 showed that the average net labor income of all the farmers for that year, including all the members of the farm er' a familv. was twelve hundred dollars Detailed figures of farm incomes com niled bv the Department of Agriculture in twenty-eight representative sections of the United States shows tuat tne av erage American farmer cleared ?9.61 per week for his own toil. " On one himdrert-tvmcal Indiana farms the farm er averaged for seven years an annual wage of $55S, after allowing five per cent for capital invested and giving His family the produce they directly con sumed on the place. In Wisconsin a group of expenieneed farmers made a study of their neighborhood, and came to the conclusion that every capable, m lnsti-ioiis man in the neighborhood ac cumulated ten thousand dollars more of nronerty every ten years. CaDitalists in other lines can snow much greater returns than this, but workers cannot; and nothing is gained by pointing out that the average wage of tho farmer is less than half the av erage wage of carpenters, bricklayers and other skilled city workmen. me latter must spend a fourth of their wages, or more, for a roof over their heads, and another fourth, or more, for the food which the farmer raises on his place, so that the net result is about the same, except that the farmer can accumulate property and does do so. Comparing the farmers with other canitalists it is very evident that they do not obtain adequate returns on their investments as compared with what oth ers receive. There is scarcely any other large industry in the country that has not brought forth large fortunes for some of the most energetic in it, yet the intelligent handling of a farm affords as great an opportunity for executive ability as is needed in a mercantile or manufacturing business, and a much greater opportunity for hard work. In the year 1919 three hundred and fiftv thousand corporations m the Unit ed States made net profits twenty-five times greater than that of the seven million farmers. It took five hundred farmers to make as much as one of these corporations. The profit of one coal company during the "World "War was 7, S5G per Cent. Farm Losses in 1920. In 1920 the average farmer lost ovfcr a thousand dollars on his crop. The crops were the most costly to produce in American history but when they were marketed the prices offered were thirty three per cent below what they were at planting time. The sudden drop has left the farmer with a heavier burden of debt than 'he ' hascarrieoT for a long Hma -. nnrl it ia said that about one- fourth of them are virtually bankrupt. Much of what tne iarmer saises is fed to his stock. The balance which he could sell for cash brought him ,about sixteen billion dollars in xxy, Dut in 1920 this amount was decreased by five and one-half billion dollars; and if the decrease in the value of live stock prod ucts" be taken into consideration the farmers suffered a setback in 1920 amounting to eight billion dollars. Most of this huge loss has been absorbed in profits by middlemen before the ultimate cnnsnmor wns.reached, so a considerable part-.'of the farmer's capital and credit has 'been transferred to tnose who al- readV have too many favors at the hand si of those who have capital to supply and credit to extend. With one-third of the country en gaged in . agriculture, the rest of the country does twelve and one-Half times as much "business," much of it consist ing in swapping the farmer's products back and forth, always at a pront, and EeiHom to his advantage or to the ad vantage of those who must eat Or wer what tne iarmer proum-cn. So aecere were the 19-0 losses that in Texas, Kansas, Illinois and Iowa the percentage of decreased valuation of farm property amounted to Detween ior ty and forty -five per cent. Lands in the Mississippi delta which brought $400 an acre but a little more than a year ago are now selling for $100 an acre, and mules which then brought $250 can now be bought for $75." There is some rinner that in 1921 these losses may actually produce the food shortage which was predicted for 1920. Farmers can hardly be blamed far not wanting to lose the increased value bf - their lands by producing crops at a loss; and as the farmer -can always produce enougb to keeD himself and his family, he has it within his power to create a situation more terrible in possibility than it is in probability. Competition from Abroad. Tt is a new experience for the Amer ican farmer to find his own market in vaded: but the invasions have been so serious that during the first eight months of 1920 the import of food stuffs was almost exactly the same as the exnort. and in the month of Aug ust the imports actually exceeded the exports to the amount of $oo,UUU,UUU. This means that the high prices ruilng here attracted agricultural products from other countries to such an extent na to make the foreign markets of American farmers valueless to them. Fnr the fiscal year ending June, 190, thn United States imported the quiva- lent of twenty-five million bushels of nnshelled neanuts. It is estimated that in the vear 1920 the southern farmers lost from twelve million to fifteen mil lion dollars due to the importation of peanuts from China. It goes without saying that the farmers of tne soutn are no more able to compete witn coone labor than is any other industry. Tn Jnlv. 1920. one steamship brought into New York more than four million pounds of Danish butter, and for a long time it came at the rate of a million pounds a week. This is the more re markable, coming from Denmark, be cause at the close of the war she had few cows, not having been able to raise enough feed for them, or to buy it from the United States during the war. All this recovery has taken place in two years. During the winter just past it cost si 23 ner barrel for the Maine potato growers, in the famous Arookstook dis trict, to land their potatoes in iew York, while Holland potato growers placed them on the dock in New York for twenty-five cents a Barrel, m tne same winter months four hundred car loads of finest lemorfs were dumped in to a gulch near- Los Angeles because they could not compete in price with the lemons of southern Europe. The freight charges killed all prospects of selling these lemons even at cost. One reason why the American farmer is now in trouble is that, theoretically, h has a free-trade market to sell m, all of his products being sold at a price which enables them to cnmpete in tne world's markets with the competitive products of pauper countries. But ac tually, in 1920. he had no foreign mar kets at all. as we have seen, and was at the greatest possible disadvantage be cause his own natural marKet in tne United States was invaded. The onlv good his foreign market did in 1920 was to, fix fqr his products a nriee so low that he could not sell them for enough to. pay for raising them. Then he had the double disadvantage that everything he needed to purchase was bought in a land which has now tor fnetured articles the highest prices of any country in the world. Pro tection has protected the manufacturer in America, but it has not protected the farmer. To this we must add the fur ther fact that the farmer has had o pay -the highest prices for abor, due to the scale of wages' fixed for the pro tected manufacturing industries. During' the years 1918 and 1919 the prices of farm lands throughout the country, went up and up; and those who bought farms during those years, at three hundred to four hundred dollars per acre, are faced with ruin unless the farms were bought outright for cash. At the prjces agreed upo'n the new owners can neer hope to pay fW them, and the holders of mortgages on such investments have almost as much to worry about as the ones who did the purchasing. Improved Farm Acreage. . Of the total land area of the United States twenty-five per cent is improved, ten uer cent is arable , forest or cutover land, three per cent is swamp land which needs to be drained before it can be used, twcper cent is irrigable land, four per cent is improved land other than wood land, twenty per . .cent is adapted to forestry but not to general agriculture, thirty-two per. cent is suit able for grazing purposes, two per cent is desert and two per cent has been used for city lots and railroad rights of way. . '' The improved farm acreage of today is 293 per cent of what it was sixty-' five years ago. In 1920 it was divided into 6,449,998 farms, ranging in value from six dollars an acre, for : grazing lands to eight hundred dollars an acre for highly developed orchards and truck gardens. But there is an ugly side to this mat ter of improved acreage. 1 One-half the Once tilled land' in New ' York arid New" England now lies" idle. Those who first farmed these lands sold the fertility off without reolacine anything, the losr price's obtained for their products not enabling them to purchase the needed fertilizer. . . The recent census showed a net de- crease -of one hundred thousand farms in New York, Pennsylvania, West Vir ginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michi gan. There are twenty-nine tnousana abandoned farm houses in Ohio as com- : nared with eighteen thousand a year , ago, and seven men leave the farm ev ery year to one that returns to if. 'JLhis is a serious situation. In Iowa there are 3,732 fewer farms than ten years ago, but there are 44,071 more in Mon- . tana, showing the drift of the farming population toward new lands.' In the (Continued on Page 8.) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0- 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Confidence in Her Personal Charm comes to aloman not so much from beauty of face or figure, or fr6m beautiful clothes, as from that indefinable but unmistakable smartness which somehow marks some women out from all others. em 0 0 0 rTKedf have a clever way of changing more than just the lines of your figure; they make you feel younger, more at tractive, more elegant. They make your clothes lookas if they were designed just for you, and they give you, that superb confidence in yourself which is the height of feminine charm. Let Us Fit Your Figure in a Redfern 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - v M Leigh Sheep Company -WOMAN'S WEAR m - : - ; Wm W . awyer Again Ready to Serve You for . PtaimfoSinig '& IHIesiltSim At my new location, 2 Panama St.) Phone 608-J. Esti mates freely furnished on.plumbing and all styles of hot water, vapor and steam heating. Special attention to re pair work; also automobile radiators repaired. ISgT-Hn:;zzW:;:::KM."iiiislII M MM MM V.AT Here is your opportunity to insure against embarrassing errors in spelling, pronunciation and poor choice of words. Know the meaning of puzzling war terms. Increase your efficiency, which results in power and success. WEBSTER'S IIEW IflTERIIATIOriAL DICTIONARY ia an all-knowing teacher, a universal question answerer, made to meet your needs. It is in daily use by hundreds of thousands of suc cessful men and women tha world over. 400,000 Words. 2700 Pages. 6000 Il lustrations. T2.000 Biographical En tries. 30,000 Geographical Subjects. CRAND PRIZE. (Highest Award) , Panama-Pacifies Exposition. REGULAR and INDIA-PAPER Editions. WRITE for Specimen Pages. FREE Pocket Map if you name this paper. G. & C. MERRIAM CO., Springfield, Mass. U. S. A. tHEWVEBSA CAB $545 f. o. b. Detroit If you are doubtful whether it will pay you to buy a Ford Truck for your farm, go to the man .who owns one and ask him. Or we will come to you and will tell you what dozens of Ford Truck' Owners have told us that the Ford Truck is pos itively a paying proposition. v . It brings the best markets to your door. It solves the hauling problem( on the farm and between the farm and the Qty. It does a dozen different jobs every day and stands the wear and tear of farm - work under all conditions. 'A post card will brthg you further information. Auto & Gas Engine Wksr, Inc. C W. GAITHER, President. ' . . Ct. ' Elizabeth City, N. C 105 Water Street 0 w 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 BsssmO - . . "