The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., January 29, 1910, Page 63, Image 11

About The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920

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butter will be quickly realized for the home
made product just as soon as better breeds
and better methods are introduced.”
Even where the cattle tick remains, steps can
be taken, of course, to overcome the difficulty;
and everywhere in the South there are golden op
portunities for money-making in raising improved
breeds of hogs, sheep, horses, and poultry, while
the cattle tick, of course, need not prevent any
ono from getting the best breeds of cattle for the
dairy and realizing upon the splendid opportun
ities in this line of industry.
NN ritlng about Emporia, Kansas, his home town,
in the same Christmas issue of the Breeder’s Ga
zette to which we have referred, William Allen
White says: "Emporia still remains a rural com
munity a metropolis of the meat growers. The
men on the trains coming into Emporia talk Stock
ers and feeders and hogs and steers as the men
on the trains In and out of New York talk about
bonds and securities.” What the South needs Is
more towns like this. When the farmers begin
to talk of cattle prices instead of cotton prices,
the change from land-robbing to land-building
will really have begun.
Let us make 1910 indeed a live stock year. The
first thing to do is to get better stock - improved
breeds of cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, and poultry.
And the next thing to do is to give them better
care.
This Week’s Special Message.
EHY FEW of us. Indeed, have any adequate
realization of what good poultry well cared
for might add to the returns from South
ern farms. With eggs at 35 cents a dozen, hens
at 15 and turkeys at 20 cents a pound, there Is
surely money in poultry. Even if these abnormal
ly high prices do not continue, there is little dan
ger that they will soon get low enough not to
give the producer a handsome profit. The fear of
an over-supply of poultry products no longer trou
bles any thoughtful person. For the last two or
three decades there has been a steady increase lu
the prices paid for poultry and eggs as compared
with other foods of similar nature, and the de
mand keeps on increasing.
We know one town of 4,000 people from which
12,000,000 worth of poultry and eggs is shipped
each year, and the loading concern In the busi
ness is right now enlarging its plant to meet the
greater demand.
All of which, is Just a sort of introduction to
the plea we wish to make that each and every
reader study this "Poultry Special" and save It for
future reference. We have tried to make it plain,
practical, and helpful we do not believe you will
find many "glittering generalities" or any "tall
tales" iu it; but we do believe you will find much
instruction of actual value. You can learn how
to set a hen, how to feed und care for the young
chicks, how to breed up the ilock, how to have
hens that will lay, how to build u poultry house,
how to make a brooder, how to soil your surplus
stock, how to cook the ones you don't sell, how to
care for ducks and turkeys, and how not to go in
to the poultry business.
This lust we regard as a very important point;
for while wo have unlimited faith in the future
of the poultry industry in the South, we have not
unlimited faith iu the ability of most men and
women to go into a business which requires in
ilnitu attention to details with which they are
not familiar, und muko an immediate success of
it. Poultry raising is not a "get-rich-qulck”
business; but it is a business that will pay big
dividends on careful, persistent, intelligent work.
Therefore, let's nil get in line, and raise "more
poultry and better poultry" this year than ever
before. The "better poultry” will count for as
much, too, remember, as the "more poultry"; and
there ure thousands of readers to whom pages 71.
und 12 may bo the most valuable iu the paper.
The Week’s Happenings.
□HE MEMBERS of the English Parliament,
unlike the members of our American Con
gress, are not all elected the same day,
but the polling continues in different districts
through about a fortnight. While the result of
the first day’s elections, therefore, indicated a
sweeping Liberal victory and the consequent tri
umph of the Lloyd-George budget with its in
creased taxes on lands and incomes, the later
elections have gone strongly in favor of the
Unionists or Conservatives. At this time, there
fore, it seems certain that the Nationalists or
Irish members will hold the balance of power in
the House of Commons, and while they will prob
ably favor the more important features of the
Lloyd-George budget, it is likely that they will
oppose the increased tax on beer. Moreover, the
result of the election being so indecisive, it is al
most certain that another election will be held
within a year or two when the issue of free trade
or protective tariff will be definitely fought out.
The popular vote to date gives the Unionists
2,566,627, Liberals 2,324,315, Laborites 395,155,
or a total majority of only 153,803 for the united
Liberal-Labor parties.
aft
The high price of meat has become not only
oue of the most Interesting but, for the people
in the cities, one of the most serious of recent
news matters. In many Northern cities a boycott
on meat has been begun, the members becoming
temporary vegetarians in the hope of reducing
meat prices. "There are not enough people on
the farms raising food and too many people are
going to the cities to be fed,” is the laconic ex
planation given by Secretary Wilson, and he goes
on to point out that three-quarters of a million
people are coming to America annually from Eu
rope, and all of these go to the towns to increase
the already too high proportion of city people.
For these and other reasons, the high price of
meat (at least as compared with other com
modities) Is likely to continue, and all this means,
of course, big profits for the farmers who grow
the meat. There has never been a better time for
starting a general crusade In behalf of stock rais
ing in the Southern States.
It begins to look as if the South is to have
some compensation for the losses it has suffered
through our terrible race problem. The presence
of the negro has kept from us the great flood of
Immigration from Southern Europe—Italians,
Poles, ami Hungarians, etc.,—which has crowded
the Northern cities and overflowed their slums
and, Instead of this Immigration, the South is now
to gain strength by the coming into our borders
of progressive, wide-awake Western farmers of
our own blood, tongue, and ideals—sons and
grandsons, many of them, of the very men who
went West from the South itself in other days:
men who are of the finest type of American citi
zenship and will play a large part in the great
agricultural revolution in the South. Upon their
coming, moreover, the negro problem will become
less acute for the proportion of the white popula
tion will become larger. In fact, it seems not un
likely that as our Southern States become as
thickly populated as some of the Northern States,
the proportion of negro population to white in
many of them will be reduced from 50 to 25 per
cent.
In the splendid Southern Number of Collier’s
Weekly the surprising statement is made that the i
new school census of Texas shows a population of i
six million for that State. The census of 1900
gave the population there as only 3,500,000. In
recent years Texas has had heavy immigration •
from the Middle West, especially since cheap
lands in Canada have been exhausted. If the
school census figures are correct, Texas claims
that it is the third State in population in the
1910 census, only New York and Pennsylvania
ranking ahead of it. Next to Texas, Florida is
getting more immigration than any other Southern
State. Numerous companies have been organized
for the development of Florida lands and the
great drainage projects now on foot will open up
much other fertile land for cultivation.
Congress is doing little outside the committee
rooms. Between the old-line Cannon-Aldrich ele
ment and the insurgent Republicans, there is a
more or less definite struggle for the mastery, and
of late the Insurgents seem to be having the bet
ter of the contest The Middle West is undoubted
ly behind them, and it will be hard for the Re
publican Party to carry that section if the Insur
gent element is defeated. President Taft is said
to be insisting upon more positive action in be
half of his policies on the part of the Senate. He
urges immediate action in behalf of the postal
savings bank bill, but the measure he advocates
has been made exceedingly weak out of deference
to the great banking interests.
J*
General Robert Lowry, one of Mississippi’s most
distinguished sons, died in Jackson last week at
the age of seventy-nine. General Lowry was born
in South Carolina, but when he was eight years
old his parents moved to Mississippi along with
the heavy tide of immigration from the Carolinas
in the '30’s and ’40’s. Distinguished as a lawyer
and as an officer in the Confederate Army, Gen
eral Lowry is best known for his eight years'
service as Governor of Mississippi. Since his re
tirement in January, 1890, he has practiced law
in Jackson.
J*
Mr. Chas. W. Bryan, brother of W. J. Bryan,
declares that the Nebraskan is not to be consider
ed as a candidate for the Democratic nomination
in 1912. Mr. Bryan, himself, is on a tour in
South America. At this time the most prominent
candidate for the next Democratic nomination is
Governor Judson Harmon, of Ohio, but he is get
ting rather old and is at a disadvantage in that
he is supposed to belong to the old-line element
of the party.
aft
Both Houses of the Rhode Island Legislature
have passed a bill for the return of the fraudulent
Reconstruction bonds which some schemer had
given that State in order to have it sue North
Carolina for the amount. This is a gratifying
evidence of moral sensitiveness that is very credit
able to Rhode Island.
Jt
It is announced that Governor Hughes will not
be a candidate for re-nomination as Governor of
New York. The explanation is, that he cannot
afford the financial loss involved in giving up his
law practice for the comparatively small salary as
Governor.
The Maryland Legislature has re-elected United
States Senator Rayner for another term of six
years.
A Thought For the Week.
DIVE US COURAGE and gaiety and the quiet
mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to
us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in
all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give
us the strength to encounter that which is to
some, that we bo brave in peril, constant in tribu
lation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of
fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal
and loving one to another.—Robert Louis Steven
son.