The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., March 19, 1910, Page 208, Image 12

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

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
Under the Editorial and Business Management of
DR. TAIT BUTLER,
8TARKVTLLB, BOSS.
CLARENCE H. POE, ... AoocuTi Editor and Manager.
Prop, W. F. MASSEY. .... Associate Editor.
B. E. MILLER. ...... Managing Editor.
FISHER SPECIAL AGENCY, - New York Representatives.
ALBERT H. HOPKINS. .... Chicago Representative.
8. M. GOLDBERG, St. Louis and Kansas City Representative
OFFICES i
RALEIGH, N. 0. 8TARKVILLE, MISS.
To either of which Commoniestiocis regarding
_Advertising or Snbecripttone may be Addri— ad.
Entered ae second dam matter Oct. 18. 1907. |t the postoffice Ral
Mgh. N. C.. under the Act ol Congress Of March 8. 1879.
We Guarantee Our Advertisers.
WE will positively make good the loee sustained by any subacriber
aa a result of fraudulent misrepresentation made in oar col*
—WMMtn the part ol any advertiser who proves to he a deliberate
swindler. This does not mean that we will try to adjust trilling
disputes between reliable business houses and their patrons, but in
•ny cam of actually fraudulent dealing, we will make good to the
subscriber aitaa have hast Indicated The condition of this guaran
b* Is that the claim for lose shall be reported to us within one
Bronthjafter tfap advertisement appears in our paper, and that the
Subscriber nWJatmy when writing each advertiser: T am writing
yon asadvertiser in The Progressive Parmer and Gazette, which
guarantees theralttbflity of all advertising that it carries.'’
^ «i "
Circulation, 1909, 70,108.
| 1 .
Editorial Gleanings.
Ruffl HENEVER a farmer gets money in the bank
and begins advertising something—im
proved seed op hogs or cattle or poultry—
he becomes a business farmer indeed. And a
business farmer is as genuinely a “business man”
as a merchant or banker.
J*
The more England Investigates the patent med
icine fraud—which is the same thing in America
as In England, except that It is worse here—the
more shameful does the whole traffic become.
There are many reports of death after death
where the persons could have been saved by early
medical treatment, but depended instead on the
Vnpfh ldkOO AAnAAof(oM«. __1 «_at_ i I
1 |/» vjiUi^u U/ IUCOC CUUDtl
enceless frauds. The “indigestion cure” fakirs
are the latest class of quacks vpho have had the
light turned on them, and an expert contributor
to the London Spectator says on this subject:
“Indigestion, pain or discomfort at some
part of the alimentary canal, Is merely a
symptom, not a distinct disease. It may in
► dictate merely slight functional disturbance,
or may be a sign of organic or malignant dis
ease. Cases of the more serious kind are al
ways to be found in hospitals, and Inquiry al
ways discloses the fact that many of them
have been dosing themselves with quack
medicines until, their malady having assumed
a serious or mortal phase, they have been
compelled to seek relief In a hospital. With
in the past few years In our local cottage hos
pital I, as a visiting member of the commit
tee, have come across a number of cases of
gastric ulcer in young women, and in most
instances have elicited the fact that they had
been dosing themselves with one or other
of the most advertised indigestion cures, the
sole potent Ingredient of which is aloes
One ease ended fatally; the life might have
been saved by an early diagnosis and scien
tific treatment. I could fill pages of your
space with similar illustrations, and more
pages with reports of inquests fully establish
ing my statements.”
Jt
Riding through the cotton fields of the South
at this time of the year, one Is struck by the down
right lack of thrift shown by too many of our
people. After all the hard work of making the
cotton crop last year there are now rotting in the1
fields thousands and thousands of pounds of lint
that shosld have been picked and marketed
months ago. With all the idle labor there has
been on our farms during the winter and all the
pretty weather we have had, such wastefulness is
inexcusable. Some of the people who have failed
to pick this high-priced 15-cent cotton may live
through another period of hard times when they
will be forced to save the last locks of 6- and 8
cent cotton.
J*
It is announced by Prof. P. P. Garner, that the
member of the Boys’ Corn Club of each county
making the largest yield of corn in 1910 w ill be
given a diploma signed by the Governor, the State
Superintendent of Education, and the Commis
sioner of Agriculture of Mississippi.
Some of our readers seem to expect the Mother’s
Magazine which we have been clubbing with about
four times as often as it is printed. Please re
member that it is published only once a month.
j
The illustrations used in our Corn Special last
week were from “More and Better Corn.” only
one of the many useful publications issued by our
advertisers and sent free of rh arsre to our ranitora !
ff you wish to get this free book on corn raising,'
drop a postal to Deere & Mansur, Department 2,
Moline, 111, The illustrations on our front page
this week are reproduced by courtesy of the Indus
trial Department of the Norfolk and Western
Railway.
J*
A dispatch from Vicksburg, Miss., says that a
hotel there has been serving bread made from
cottonseed meal, and that It tastos as good as
graham bread. Whether or not it would be worth
while to boost cottonseed meal for human food,
there is no doubt about the shameful waste in
volved in using it as a fertilizer without first
feeding it to live stock. It would be almost as
foolish to use wheat bran as a fertilizer. This
year cottonseed meal is a more expensive source
of nitrogen than any other fertilizer product, an !
we hope It will keep going up until nobody will
use It as fertilizer. When we get to feeding all
♦he meal to live stock our soils will become rich
er, and our farmers, too.
J»
We have been saying that you can't afford to
waste your time and sweat this year on scrub
seed, scrub stock, or out-of-date tools. Another
thing to remember Is. that you can't afford to
waste your time on scrub papers either. This
thought from Wallace's Farmer cannot be too
strongly emphasized:
“It Is not the cost of the paper (the high
est price is nothing), but it is the time wasted
In reading matter of no value that determines
the actual price of a paper. Besides, these
papers, getting less than the cost of the
white paper out of their subscribers, are
obliged to take almost any kind of advertis
,n" luai is onerea, Ann nenc© lead th© reader,
if he read* them at all. Into foolish Invest
ments. It la only the paper that charge* a
good price and require* each subscriber to
pay his share that can afford to turn down
fake, deceptive and Immoral advertisements.”
J*
Some people pretend to think that The Progre*.
slve Farmer and Gazette Is not In sympathy with
the one-horse farmer simply because It Is con
tinually urging the advantage of two-horse Imple
ments and machinery. One might as well sav
that you are not In sympathy with a sick person
when you urge him to get well. We want to
help the one-horse farmer to do Just as good
farming as possible with his one horse, but w#*
also want to help him get ‘o the point where be
will use two horses Just as soon as possible. As
a matter ef fact, we regard these one-horse farm
ers of to-day aa the real hope of the South, it
Is the small farmers who own their own homes
and work with their own hands who are the
strength of the country. Although a large propor
tion of this class In the South are now working
with one horse, they are fast taking up Improved
methods and fast becoming able to buy two, three
or four horses. And when they once become thor
oughly aroused, they will do as much for th*
South as farmers of the same type are doing for
the West.
Where Hard Thinking Would Save.
EAR AFTER YEAR, a* the planting season
conies around, and In fact, all through tha
year, we try to Impress these facts upon
the readers:
(1) That the fertility of any soil Is not n mere
matter of the plant food It contains, but Is largely
dependent upon the physical condition of that
soil—that Is to say, upon teiture, drainage, depth,
and the supply of humus.
(2) That the proper office of commercial fertil
iser* is to supplement the stable manure that
should be produced on every farm, and that any
system of fertilisation which Includes only com
mercial fertiliser* 1* bound. In the course of nny
length of time, to leave the soli poorer than It
wan at the beginning.
(2) That before any man can use fertilisers In
telligently he must know something shout what
these fertilisers contain, and something of the
special needs of the various crop* on his particu
lar soil.
It would seem that these are very simple propo
sitions, and that to the man studying them for a
little while they would he almost self-evident,
let Southern farmer* spend millions and millions
of dollars each year for commercial fertilisers
without any real conception of what these fertil
isers contain or of what la needed by their crops.
Alter all these yeara of Instruction on thin subject
hr the farm papers, the agricultural colleges, the
experiment stations, and the farmers' institute
lecturers, men. who who hare no deoht been
buying fertlllters for yeara. write ua and ask
snch questions as. "What fertiliser can I use to
produce 4 0 or 50 bushels of corn on my land this
year, or what is the difference between add phos
phate and phosphoric add"? We do not wish to
«ny harah things, for we certainly have no desire
to offend any of the one hundred thousand farm
ers mho mill read this article, but such questions
ah this tell of a shameful neglect of opportun
ities. a man in any other business who gave no
more real thought to hia work than these men
have been giving to theirs would he certain to
make a failure of that business. How, then, can
these farmers expect to make a success?
It is Indeed a very disconsolate picture wo see
from tbit viewpoint. One of these questions
never comes to us. but we get a glimpse In our
minds of a farmer who la going along in the
same old way hia father went before; probably
working hard day after day on land which geta
poorer year after year; remaining utterly Ignor
ant. perhaps, through his whole life of the eeaen
'ial laws which govern his work and with n blind
faith In certain formulas or mixtures of whose
real character he knows nothing, too often be
cause he has deliberately chosen to remain Ignor
ant rather than to gtvo a little time to one of
the moat profitable studies In which n man cnn
engage.
• Truly a pathetic figure la aucb a man. and we
would give a great deal to be able to help any
one who la in the abject condition to which these
men have condemned themselves. But how t»
we to help! w# may give him the formula for
••• hich he asks, but It null be mostly guess-work
with us. as we could not possibly know the ex
act needs of his soil; and even If we could tell
him the best formula In all the world for the
f r°P he wishes to grow on his land, It would not
reach his case.
VVhut he needs Is not a fertiliser formula, but
some knowledge of the elementary laws of plant
growth und plant nutrition.
He ne«ds to study his soil more than he needs
to study the analysis on the fertiliser bags, al
though Heaven knowH. In most cases, there Is
need enough of this.
Is It not amazing that men will go on one