Professor Massey's
Editorial Page.
Cotton—Our Greate&t Crop.
HERE IS NO crop grown In the United
States that offers better profits for good
farming than cotton, and there is no crop
grown that keeps men poorer, when grown in the
old single-crop way than cotton.
These old methods have enriched the fertilizer
manufacturers and have made wastes of thousands
of acres in the Cotton Belt. They have kept thou
sands of men in bondage to the merchant and the
fertilizer seller, year after year taking up the old
'hopeless task of going in debt to start the cotton
orop, and coming out at the end of the season of
*3en worse off than at the beginning.
*
The au-cotton man will tell you soberly that
there Is* no money in anything but cotton, while
*the fact is. iiat in most cases he has not found a
great deal in cotton. Yet here and there are
farmers who have found out what there is in cot
ton when they farm Instead of merely plant cot
ton. Talking once with a large cotton farmer in
43outh Carolina who generally made more than a
bale per acre, he said that he made cotton at a
cost of four and a half cents per pound, and that
'the cured bacon 1 saw him selling by the wagon
toad cost him the same price per pound. Cotton
was then six cents a pound, and he still had a lit
'tie margin, but the bacon and hams averaged him
fourteen cents a pound, and the feeding of the
bogs left something to help his soil.
At that time the all-cotton men were in distress,
"for they could not make cotton at four and a half
cents a pound after being carried by a merchant
And paying 1041 per cent on everything they
bought. The other man kept hogs and sheep and
cattle, and made corn and oats and hay and fed
'them, too, and, of course, he had manure, and
with these auxiliaries he was carried, but not by
the merchant. He bought for cash all that he
weeded to buy, and he did not need to buy much,
for he did not need to buy fertilizers for his corn,
wor a complete fertilizer for his cotton, for it fol
<)nwo(l nf tar nano a n rl ui. 1.. j
im Increasing in fertility and productiveness,
■while the all-cotton men were asking what fer
tilizer to use for corn, oats, wheat, cotton and
wvery other crop, and could not think of planting
■any of these helping crops without buying more
Vertillzer for them. Realising what the fertilizer
for cotton costs them, they can not understand
•fhat they need not buy a complete fertilizer for
‘•very other crop, and they jump to the conclusion
■Chat cotton is the only crop they can afford to
**ww.
J*
What we need to learn la, that commercial fer
tilizers, properly used, are a valuable adjunct to
bur home-made manures in the permanent up
building of the soil in humus, but used merely,
year after year, for the production of something
to sell off the land, they are the ruin of the soil and
the farmer alike. And the poorest farms and the
poorest farmers in all the Cotton Belt are where
the most money has been spent for commercial
fertilizers with the one idea of making cotton to
•ell.
The all-cotton man must spend more money be
cause he has to buy his nitrogen in a fertilizer,
while the good farmer gets his nitrogen free, and
Tor the same money gets twice as much of the
phosphoric acid and potash he has to buy, and
these stay by him till used by the crops, while the
nitrogen does not.
The hardest thing to get the average cotton
planter to understand is. that the use of a rotation
of crops and the growing of legume forage will
onable him to reduce his cotton acreage and still
knake as much, or more, cotton on one-third the
land than he has been making on the whole. It
Is the man who takes five acres to make a bate of
cotton who Is keeping the Southern soil and him
' aelf poor.
J*
taut 7 am glad to know that there is a new
spirit abroad in the South, and the day is not far
distant when a farmer will be ashamed to tell
you that his land is poor, for our people are fast
doming to understand that If a man’s land remains
poor it is the fault of the man who farms It. The
Demonstration Work is doing great good, and
when they persuade farmers to carry the demon
stration through their whole farm work we will
have different times in the South.
Jl
I do not believe that we will ever see six-cent
cotton again, because the advance of the boll wee
vil will make the culture too risky for any but
those who study the conditions and take the best
measures to overcome the difficulty. If the boll
weevil ever reaches and thrives in the upper sec
tions of the Cotton Belt, it will be the end of cot
ton there, for we can not, like Texas and the far
South, make an early crop ahead of the weevil.
Hence the great Importance of getting into a sys
tem of farming that will make the farmers of the
upper South independent of cotton if they are
driven out of Its culture.
The advance of the boll weevil does not mean
that we should look after new crops, but that we
should farm well with the old ones. The farmers,
and there are a very few of them, who have made
two bales to two and a half per acre, have not
done It by simply piling on fertilisers, but by
adopting a course of soli Improvement that has
Increased the productiveness of their land while
paying for the improvement.
S
You must have something besides cotton to
sell. You must raise good forage and feed stock
of some sort. One young farmer who adopted my
advice made seventy-five bushels of oats per acre,
and then cut two tons of cow pea hay from tbe
same land before frost. It would take a good
Ideal even of fifteen-cent cotton to pay as well,
and at the same time, tbe growing of these crops
was part of the means used tor getting his cotton
crop up to more than a bale per acre on land that
when be begun Its Improvement would not make
a fifth of a bale per acre.
With cowpeas and crimson clover even the In
dian corn crop becomes a soil-improver through
1 tbe feeding of tbe shredded stover added to tbe pea
bay and the cottonseed meal. It Is to the barn
yard that we must look for tbe future, and sided
by the barnyard, we can make the South the
greatest farming section of tbe country.
SOME CHEAP DRAINAGE,—Professor Barrow
talks wisely about drainage, and where lands are
wet drainage is the first thing needed. I saw soma
years ago at Darlington, 8. C., some tiles mads
there by a farmer, out of sand and rosin that
seemed to ms to be well adapted to answer the
purpose. I have drained land that Is still drained
after more than 20 years, with skinned pine poles
laid side by side In the ditch with a space between
and a larger pole laid on top. Pine straw was
then placed on. to keep the earth from working
In and the whole covered. No water has covered
that land since and good clover has been growing
where willows grew when the drainage was done.
FIVE TEXTS FOR COTTON
FARMERS.
There is no crop that offers better
profits for good farming than cotton,
and there is no crop that keeps men
poorer when grown in the old single
crop way.
The poorest farms and the poorest
farmers in all the Cotton Belt ore
where the most money has been spent
for commercial fertilisers with the
one idea of making cotton to sell.
A
The day is not far distant when a
man will be ashamed to tell you that
his land is poor.
J*
The advent of the boll weevil does
not mean that we should look for new
crops, but that we should farm well
i with the old ones.
Jt
It is to the barnyard that we mast
look for the future, and aided by it
we can make the South the greatest
farming section of the country.
Good Seeds and Reliable Seedsmen.
F YOU QET a seed catalog from, say Smith
£ Jones, and everything la It le Smith ft
_ Jones’ Special, and there are all sorts of
Impossible pictures of fields covered over with big
watermelons almost touching each other, cab
bages of enormous slse and not a poor head
showing in the lot. potatoes being dug and great
windrows of potatoes all over the ground, and
everything exaggerated In like manner, that Is a
good firm to let alone. But If you get a neat
catalog, with cuts made from photographs and
half-tone pictures showing what may actually be
grown, you may consider that here Is a firm that
tries to be truthful about Its stock, and is apt to
have better seeds than the man who plcturea !m
possible things.
Then In buying farm seeds, such a# clover and
grass, avoid the man who offers these below the
rates of the best seedsmen, for low-priced clover
seed 11 usually the moet costly you can buy. it
means that there Is a lot of trash and weed seed
In the sample and the clover seed In It cost more
than In the well recleaned seed, and you will be
seeding your land with weeds. My practice in
buying clover and grass seed Is to send for sam
ples and examine them carefully with a magnify
ing glass, and to reject any that show fool
weed seeds. Then be sure to demand that the
seed shall agree with the sample or be seat hack.
1 always bay from established firms who have e
reputation at stake, and bay the best, no matter
what the prioe Is, tor cheap eeed means poor oeed
always.
Tools That Will Make Money For Yon.
rjS7]0 NOT TALK ABOUT the scarcity of labor
{■YV* if you are doing all your cultivation with a
single mule and a tingle man to each mule,
while a pair of mules to a sulky cultivator will do
more work In the crop, and do It better than
three men each with a mule and plow. Then In
the early stages of the crop, when all around you
men are getting In the grass, the man wbo uses
s weeder can get over eo fast between rains that
tbe gras« has no chance to start, and he does not
have to plow and cover. A man gets "in tbe grass*'
because of lack of labor-saving implements. Bui
there will always be some who. ss Mr. King says,
will be too inert to get the Implements they
might get, and will go on making cotton with n
mule and* one-horse plow at n cost as high as
cotton often sells for. To make cotton cheaply
you must use the labor-saving implements.
Break the crust and kill the grass just starv
ing by running over with the smoothing harrow
before the corn or cotton comes up, and Again af
ter It Is Just up well, and then use the weeder
Ull tbe crop la five or sin Inches tnll, and you will
never get la the grass.
THE MOWER KILL* WKKDfL—Mr. 8trupe to
right. The mower to the best thing on the farm
for ridding the land of sprouts and briars. Mow
the wheat stubble as soon as the ragweed to
1*11 enough to cut, and you will got loss and less
ragweed every year the field comes lu small grain,
for you will got rid of the seed. Mr. Btrupe, too.
hat good ideas as to the care of the mower, and,
doubtless, applies them to other farm machinery.
MAX fit K HPREADKIt HELPS MAKE MA
NlTtE.-—'That to a good Idea of Professor Dod
son's that the possession of a manure spreader
causes a man to make more manure. It to so
bandy that one will not only try to make more
manure, but will load up every particle and gat It
out Instead of letting It waste around the ata
ties. Get a manure spreader and you will want
to have more and more use for It.
The best place to use the home made manure.
In my experience, to on the land that to to go In
corn, and to get It there aa fast aa practicable
after It to made. Corn can use the fresh manure
more profitably than any other crop oa the farm,
and will leave the residue la the beet shape tor
the small grata erop following tL
An open ditch to always In the way, especially
when It cannot be crossed and when Its banks are
grown up In briers aud hushes. Broad, shallow
ditches that cau be crossed with a team not only
makes cultivation easier, but give better drainage.
When large stalk growth Is made on land do
not waste your money by buying nitrogen.