The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., May 28, 1910, Image 1

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

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
7 r If A Farm and Home Weekly for the States of Mississippi,
fV — Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
J ^ -—-——
_ FOUNDED, 1895, BY DR. TAIT BUTLER. AT STARKVILLE, MISS.
Volume XV. No. 21. SATURDAY. MAY 28. 1910. Weekly: $1 a Year.
THE CHANCES OF THE LANDLESS MAN
t r r *» ^
f in- uuvice t rojessor Massey gave the negro students at
A Hampton Institute—to get land and improve it, is advice
that they arc getting from every quarter. It is advice
that the negroes are taking, too; and it is advice that the land
less white men of the South must take if they woulil maintain
their economic independence and their social superiority. Pro
vided only the population of negroes in any community does not
who are now tenants on them, and by ambitious and progressive
Western immigrants who will not only enrich the South by their
prosperity, but will also help greatly by popularizing stock-raising
and better methods of farming.
There are few tenant farmers so poor that they cannot buy
a few acres, at least, of land; and once owning a tract of soil,
if a man starts to work to improve and beautify it, to make it
w V W u rri I; < u r g t? V fi U U £ (1 I Cl
check the growth of an ad
equate white population, we
believe it is well for the South
that the worthy negroes on
the farms should acijuire
homes of their own, should
have the added stability and
the increased incentive to
thrift and industry that the
ownership of land will give
them ; but it is as inevitable
as fate that if any large
proportion of the negroes
acquire land, build homes
and thus become to a mark
ed degree financially inde
pendent, profiting hy every
movement that makes for
the country's development,
and sharing in the natural
increase in the value of all
land, that these negroes will
advance faster, attain to a
more fertile and more home
like, he will soon find it
adding to his income and to
his standing and influence
in a hundred ways of which
he had never dreamed.
There is dignity in the
very fact of possessing a
freehold, and while the man
who neglects his land or mis
treats it may be written down
in Nature’s eternal book of
justice as one recreant to
the trust confided to him,
the man who takes even the
humblest home-spot and
loves it and cares for it and
makes it a place of refuge
and a source of comfort to
those dependent upon him,
not only share in the re
ward of those who put their
talents to work and thus
il._ __ f_ 1_A _
higher standard of living
and acquire more influence,
both politically and finan
cially, than will the white
men who remain mere rent
ers, who have no home ex
cept by some other man s per
mission, and to whom the
[Courtesy Bateman Mfsr. Co.
OUK MOST PRESSING PROBLEM
Cultivation of the Browing crops Is right now the most Important feature of the work to be done
on the average farm. In many cases It sll depends upon whether this work is done well or wrongly
as to whether bo<d crops or poor will lie Bothered next fall The ideal cultivation is that which
keeps the turfa< <■ of the toll loose sml mellow and free from wfeds, and which doe* not disturb the
feedinB root* of the plant. The ideal tool Is the one that put* the soil in gcod condition in the least
t me and with the least expenditure of human lalsjr. The outfit shown here is one that does good
work and does it economically If one must walk, however, let it he behind a shallow-running im
plement The place for the turning plow at this season Is under the tool shed.
O UIOU; l/UI U IOU
earn the gratitude of all who
may come after him by mak
ing a fairer and a sweeter
world for them to live in.
So, to every tenant, to
every young farmer, to every
landless man to whom farm
life appeals, we would sav:
increase mar conics in me
price of life's necessities, us the result of the increase in land
values, will mean only harder times. Wages are likely to in
enase in the Smith, but they are not likely to increase as fast as
land values. So it is going to be harder each year, as President
Hranson says on page J85, for the man who must work for wages
to get land. And the white wage-earner is bound to gradually
become of less importance in the affairs of his community and
a] his State than tfie ni^ro land-owner to whose wealth the very
labors of these tenants will add.
It helps the South to have the negroes prosperous, but it is
necessary Jar trie prosperity of Doth wnitc ana OiacK mat we
have for the bulk of our rural population thrifty white farmers
who own thi ir own homes. We cannot believe that the landless
white men of the South will sit still and neglect the opportunity
now theirs to get homes of their own, thus putting themselves
forever in the class of free men—men economically as well as
politically free. The great estates, the big plantations, half
farmed, rented out to tenants whose only care is to get as much
out oJ the land as possible without regard to how much damage
their slipshod methods may do, are going to be broken up. -4a
those estates are broken up they should be bought by the men
Let one of your first ambi
tions be to get a home. Though it must of necessity be of the
humblest sort, get it and keep it and see that it is given the
studious attention and the loving care that such a precious pos
session merits. This way lies independence and prosperity and
influence with your fellow men, and that most priceless of all
possessions that you can leave to your children—a love of the home
in which they live and an appreciation of the dignity and
beauty of work that adds to the welfare of the world.
FEATURES OF THIS ISSUE.
V Good notation Makes Fer
tilizers Profitable. ;{1)U
A Visit to Hampton Institute ;{KH
Breeds and Types of llogs. . . ;{)><(
Forty Thousand Boys in One
Big Farm School. ;{«;{
Get Land and Hold It. ;{S5
How to Heal With Peach
Tree Borers.;{!)5
How Tillage Conserves Mols
<l,,e . 333 ‘
Keep the Chicks Growing. . . 394
Sheep That Have Golden
Hoot's .
The Dressmaker's Outfit. . . . 380
The Land of Opportunity. . . . 381i
Thinning Corn and Removing
Suckers . 384
What I Saw in the Middle
West. 389