The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., June 25, 1910, EDUCATIONAL SPECIAL, Page 446, Image 2

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

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Professor Massey’s
Editorial Page.
The Southern Farmer’s Needless
Burdens.
ISSACHAR IS A STRONG ass crouching down
between two burdens. And he saw that rest
was good, and the land, that it was pleasant,
and became a servant into tribute.”
Henry Wallace, in Wallace’s Farmer, makes
this a text for a sermon on the burdens that the
common people bear from ac
cumulated and organized cap
ital on the one hand and or
ganized labor on the other. I
want to use it to talk about
education. The Southern far
mer is Issachar. He knows
that he has a pleasant land, but
like a strong ass, he has been
crouching beneath two burdens
„ —the lack of education, and
Prof. W. F. Massey. ...... . . ,,
the tribute he pays to the
Northern farmer for things a good agricultural
education would show him how to raise for him
self.
dk
I can well remember when four of us with a
President opened the North Carolina A. & M. Col
lege in Raleigh, with one lone building standing
on a barren hill covered with brickbats and rocks,
where now the beautiful lawns and parade ground
are. I remember, too, that at that time the farm
ers sent their sons there with the strict injunction
that they were not to take the agricultural course,
for there was nothing for them in farming. One
man who owned a good farm, was living in an
official position in town, and said to me that he
wanted to send his sons to the college and wanted
to know what course of study was best for them.
I suggested the agricultural course. “No, thank
you, they could get enough of that at ffiome, but
there is no money in farming.”
Then we were watched by the other colleges
with a rather jealous eye, and the farmers of the
State apparently had no sympathy for our work.
But the college lived and grew. The farm papers
and the farmers’ institutes educated the faripers
and infused new ideas, and by degrees the intelli
gent farmers came to see that there was a need
for education of the men who are to build up the
I waste places and redeem the lands of the South
I *
Now the Farmers’ Union is the first of the farm
ers’ organizations to really take an active interest
in agricultural education. When a Farmers’
Union, like the one in North Carolina last fall,
puts up $50 to pay my expenses there to have an
institute, it is evidence of the new spirit that the
Union has infused into the members of the or
ganization. Issachar is feeling his oats, and is
determined to stop paying tribute to the North.
And what is the way to shift his burdens?
Education and efficient training in better methods,
and compact social organization among farmers.
Issachar is a strong ass, but there is no need
of his carrying needless burdens. Education will
enlighten his mind and organization will give him
power. The burden of poor farming is due to
lack of knowledge of better methods, and the
poor farming is the cause of the burden of the
tribute to the Northern farmers. Education will
clear him of the burdens, and organization will
not only help him in business matters but will
make a more sociable man of him.
The farmers of the Southern States have gotten
new ideas in regard to the work of their colleges
of agriculture, and in most of them the students
in agriculture are outnumbering those in other
courses. Issachar is gradually throwing off one
burden that will enable him to throw off the
other.
J»
Any young man of energy and industry who
loves the farm can now work his way through the
North Carolina A. & M. College and probably any
of the others. What is now most sorely needed
is to make the Farmers’ Union a force behind the
rural schools, to compel the teaching of the ele
ments of agriculture so that those who cannot go
to college, but must go back to the farm from
school, will go back with some of the new ideas.
The Farmers’ Union can be made the greatest
help in this educational work of any organization
in the South. This is a time in the affairs of the
Southern farmer when the organization can do
the best of work, for there is a spirit abroad in
the whole South to learn better farming.
Issachar has burdens enough without that of
lack of education that causes him to pay tribute —
burdens that the special interests have laid on us
all, and which we hope the whole country will
soon shake off. Rut the special burdens that the
Issachar of the South is bearing, can be shaken
off by education. Let every farmer see that his
son has an education for his life work if he loves
the farm and wants to stay there. Do not think
that the farmer, of all professions, needs no edu
cation. He needs a broader one than the lawyer
or the doctor, for the art of farming depends on
so many of the sciences that a man need be expert
in several of them. L«t the Farmers’ Union use
its influence with the legislators to get the coUeges
all the help they need. For the legislators will
always do what the farmers want if they know
what they want.
Issachar may be strong but he has been an ass
too long carrying needless burdens. Let us shake
them off.
Notes on Recent Issues.
IN VIRGINIA last week I saw them "barring
off” corn, and like Mr. French, I would like to
know' why they do it. I suppose because
everybody else does and their fathers did, for I
saw them going through with the little plows
where there was little or no grass. Looking from
the train, I wished that I could stop and tell these
men how much needless labor they were using,
for the land was light and level and a weeder
would have enabled them to run over so rapidly.
And then, just as I was pitying the men who were
barring-off, the train passed a field where I saw a
man going over his corn with a weeder and anoth
er using a weeder across the sweet potato rows,
and I thanked Heaven that the leaven is taking.
The men who were using weeders I know are not
going to use a turning plow in their fields, and
ere long their neighbors will learn the advantage
of the weeder. Then I saw three hands thinning
cotton where a weeder bad evidently been used
across the rows, and again I felt thankful that
some are finding out the better way and do not
have to hoe off the crust around the cotton on
high beds.
J*
SOY I JEANS OR OOWPEAS.—Mr. Zeno Moore
think that the soy bean beats the cowpea Well,
I have nothing to say against the soys, and am
only too glad that men are taking more Interest
in legume to age. Hut I can get more feed on an
acre from peas than from soys, if you leave out
the hard stalks that are not eaten. But either
peas or soys followed by crimson clover will en
able a farmer to get rich, and make his land rich,
if properly used.
Ji
SAVE PEAS FOR SEED.—The farmers who
have grown no peas for Beed and who think they
can not afTord to buy the seed should study what
Dr. Butler says. The Southern farmer can not
afTord not to sow peas and feed them, and no
Southern farmer need ever have to buy the
seed, but should have them to sell regularly to
the people northward who find It hard to mature
them and to those down on the Gulf Coast where
they do not seed well. The Bugar planters of
Louisiana always buy them and never fall to use
them.
,+
“REFLECTION ON THE SOUTH."—Mr. Poe
is right in what he replies to the one who objected
to what he thought was a reflection on the South
We need of all things to know wherein we are
lacking and lagging behind other sections. The
staff of The Progressive Farmer and Gazette are
nearly all Southern-born, and even Dr. Butler,
though not born in the South, has been so identi
fied with Southern interests for so many years
that he is a real Southerner and as auxiouB as are
we who are native to the soil to help the Southern
farmers to better and more profitable practices.
Personally, I have given my life to the work of
Southern farm improvement and am fully ac
quainted with the farming of other sections and
know that we need much in the South to put tin
farming where it should be. Let us get the
Southern lands where there can be no ‘‘reflection’'
to tell what other folks are doing, it is no reflec
tion on the South to Bay that we are behlnd-hand
In many respects. The North never was desolated
by armies nor robbed by carpet-baggers, and the
South has had a hard road to travel, but she is
getting there,” and I only wish that I could live
to see her lead the whole country in farming as
she should.
But last year. I want to say. I saw gullies and
wasted hillsides in northern Ohio, and somthcrn
Illinois. Had farming in the hill lands of south
ern Illinois has made poor, gullied hills from rich
ones just as it has in the South, and 1 saw In Ohio
where they had plowed straight up and down hill
and there was a gully in every corn row
What Farmers Want to Know.
IN THE FOLLOWING paragraphs, taken from
letters written in answer to the inquiries of
Progressive Farmer ;md Gazette readers,
possibly you may find an answer to some question
that you have been intending to ask
Sow crimson clover in early September, and if
the ground Is dry, roll it after sowing Clover
of any sort will not do well an an acid aoil. A
good time to apply lime will he as soon as the
peas are cut. Spread 25 bushels of freshly slacked
lime per acre, and harrow in lightly.
You can sow rye at any time from September to
Christmas. If you wish to Improve the laud and
sow something in the cotton for a winter cover,
you should sow crimson clover. 1pounds of seed
to an acre. If the cotton was well fertilized, you
will not need to use any more, but If there was
only a little fertilizer put in the furrow for cot
ton, you had better apply some acid phosphate
between the cotton rows broadcast. Sow the
clover after corn and cowpea# in September
That is, sow the seed among the peas Then you
will have the best thing for sweet potatoes next
spring. Sow the clover seed, too. or rye. after
peanut and sweet potatoes It will prohahl) be
rather late for the clover, and rye will answer n«
a winter cover.
I am rather puttied to know how the practlc*
of applying a second dressing of fertiliser origi
nated. The only thing that may have a good ef
fect from dressing during the growth of the crop
la the readily available nitrate of soda This
aimply promote* more rapid growth, and In land
where cotton make* a good strong "weed," 1 d<>
not believe that It pay* to use the nitrate
For alfalfa, 1 would advise sowing peas,
letting them mature and turntug them under tn
early September. Then apply 30 bushel* of fresh
ly staked lime per acre and harrow It In well
Give the peas a dressing of 0 p ounds- of acbl
phosphate and on sandy *o!ls 50 pounds of mu
Hate of potash per acre, and It will all be there
for the alfalfa. Never sow alfalfa In spring, but
always In September Fse 2 5 pound* of weed per
acre.
The planting of the early potatoes that have
been kept lu cold storage I* a perfect success, and
will give as good, if not better, weed than the
reul second crop, and planted In July will make
a larger crop and better for table u-e I would
plant them lu a deep furrow and cover very light
ly till they grow and then voA the earth to them
till level and would not hill at all as we do e»rl>
potatoes, the object helug at that season to retaki
moisture
T he green brier In really the tuberous-rooted
ainllax. The only thing to do Is to keep the top*
< ut off and never allow them to make green l«'nv»*s
and the roots will Anally die. 1 am righting them
In my garden, and this is the Anly way I know
If Is unclean to grub them out. for every rut root
will sprout, but no plant can long survive If not
allowed to make green leaves Of course I pull
out any that I can pull up. but It is seldom that
you can pull them Nothing will overcome them
but constant cleaning off of every shoot that get*
above ground.
It Is believed that the continual application of
acid phosphate brings about acid conditions In the
soil that are unfavorable to legume crops und
many others. Add phosphate Is made by mixing
f quiil w eights of sulphuric acid and pulverized
rock. I he cropH tuke the phosphoric acid and
t ie sulphuric acid is set free and at once uultes
with the lime In the soil, forming sulphate of
ime, or plaster, which does not sweeten the soil
us the lime carbonate does, and acid conditions
are brought about by the robbing of the soil of
lime carbonate. The remedy is, of course, to ap
ply lime to sweeten the soli and bring about
Conditions favorable to the legumes.
I he Progressive Furmer and Gazette l* the enly
Southern farm paper that runs no patent stock
food advertising.