The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., July 09, 1910, Page 484, Image 8

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

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT
RALEIGH, N. O. STARKVTLLE, MISS.
COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING ADVERTISING OR SUBSCRIPTIONS
MAT BE ADDRESSED TO EITHER OFFICE. ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS
MATTER AT THE POSTOFFICE AT RALEIGH, N. C„ UNDER THE ACT OF
CONGRESS OF MARCH 8, 1879.
l/nder the Editorial and Business Management of
TAIT BUTLER and CLARENCE POE.
Prof. W. F. MASSEY.Associate Editor.
E. E. MILLER..Managing Editor.
JOHN S. PEARSON.Secretary-Treasurer.
Advartiaina Repreaantativea: Fisher Special Agency. New
York, Eastern field ; Albert H. Hopkins, Chicago. Western field.
We Guarantee Our Advertisers.
WE will positively make good the loss sustained by any subscriber
" as a result of fraudulent misrepresentation made in oar col
umns on the pvt of any advertiser who proves to be a deliberate
swindler. This does not mean that we will try to adjust trifling
dispates between reliable business houses and their patrons, but in
any case at actually fraudulent dealing, we will make good to the
snbecriber aa we have just indicated. The condition of this guaran
tee is that the claim for loas shall be reported to as within one
month after the advertisement appears in oar paper, and that the
subscriber must say when writing each advertiser! I am writing
yon aa an advertiser in The Progressive Farmer sad Gazette, which
guarantees the reliability of all advertising that it carries.1'
Average Weekly Circulation for Six Months Ending
March 31, 1910, was 904121.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
One year. $L60; six months. 66 cents; three months. 80 cents.
Ta tndmea mam anbacriptimna, ana ness ambaerihar and ana old
aahaaribar atop bath oat tha pmpar ana aaar far 91. bd.
Editorial Gleanings,
EVERY NOW and then one bobs up against
the old exploded idea that white men can
not farm successfully without negro help
in the lower South. And yet white men are farm
ing most successfully in lower Texas, the south
ernmost extremity of which is nearly 300 miles
south of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Tn his re
port for 1876, the Mississippi Commissioner of
Agriculture put the whole matter in its right
light when he said: “This old nonsense about
our climate and the inability of the white man
to toil under a blazing sun, is so transparent
that it is scarcely necessary to show its falsity.
White immigration has poured into Florida of
late, passed over the negro districts, and, settling
in the extreme southern portion, the hottest sec
tion of the State, has built up there, amid its
waste swamp lands, an agricultural prosperity
that Florida never knew under slavery and negro
labor. The white men who have poured into
Texas since the war, from all sections of the
Union, have shown that the climate did not affect
their labor in the slightest degree; but they
have worked to such good purpose that they have
placed Texas at the head of the cotton States, the
producer of nearly one-quarter of the entire
crop.”
4
A few weeks ago we had a telegram from a
reader wanting to know where he could buy sweet
potato plants. He had written one of our adver
tisers, waited a long while for the answer that did
not come, and was about to get behind with his
crop on that account. If you advertise a thing,
it is your duty to answer every Inquiry you get
about it, and to do it promptly. The fact that
you have sold out makes no difference. You
have invited the man to write, and it is neither
courteous nor fair not to tell him what you can
do for him, and to tell him at the earliest possible
moment.
The Illinois Farmers’ Institute Bulletin tells
how a teacher of agriculture got a class of boys
just off the farm and put them to work doing
some of the things that are frequently necessary
on the ordinary farm. Most of these boys did not
know how to tighten the clip on a Bingle-tree, and
some of them failed lamentably in their efforts
to take a section off of a mower sickle. Every farm
boy should be taught to do such simple jobs as
this. The knowledge and the knack will often
save hours and dollars; and any bright boy will
take a pride in his ability to do the work.
Jl
The Index for the last quarter in last issue was
not for ornament. We went to the trouble of get
ting it up and printing it so that you may save
all your papers and be, at any time, able to refer
to any article you wish. If you don’t do this, you
do not get more than half what you might out of
the paper.
J*
What is your State doing about Women’s Insti
tutes this year? If nothing, then you had better
find out or have your Farmers’ Union And out,
who or what is to blame. If the State Depart
ment of Agriculture hasn't suAIcient funds, the
State Legislature should make an appropriation.
Sir Horace Plunkett was everlastingly right when
he declared in a recent issue of the New York
Outlook that the rural exodus will never be stop
ped until more is done for the women on the
farms.
A farmer probably forty-five years old who was
in our office the other day had just been out to
the Agricultural College. “If I were under thir
ty,” he declared, “I should take a course there
right away: I would begin getting ready for it
to-mor >w.” This remark brought vividly to
mind the greatly improved opportunities for
young farmers now as compared with twenty
years ago. The farmer boy to-day need not re
gret when he is forty-five that he did not have
a course at an agricultural college. If he has
the right sort of spunk he can start next fall and
go. And if you are going to do it. It is none too
early to begin making preparations.
Jl
In a recent article on the exposure of tho pa
tent medicine fraud in England—Heechain's pills
for example being found to consists of aloes, }
grain; powdered ginger, } grain, and powdered
soap, 1-6 grain—the London Spectator explains
their hold upon people as follows: "Gullible peo
ple love mysteries, and this accounts for the style
of advertisement in which tho reader is told that
a herb of marvellous properties has been discover
ed in some remote part of America, and so forth.
The ultimate explanation of the enormous Bale of
patent medicines, however. Is that the superstition
lingers that everything which appears In print In
true. When one adds to this the great value of
reptition, surely no further qf^^atlons are
needed. 'What I tell you three times Is true,'
says the bell-man in 'The Hunting of tho Smirk,'
and no uneducated person is quite proof against
statements which spring out at him from nearly
every newspaper he openB, and haunt him from
the school-room to the grave.”
Put It Up to Your Candidate.
EVERY COUNTY In the South should have a
Fire Warden, a man responsible to the Gov
ernor or State Forester, charged with the
duty of preventing Ares on forest lands and ol
checking them when once started. Ho should
be empowered, too, to call on any able-bodied
man to help in such work—for a fair compensa
tion, of course,—and to compel him to do so. Ol
course, such a system would not prevent all foreHl
fires, and would cost the State u few thousand
dollars a year; but If supplemented by good, stln
fines for those who wilfully or carelessly starl
such Ares, it would, in a few years, do away with
three-fourths of the enormous and shameful de
struction now wrought by fires of this kind and
save hundreds of dollars for every one dollar it
WOUld COBt.
This Is practical "conservation.” Put the mat
ter up to your candidates for the Legislature.
Put Intelligence Into Our Road Making.
WE ARE IN RECEIPT of a copy of the re
port of the Committee on Agriculture of
the United States Senate, recommending
the passage of a bill appropriating $500,000 for
the use of the Office of Public Roads in aiding
the road authorities of the country to do the work
of road-building in an intelligent and economical
manner.
N. J. Ilachelder. master of the National Orange.
says:
“The enactment of this bill will result in
widespread and permanent reforms in the
present methods of public highway construc
tion and maintenance, under which it is esti
mated that of the $90,000,000 annually ex
pended for road Improvement, at least one
half, or $4 5,000,000. is practically wasted,
through lack of knowledge on the part of the
various local road authorities. The greater
part of this money could be saved by giving
these local officials the benefit of expert ad
vice and assistance by the trained engineers
of a properly equipped Office of Public Roads,
and it Is with this object In view that the
proposed appropriation is sought"
i nere jb no longer any doubt but the people of
the South are Interested in the making of better
roads The majority of leading men everywhere
are willing to pay for improved highways, and in
most sections more work and more money is being
put on the public roads, but as Mr. Bachelder
says much ot this money and effort is wasted
through a lack of knowledge of road-building by
those who are spending the paltry 990,000,009
which the country is devoting to the building of
roads.
Some of those who are spending the public
money trying to Improre our roads know that
they do not know how to build roads; while oth
ers don’t know, but don't know that they don't
know anything about road-bulldlng. Public
money, a national appropriation, could not be put
to a better purpose than In sending out over the
country everywhere, expert road-builders to show
and Instruct those who are seeking to Improve
our public roads how the work can be best and
most economically done.
The Sort of Immifration Wo Need.
WE ARE of the opinion that the South does
not need more laborers We already have
toe many for the work there is done. In
fact, one-half the men who do farm work could
do more than all now do If properly oqulpped
and directed. We have too many laborers and
too many 'bosses ’ and overseers nnd Idle pro
prietors nlreudy. What wo need Is more working
owners; men who will own land and direct the
farming of It themselves. We need more fann
ing in person nnd less by proxy.
I he present land-owners may not w ant to sell,
nnd nn inheritance of land may be the best legacy
they can leave to their children; but 100 acres
of land Improved so as to produce a bale of cot
ton or Do bushels of corn to the acre. Is a better
legacy to leave to a son or daughter than 300
acres of land producing only a third of a halo of
cotton or 15 bushels of corn to the acre.
Legally It Is the general right of any land
owner to hold land or sell it at his pleasure; but
in matters of public Interest this right Is often
taken from him, us for example, when land is
needed for railways and public buildings. On the
bame principle, it Is a matter of grave doubt if
any man has a moral right to hold land to which
ho does not give sufllclent attention to make It
produce something for his own and the public
good. Before w0 can build up the country and
maintain those public institutions which are
needful to u happy and prosperous rural popula
tion wo must have a large per cent of the farm
lands producing largo crops and able to pay more
t ixes In the aggregate. A community with one