The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., August 06, 1910, Page 556, Image 16

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

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Our Progressive Farmer Boys
SHOULD THE FARM BOY DRINK?
A Little Talk, With Nothing About Drinking as an “Awful
Sin,” but Only a Calm Inquiry as to Whether or Not It Pays
to Drink Moderately—What Life Insurace Tables Show.
My DEAR FARMER BOY: We
published in this department
last week a letter from “Uncle
Henry” Wallace about “Amusements
for Boys,” suggesting the formation
of Saturday afternoon baseball clubs
among farm boys, and also some
thing about the value of boxing and
wrestling.
This article was published because
we want our “Progressive Farmer
Boys” to have strong bodies, because
we want them to be strong, healthy,
well-developed men, and because we
want them to have plenty of whole
some recreation. You might talk
over “Uncle Henry’s” letter with
your father and mother and see
what can be done about this sugges
tion. But if it is not practicable to
organize a baseball club or to carry
out any of the rest of “Uncle Hen
ry’s” suggestions, there are still
plenty of other wholesome amuse
ments open to the farm boy such as
the town boy often has to grow up
without. VI
I. 1
In this particular letter, however,
I am not going to say so much about
your amusements as about the ways
of building up a strong, healthy
body. On the farm you can get lots
of exercise if you work as you ought,
and you ought to be thankful that
you can work out in the fields and
the sunshine and the open air instead
of being shut up in some crowded
shop or factory. You have far bet
ter chances for health and happi
ness.
And health and happiness—what
better things is there to seek after
except to make your life of some
service to others? And the basis
of health and happiness is good
health. Now our farmer boys usual
ly have good health, but a great
many of them, while in good health
now, are contracting habits which
will ruin their health a few years
later. And this is what we don’t
want you to do.
n.
Most serious of all these habits is
the drinking habit, and I should like
for us to talk together about it just a
little. Now I am not going to lec
ture you, and I am not going to say
a word about its being an “awful
sin” or anything of the sort. We are
Just going to talk about it as a busi
ness matter and find out if it pays.
That’s all.
Now, my conviction from a great
deal of observation and study is, that
It doesn’t pay, and I am going to tell
you the reason why. If your drink
ing were simply a boyish prank, I
shouldn’t have a thing to say about
it, because I know that while you
may play rough practical jokes and
may take dare-devil risks now and
then, that s just the boy in you, and
you are straight and square and hon
est at bottom and you are going to
come out all right.
What I want to say about this
drinking business, however, is that it
is a very different matter from these
pranks and feats and jokes in which
a boy may naturally and healthfully
let off steam.” They may not leave
you any the worse, but drink will.
A great danger is that if you be
gin drinking at all, you can’t keep
from drinking immoderately. There
are all kinds of chances that you will
wind up as a dirty, bloated, worth
less drunkard—one of the kind, as
Uncle Remus says, that is “not fit
ten to stop a gully wld”—but what
I want you to remember is that even
if you should only drink moderately,
you will not live so long, you will
not be so healthy, nor will you be so
happy, as you will be if you don’t
drink at all.
III.
In other words, no matter whether
drinking is a sin or not, you want to
live a good long life, and you want
a healthy body, a steady nerve, and a
clear brain, and you can’t have these
if you drink even moderately.
Take the matter of length of life.
The life insurance companies have
been keeping careful records of
thousands and thousands of men be
ginning years and years before you
were born, to find out just how
drinking affects a man’s health and
length of life. It’s their business,
you know. Well, they started out
before they began these records with
the idea that a man was actually
helped by drinking some whiskey,
and in England 40 years ago they
tried to make Robert Warren pay a
higher premium because he was a
teetotaler. So Warren started a so
ciety which has kept track of thou
sands and thousands of English in
surance cases for over 40 years, the
result proving that the death rate is
over a third higher for moderate
drinkers than for total abstainers. |
In other words, in any given year,
four men die among the drinkers for
every three who die among an equal
number of abstainers. Of every 100
drinkers the life insurance compa
nies expect to die in a year, 9 4 of
the 100 die, but of ever 100 expect
ed deaths among abstainers only 71
die.
Again, it has been proved that of
every 100 persons thirty years old
who drink, only 44 of the 100 will
live to be seventy; but if you take
100 30-year-old persons who don’t
drink, 55 of the 100 will live to be
seventy. Isn’t It worth something to
you (even if drinking paid in other
ways, as it doesn’t) to have a 2 5 per
cent better chance to live out your
“three score years and ten,” sb you
do by not drinking.
IV.
These figures are based on the
English experience, but the figures
for America tell the same story. In
a recent address at one of our South
ern agricultural colleges 1 heard
Richmond P. Hobson, the famous
Alabama Spanish War hero, give
the farmer boys there the showing
of these American statistics. Among
other things he pointed out that
without drinking the prospect of life
when you are 20 years old is 4 4
more years of living, but w ith drink
ing only 31 years—an average re
duction of 13 years in length of life
due to the drink habit.
Or take the evidence of Mr. Ed
ward A. Woods, a practical Insurance
manager of Pittsburg, Pa., who says
furthermore that 40 per cent—near
ly half—of the men who have such
diseased bodies, weakened nerves,
etc., that they can’t get life insur
ance at all “are for causes connected
with alcohol.”
Experiments which a distinguished
group of scientists made with a
group of laboring men showed that
even beer drinking decreased the
output of labor 8^ per cent; while
in clerical and intellectual work the
damage was even greater.
It is because the people under
stand these things that all classes
are frowning on the young man who
drinks. If you want to get a job,
the boy who drinks is passed over
and the young fellow who doesn't
is taken. That’s one reason why
country boys usually beat the city
boys in business: there is less drink
ing in the country. If you want to
succeed in farming—as I hope you
do—and if you want to marry the
prettiest or smartest girl in the
neighborhood—as I hope you do
it's all the same story. The chances
are against you if you drink.
V.
Now there's no use for me to dis
cuss this subject further with you
and I can only ask you to look up
the further facts set forth in our
“Two-Minute Health Talk" this
week on “What Medical Authorities
Say About Drinking.-’ The whole
story is that I want you to live out
a long, healthy, happy life, and 1
want you to be a success, and I know
the chances are against this if you
drink. That’s why 1 want all our
“Progressive Farmer Boys" to have
nerve enough to let liquor alone.
I like a boy who has spunk, and you
do, too; and often It takes more
spunk to refuse to take a drink than
it does to ride a bucking broncho or
swim across a raging river.
But if you will shake hands with
me on this proposition I am sure I
can trust you to show the spunk
when it's needed.
Sincerely your friend.
CLARENCE POE
Hoys, Ihm’t Pull Fodder.
Now, 1 “know what I am talking
about,” when 1 affirm that fully one
third of a corn crop is lost when the
stalks are stripped of the blades and
later the ears and left in the field to
be in the way of the next crop. jn
this rough estimate I take into con
sideration the advantage of getting
the stalks off the land and entirely
out of the way. The agriculturally
of the Georgia Experiment Station
used to say that he believed It would
be sound practice to cut nnd shock
and then shed the stalks and blades
even if not used for feeding, but only
for stable bedding. Possibly It is (
rather extreme statement, but it Il
lustrates his confidence in the wis
dom of the practice which 1 fully
shared. it's a great advantage to
have the stalks all out of the way of
the peas, out of the way of the plows
and harrows and grain drill, which
should follow the corn harvest. Even
if the old. dry stalks left In the field
after the harvesting, in the usual
way, be cut up and plowed down they
will be of no advantage to the imme
diately succeeding small grain, little
or none to the next spring's crop, and
very much In the way of the young
cotton, if cotton shall follow corn.
It takes well nigh twelve months
for corn stalks to moulder away into
unrecognisable mould or dust, and
until It reaches that stage of decom
position it can be of precious little
help in any way to a crop that may
be planted on the land Col. R. J.
Redding, of Georgia.
A CITY business man who sent his farmer brother a copy
of “A Southerner in Europe", writes us as follows:
" Please note the enclosed bit, cut out of a
letter from my sister in reference to your book,
and note that my father, now seventy years
old, was much interested in it."
Th« “eaclosed bit” cut out from bl* •(•tor's letter, rt»»d* as follows:
had to d .man' ,7? year* 0,d ha<1 uwvwr rt,ttd u book through before.
. .. op ° r#,t hut If your eyes are younger, you may not
read e r P' R W ° Connor’ author of "Cornelius HarmeU": "I
fn. “ T!r ^ C°Ver wllbout stopping—a whole day of delight
before laaf a«dJ°h^ 8harp Wl,1,ama> of Mississippi says: "I read It night
clroHni .„v. J* Tery mucb'M Kl «®*‘'ruor Aycock. of North
other aleM h . cba,Jter of A Southerner In Europe/ the
h#rH: Bh -rh‘VD8 f°,r th® flrat Um* ,ound an opportunity to look Into
;rnmH* ‘D* raad tb® ,aat chapter. I turned back and took the book up
rom the beginning, and nearly completed It before laylag It down."
No Farmer’s Book Case l» Complete Without It
U youra®,f' your w,fe and your children to put this
of vTtwl th 5 hh, h°“®~,ot aa ordinary book of travels, but a book full
w* CtM ab°Ut tb® bl* tb,nK" al1 Southerners may
learn aa to how Europeans work. live, and are governed.
?J>*per’ ^ cents; Cloth, $1. With The Progressive Farmer
and Gazette one year, Cloth, $1.50; Paper Copy, $1.30.
Pree Paper ^Py *ny subscriber sending $1 in NEW
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