The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., August 06, 1910, Page 548, 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. STARKVILLE, MISS.
COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING ADVERTISING OR SUBSCRIPTIONS
MAY BE ADDRESSED TO EITHER OFFICE. ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS
MATTER AT THE P08TOFFICE AT RALEIGH, N. C., UNDER THE ACT OF
CONGRESS OF MARCH 3, 1879.
Under 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.
Advertising Representatives: Fisher Special Agency, New
York, Eastern field: Albert H. Hopkins, Chicago, Western field.
We Guarantee Our Advertisers.
VI will posltivalp make good the loae sustained bp anp subscriber
" aa a revolt of fraudulent misrepresentation made in ourcol
wim on tbs put of anp advertiser who proves to be a deliberate
■windier. This does not mean that we will tip to adjust trilling
dispates between reliable trasineea hoosee and their patrons, but in
anp ease of actually fraudulent dealing, we will make good to the
subscriber aa we have just indicated. The condition of this guaran
tee la that the claim for lose shall be reported to ua within one
month after the advertisement appears in our paper,juid that the
subscriber must sap when writing each advertiser! I am writing
punas an advertiser in The Progressive Farmer and Garnetts, which
guarantees the reliability of ail advertising that it carries.”
Weekly Circulation First Half of 1010. . . .07,230
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
One pear, $L60; eiz months. 66 centa; three months, 60 cents.
Ts indues new subscriptings. one new wiicriis and one eld
igtrrrff r~ n—p *■-**• r~* ni-—-»* **
Editorial Gleanings.
THAR’S MORE in the man than thar is in the
land,” said Sidney Lanier, and it cannot
be repeated too often. A striking illustra
tion came to the writer’s attention the other day.
On one side of the road was a field of corn green
almost to blackness and almost tropical in its
luxuriance, the yield almost certain to be be
tween sixty and one hundred bushels per acre,
and the corn of uniformly high quality, the
ground giving evidence of having been deeply
broken and thoroughly cultivated. With only
a ten-foot roadway intervening was another field
of corn; the stand poor, the ground evidently
poorly broken had become hard and weedy,
while the corn blades were yellow, the stalks
stunted, and the indicated yield not over twelve
bushels to the acre. The difference in appear
ance of the two crops was as great as that be
tween a vigorous, ruddy athlete and an emaciated
hook-worm victim—and yet the land was the
same. The vigorous 60-bushel-per-acre corn the
farm owner had cultivated himself with intelli
gent and up-to-date methods; the shabby, sickly
looking, weed-infested, 12-bushel-per-acre corn
was the product of an ignorant renter who scoffs
at “book-farming” and rejoices in the fact that
he farms like his grandfather did.
We are anxious to have all our readers adver
tise their improved cattle, hogs, or poultry not
only because it helps pay the expenses of getting
^out a paper like The Progressive Farmer and Ga
i^Kette, but also because it is a convenience for the
Tman who wishes to buy—to say nothing of the
profit it means to the seller. Almost every week
we get one or more inquiries from readers who
wish to buy some breed of cattle or hogB which
no one is advertising with us. In our last mail,
for example, is a letter from a reader who wishes
to get a half-dozen white Chester pigs. Every
time you have a pig or a calf of any improved
breed that you would sell, the first thing to think
of is an advertisement in The Progressive Farm
er and Gazette. As for the man who has any
considerable number of improved hogs or cattle,
he should keep an advertisement with us all the
year round.
J*
He is either a poor or lazy farmer who lays by
a crop on account of the time of the year instead
of on account of the stage of the crop. This
year when cotton In many sections is two or three
weeks late the crop should simply be cultivated
two or three weeks later than usual. Nor is
there anything in the Constitution or the deca
logue to prevent a man from increasing his crop
yield by stirring the surface soil even after his
crop has been supposably “laid-by.” Work your
crops by common-sense and not by tradition. Late
cultivation is the only way to insure full cotton
crops in any territory.
The canning season for many vegetables is just
now at its height. From now on until cold weath
er, tomatoes, corn, beans, okra, to say nothing
of apples, peaches, and other fruits, should be
put up in abundant supply. Canned sweet po
tatoes, too, are good, and most people like canned
pumpkin. Re-read the directions we have pub
lished this summer for canning various vegeta
bles and write to the Secretary of Agriculture,
Washington, D. C., for Farmers' Bulletin 3 5 9.
J*
In next week's paper we shall print a parable,
“The Parable of the Hedgerow," setting forth the
foundation principles of good farming in the form
of a little story that should set every farmer
thinking; our Live Stock Page will tell you how
to feed your fattening hogs this fall; Professor
Dugger will discuss preparation for the fall gar
den, and the question of 6 per cent cotton tare
will be exhaustively discussed.
We are going to keep reminding you that you
ought to have water-works in your home. If
you read ail our articles in last week's paper,
you must have found some system by hydraulic
ram, windmill, gasoline engine—suited to your
circumstances. If you haven't the ready money
now, get your plans in shape to begin work when
the fall crops are sold.
«**
Turnip planting time begins in August, for the
early or ‘‘summer" sorts and lasts until Novem
ber for the Seven-Top variety used for greens in
the spring. Sow a good supply of both kinds,
and make two or three sowings of the early sorts.
When cold weather comes they can easily be put
in a pit or hole and kept until after Christmas.
J*
Every weed that you allow to ripen seed this
year means hundreds next year. Now is the ac
cepted time to get rid of weeds, briers and bushes;
and every day's neglect means more seeds to
ripen, and more work for you next year. Get
out the mowing machine, the scythe, and the
mattock and get busy.
Jl
Remember, it isn’t too late to plant an early
variety of sweet corn and have plenty of roasting
ears right up till frost, and later if you cut the
corn when frost threatens and set it up In big
loose shocks so that it will not mold.
J*
Don’t allow the inferior and unsalable apples to
go to waste. There is always a demand for good
vinegar, and it will pay to work up the early wind
falls as well as the poorer part of the later crop.
Save the Corn Stover.
SAVE THE COHN stover. It Is not a ques
tion of whether you can make better forage
cheaper, or whether the corn stover is a
first-claBs feed. The question is. Can you har
vest the stover at a cost which will be lesB than
the value of the stover when harvested? The
stover is grown, it is yours, and if it is worth
more than it costs to harvest it, don’t let it rot In
the fields, when your neighbors, or your friends
in town, will pay you a good profit on the cost
of harvesting it, providing you can not feed it
on the farm. If it costs $4 to harvest the entire
crop, or $1 to gather the ears only, and there is
one ton of stover, then this stover costs you $3 a
ton. If shredded. It is as good, or better, than
cottonseed hulls, for which many cattle men are
paying from $G to $10 a ton.
Study Selling as Well as Producing.
THERE ARE MANY sides to the farming busi
ness, and while the producing sidd 1r the
most important, because most under the
control of the individual farmer, and on it de
pends the operation of the others, it in not the
only important part of the farmer’s work, it |R
true that no man can sell at a profit an article
produced at too high a cost, yet the selling s|de
of the farmer’s business is one Important part of
his work which has been sorely neglected.
We too often market our products in the way
that custom or convenience dictates, without re
gard to the tastes, wishes, or convenience of the
buyers and consumers. We seldom study market
conditions or requirements, and many of us think
it unworthy of thought and attention to look up
n market for the small things that might b«
spared from the supplies produced above the
needs of home consumption.
Just as it is being learned, during recent years,
that the farmer needs to know many sciences to
produce his crops most economically, so is It be
ing realized more and more every year that the
farmers must be nn all-round business man to
succeed best. In this new education of the farm
er in the importance of the selling side of his
calling, the Farmers’ Union, the Alliance, and the
Cotton Associations have played the most Impor
tant part. If the Farmers' Union had done noth
ing but this, whereas it has done much more, it
would Justify and amply repay the farmers of
the South for all the energy and time spent In
its organization and maintenance.
Farmers do not need to be merchants and
bankers any more than they need to be chemists
and bacteriologists; but they must be business
men. they must know the whole business of farm
ing. the selling or buying of farm crops produced
and articles used on the farm, or they are not
complete farmers.
True Temperance Teaching va. Fa
naticiam.
THK KEYNOTE of the new spirit In temper
anre teaching was sounded the other day by
Ur. George W. Webster. President of the
Illinois Board of Health, when he satd:
“.More may In* accomplished by teaching
the people the truth In regard to the fatal
effect* of alcohol upon mental and physical
efficiency than by expatiating on the moral
Mlikolmn* of drinking."
I his Is a doctrine which everybody interested
In the genuine development of temperance would
do well to hear in mind. I-ong haired orators
who come around and grow eloquent over drunk
ards graves and blighted homes and deserted
wives may or may not do permanent good. If
drinking is a sin, then U'b a sin because It
injures a man, and if a temperance advocate Is
to accomplish any permanent good he must show
Just how it injures a man. I,!fe Insurance tables
show that tlie man of thirty stands n 25 per cent
better chance to live to he seventy If he doesn't
drink and one demonstrated statistical fact like
thlH outweighs all the eloquent generalities in
"Ten Nights in a Bar-Boom."
Moreover, because it is so largely a physical
question, it Is high time to cmphanUo the health
Hide of the drink problem ns well as the moral
side. As Ur. Webster said in the address already
mentioned:
When physicians take hold of tho ques
tion in the same spirit as they have shown
concerning yellow fever, malaria and small
pox, instead of treating it hh a moral ques
tion and leaving It to clergymen, temperance
workers and enthusiastic reformers, we may
expect better results. We deserve condem
nation as a profession, when wo assume
the attitude of sneering contempt for the ef
forts of clergymen, laymen, enthusiasts, and
reformers in their attempts to Btaiup out this g
....; J