The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., August 06, 1910, Page 549, Image 9

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

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evil, just as we would deserve it if we should
assume the same attitude toward them if
they attempted to stamp out yellow fever
and malaria.”
In this spirit we have taken up elsewhere in
this issue of The Progressive Farmer and Gazette
the subject of drinking in the form of a letter to
our farm boys, and we shall be glad if every fath
er and mother of a boy will bring the article to
his attention, along with the conclusions of emi
nent doctors as set forth in our Health Talk.
Simply as a strictly agricultural paper we would
be Interested in this subject because drunkards
are not good fanners, and in whatever degree
these future Southern farmers are under the in
fluence of drink, just In that degree will progress
be impeded.
Sometimes we are fearful that the new genera
tion in the South will show a greater proportion
of white drunkards as compared with negroes,
because under prohibiton so many negroes are
too ignorant to order whiskey conveniently, while
good white farmers take Into their homes and
put before their boys thousands of newspapers
filled with alluring advertisements of mail-order
whiskey houses. The greater ease with which
whites get whiskey is illustrated by the fact that
the first year of prohibition in Raleigh, N. C., show
ed 212 arrests of whites for drunkenness as com
pared with only 56 for negroes. So-called clubs
in the cities are also breeding a great many
young white drinkers, and our farmer fathers and
mothers should count themselves fortunate that
their boys are not growing up exposed to the in
fluences or either saloons, blind tigers, or locker
clubs.
A Progressive Farmers' Union Leader
ONE OF THE MOST progressive Farmers’
Union Presidents in America is George A.
Cole, of Arkansas. Mr. Cole has long been
active in Farmers’ Institute work, and Is a pro
gressive and thoughtful agricultural leader. When
f hosen to head the Arkansas Union he at once
set about mapping out a definite
program of constructive work
for the agricultural Interests of
tho State.
(1) Drainage. (2) better
roads. (3) immigration of the
right sort. (4) the extension of
demonstration work, (5) the
establishment of county fairs—
okorck a. roi.it. these are some of the things he
has determined to get done.
In the matter of drainage he headed a delega
tion to Washington which hopes to get from Con
gress $75,000 for a survey of 6.000,000 acres of
Arkansas land in need of drainage. This $75,000
will be used only for survey work: then drainage
districts will be formed and bonds issued with the
lands as security.
Already the Farm Demonstration work is in
progress in 45 counties, but Mr. Cole will not rest
until every county has it.
County agricultural fairs would also help Ar
kansas ub they would help all over the South, and
the Arkansas Farmers' Union is trying to start
these fairs.
The State is yet thinly settled, and the Union,
while opposed to haphazard foreign immigration,
discriminates between good and bad immigration
and warmly welcomes the enterprising Northern
and Western farmer who wishes to come South.
A Land Congress was recently held in Little Rock
for the purpose of systematically advertising the
advantages of Arkansas. Six railroads w’ere rep
resented and these will combine with the organ
ized real estate dealers in letting the world know
what the Commonwealth offers the small farmer.
"There will be no misrepresentation," Mr. Cole
says. "We ure simply going to state facts.” Mr.
Cole is also greatly Interested in the development
of rice growing, by means of which thousands and
thousands of acres formerly thought fit for noth
ing except to hold the world together, have be
come very valuable.
The Farmers’ Union has great opportunities for
work like this in every State. It is fortunate
when it has at its head a man of Mr. Cole’s vision,
energy and determination.
Give Us a New Kind of Text-Books.
IN HIS NEW BOOK on “The Rural Life Prob
lem in the United States,” Sir Horace Plun
kett, who has done such magnificent work for
the rural regeneration of Ireland, has this to say
of our American public school system:
"At present country children are educated
as if for the purpose of driving them into
the towns. To the pleasure which the cul
tured city man feels in the country—because
he has been taught to feel it—the country
child Is insensible. The country offers con
tinued interest to the mind which has been
trained to be thoughtful and observant; the
town offers continued distraction to the va
cant eye and brain. Yet the education given
to country children has been invented for
them in the town, and it not only bears no
relation to the life they are to lead, but act
ually attracts them to a town career.”
The remedy must be found in a new sort of
text-books; and the best educational work that
the Farmers’ Union can do is to insist upon hav
ing text-books in harmony with rural life put in
to use in rural schools—not merely books that
have an artificial or sentimental smattering of ag
ricultural interest, but books that are In heart
and marrow genuinely suited to the farmer’s need,
written by men with first-hand knowledge not
only of country life but of the problems of agri
cultural education.
In our arithmetics, for example, it is not
enough to try to fool the farmer by putting in
such examples as, “If a bushel of wheat is worth
85 cents, what is 5 of a bushel worth?” Or, “If
land rents for $10 per acre, and is valued at $43,
what is the percentage of rent?” What the
farmer wants now is an arithmetic that will show
liow to apply the teachings of agricultural science
—how to mix fertilizers from any group of in
gredients to make any analysis he wishes, how to
calculate the fertilizing value of any ingredient
or mixture, how to calculate a feeding ration
from any combination of feed stuffs so as to get
greatest results at cheapest cost, etc., etc.
There are. of course, certain great cultural and
educational principles which must be kept in
mind In selecting text-books, and the demand is
for books that will meet the educational ideal
here and at the same time meet the farmer’s de
mand for books in harmony with real life. The
trouble heretofore has been that our text-books
have usually been selected by groups of poli
ticians who cared little about either phase of the
matter—or if they cared, had not sufficient train
ing to give any intelligent direction to their inter
est.
The National Ginners’ Association estimates
the cotton crop condition at 72.9, indicating a
yield of about 11,500,000 bales.
A Thought for the Week.
HE THAT FEELS not the beauty and blessed
ness and peace of the woods and meadows
that God hath bedecked with flowers for
him even while he is yet a sinner, how shall he
learn to enjoy the unfading bloom of the clestial
country if he ever become a saint? No, no, sir,
he that hath departed out of this world without
perceiving that it is fair and full of innocent
sweetness hath done little honor to the everyday
miracles of Divine beneficence; and though by
mercy he may obtain an entrance to Heaven, it
will be a strange place to him; and though he
have studied all that is written in men’s books
of divinity, yet because he hath left the book of
Nature unturned, he will have much to learn and
much to forget.—From a story by Henry van
Dyke.
“What’s The News?”
Br CLARENCE POE.
FOR SOMETIME there has been talk of a con
solidation of a great number of cotton mills
in different parts of the South, among the
alleged promoters of the scheme being the Dukes
who organized the Tobacco Trust which has rob
bed the American tobacco farmers of their inde
pendence. Last week such a merger of thirty
two Massachusetts and New York mills was ef
fected, their annual output being worth $18,000,
000, the product of 10,000 employes. Another
development in high finance last week of interest
to cotton growers was the announcement of plans
by Daniel J. Sully, John Hays Hammond, and a
London syndicate to form a gigantic system of
warehouses for storing cotton, covering the en
tire cotton-producing and cotton manufacturing
States.
* * •
We can not better summarize the result of the
recent Texas primaries than by quoting the fol
lowing from the Springfield Republican:
“The leading issue in the Texas primaries
was the question of the submission of pro
hibitory amendment to the State Constitution
and the proposal was so emphatically in
dorsed that the amendment will probably be
carried in due season. The fact that Mr.
Colquitt, who won the Democratic nomina
tion for Governor, is opposed to prohibition,
signifies no contradiction in the action of the
voters, for the prohibition vote was divided
between Cone Johnson and William Poindex
ter, who ran second and third, respectively,
at the polls and who were both pledged sup
porters of the prohibitory cause. In so far
as Senator Bailey was an issue, he appears to
have gained no great success. He supported
Mr. Poindexter for Governor, but Mr. Poin
dexter’s vote was less than the vote for Cone
Johnson, who has been one of the Senator’s
most uncompromising foes. Senator Bailey’s
effort to defeat Congressman Randall in the
Fourth District was a complete failure. The
Governor soon to retire, Governor Campbell,
is expected to contest for the Senatorship
with Mr. ailey when the latter’s present'
term expires.”
* * *
The contest between Hoke Smith and Joseph
Brown for Governor of Georgia is not so bitter
and heated as their last campaign, but what
warmth is lacking here is more than atoned for
by the red-hot fight which the earnest Democrats
are making to prevent the renomination of the
group of Georgia Congressmen who deserted
their party and came to the support of Speaker
Cannon and the Republican machine at a time
of crisis. These deserting Congressmen are swift
to invent many and varied excuses for their mys
terious action, but the people are very slow to ac- .
cept them. J
* • •
The New York Evening Post which has always
opposed Mr. Bryan, has this to say of his recent
defeat in the Nebraska Convention:
“No defeat ever became Mr. Bryan better
than the one he has just suffered in Nebras
ka. At the risk of his political life he stood
for what he believed to be a moral issue-—
the county-option system of controlling the
liquor traffic—and the party which had for
twenty years accepted his leadership in all
his successive vagaries, now repudiates it.
.Of the effect on his political for
tunes, he was perfectly well aware, yet he
played the part of a man without flinching.”
* • *
On account of the nearnesB of the election to
settle the question of negro suffrage in Oklahoma,
the Government, for the information of the pub
lic, announces the population figures of that
State—1,651,951, including 138,456 negroes, or
8.4 per cent. The population of the State has
more than doubled in the last ten years.
• * •
After a hard-fought struggle for the mastery,
the Ohio Republican convention was captured by
the Taft element, and the platform strongly en
dorses the administration and the Payne-Aldrich
tariff. Warren G. Harding was nominated for
Governor.
* * *
Wm. J. Bryan met a crushing defeat in the
Nebraska Democratic State Convention, his coun
ty option plank which he had vigorously cham
pioned, being defeated by a vote of 647 to 198.
The initiative and referendum was endorsed.