74 The Bulletin. 



After being in business a few months, we decided to handle our 

 patrons' eggs. We pay all cash for eggs and have them put up in 

 cartons, a dozen in a carton. We have built up a good trade, giving 

 the farmers from 2 to 4 cents a dozen more for their eggs than they 

 can get on the local market. 



We expect to be selling $5,000 or $10,000 worth of butter a month 

 in a few years. We have gotten the farmers interested, and we have 

 140 of them pulling together pretty well. We keep them interested as 

 much as possible, and we pay them around 28 to 30 cents a pound for 

 butter-fat. We hope to go on with this work, and later when our 

 farmers get in better shape we hope to take up the marketing of hogs, 

 etc., as well as the marketing of dairy products. We hope to organize 

 the sweet potato growers. Of course, we cannot do this all at once; 

 but I want to give you the idea of what we are doing for the people 

 of our county. Live stock is one of the great things for western North 

 Carolina. We are obliged to have cattle for manure for more and 

 better crops. When a man is a patron of the creamery you can tell 

 it by the looks of his crops. 



I want to introduce to you Mr. Bradford Knapp, who is in charge 

 of the Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. 



ADDRESS OF MR. BRADFORD KNAPP. 



Ladicft (Did Gentlemen: I feel that I ought to apologize for appearing before 

 you without my coat, though we farmers generally work without coats in the 

 summertime. My excuse is this : You know we have been having Congress 

 up in Washington, and the weather has been very warm. Suddenly, yesterday 

 afternoon. Congress adjourned, and the weather changed and became quite 

 cool, and I put on a heavy suit. But down here in your salubrious climate I 

 find that you are having the same kind of weather that we had in Washington 

 before Congress adjourned. 



To my mind, the agriculture of the South is in a transition period. There 

 comes in the history of every agricultural people periods of change, and after 

 they have been passed through we find farming on a different plan and a 

 different system than it was theretofore. I can best illustrate by saying that 

 in the great corn belt of the West, thirty or forty years ago, they were mainly 

 a one-crop producing people. In the first settlement of the prairie belts the 

 farmers engaged mainly in the production of wheat ; but from 1870 to 187.5. and 

 even until 1890, they were in a transition period. Finally they came to a 

 diversified agriculture with live stock and dairying as a main feature. Now, 

 the South in all its history has been largely a one-crop section. It is true 

 that its single crops in the different territories were well chosen. They pro- 

 duced magnificently. In the cotton section it was cotton, in the tobacco section 

 tobacco, in the cane section sugar-cane, in the rice section rice. But as Pro- 

 fessor Goodrich and Mr. Hopkins pointed out to you to-day. the Southern 

 people now see that the one-crop system of agriculture is not the safe system 

 for a permanent and successful agriculture. And so I say, from my acquaint- 

 ance with the agriculture of the South from Texas to Virginia, that the 

 South is in its transition period, and when it has passed through this period 

 we shall be a great diversified crop country and the greatest agricultural sec- 

 tion of these United States. 



The past few years have seen rapid steps in advance. It is true that agri- 

 culture all over the United States has taken a step in advance during the last 

 year, but I think that we people of the South have every reason to point with 



