50 The Bulletin. 



My friends, we must get rid of these unprofitable acres. 



But how? Well, in the first place, we must change our ideals of farming; 

 we must learn that the prosperity of any farmer is, to a large degree, neces- 

 sarily dependent on the fertility of the soil he tends, and that any system of 

 farming which does not pay due regard to the maintenance of soil fertility is 

 bound in the end to make poor farms and poor farmers. We must learn what 

 that splendid old poet-farmer, Daniel Grant Mitchell, said nearly fifty years 

 ago, "Successful farming is not that which secures the largest money results 

 this year and the next year and the year after, but it is that which insures 

 to the land a constantly accumulating fertility in connection with remunera- 

 tive results." We must realize that our soils are not only our chief wealth, 

 but that they are also the heritage of the race; that they belong to genera- 

 tions yet unborn as much as to us ; that the man who recklessly wastes soil 

 fertility, who lets his lands wash away or who crops them until they will no 

 longer pay for working, commits a crime against the men who are to come 

 after him and against the God to whom the hills belong, because He made 

 them. 



Several years ago I heard a fine old Tennessee farmer, Capt. H. B. Clay, 

 say: "I believe in our final accounting we shall be judged for the gullies and 

 the gulls we have left on these old red hills of ours where we might have left 

 perennial carpetings of grass." The thought stuck with me. I believe he was 

 right. We have no right to make poor land, because poor land means poor 

 people and a poor State. We are all proud of North Carolina, but let me ask 

 you what kind of State it would be if every cultivated acre in it was a 

 profit-producing acre? Would it not be a State of attractive homes, of good 

 schools, of good roads, of flourishing towns, of an educated, prosperous and 

 progressive people? 



Now for just a few thoughts on some of the practical methods of going 

 about this work — the greatest work given this generation to do — getting rid 

 of these unprofitable acres. In the first place, we must rotate our crops. 

 There is not any extensive soil area, I feel safe in saying, in North Carolina, 

 that can stand continued cultivation in cotton or corn or tobacco or wheat 

 without being made poorer by it ; there are practically no soils in the State 

 that do not need a leguminous crop on them once in every three years, to say 

 the least. Most of the land, indeed, should have a leguminous crop every year 

 for a long time to come ; and the land that will not make more than 15 

 bushels of corn or 150 pounds of cotton to the acre had better be planted 

 in something else. No man is likely to make poor land rich by continuing to 

 crop it in corn or cotton. He is certainly not going to make a profit on the 

 operation. The legumes are our cheapest source of humus and nitrogen, and 

 we must grow more of them. A big cowpea crop is being grown this year, 

 and I am told there is an unprecedented demand for crimson clover. This is 

 as it should be, but there is still great room for improvement. My friends, I 

 really believe that until we have as many acres in cowpeas as in corn and 

 as many acres in crimson clover and other winter-growing legumes as in cot- 

 ton, we are headed the wrong way. 



In the second place, the washing of the soil must be stopped. Whatever 

 will do this — terraces, deeper plowing, more humus, winter cover crops — is 

 well worth while, and all these are needed. 



A third thing needed to redeem these unprofitable acres is drainage. Large 

 areas of the best land in the South are practically valueless to-day simply 

 because they need drainage. The man who is afraid his crop will be drowned 

 out every time a wet spell comes is not much happier than the man who ex- 

 pects his land to be washed away with every heavy rain. Judicious drainage 

 would help both cases. Mr. French says he has made 1,000 per cent profit in 

 two or three years on some of his tile-draining investments ; and there are 

 other farmers here who could probably do as well. Another thing right here : 

 If I were farming, I shouldn't plant corn or cotton on land where the chances 

 were even that it would get drowned out before maturity. I'd put the land 

 down in redtop, if I didn't want to drain it, and sell the hay to the man whose 

 cotton turned yellow and made about half a crop. 



