52 The Bulletin. 



poverty contin\ie to sit upon our front gate, and a fertilizer mortgage remain 

 our boon coiii])anion. 



Tlicn let us fortliwith inaugurate such a system of farming as will eliminate 

 8lif)sli()(l methods. Tiiat will supjjly labor to farm workers tlie year round at 

 good wages. No man can live on poor wages received foi' hardly half tlie year. 

 The family of sucii a man will never know aught but direst poverty and darkest 

 ignorance as long as they live under such conditions. 1 know that some of them 

 do not want to work quite as long as they do now, but by setting them a good 

 example, and by giving them a little friendly advice, and having patience with 

 their weaknesses we may coax them into better ways after a time. No business 

 on earth can succeed where the operatives are idle half the time and the imple- 

 ments left to rot and rust in the weather, as is the case on many farms. 



'J lien let us forthwith inaugurate a system of farming in North Carolina that 

 will produce on tbe farm all the milk, butter, eggs, beef, pork, hams, mutton, 

 grain and hay the farmer's family and his live stock need for co7nfortable living. 

 Let us inaugurate a system of farming that will produce on the farm the best 

 breeds of cattle for milk and for beef, the best strains of hogs for bacon and lard, 

 tlie finest pcrcheron horses, such as the best farmers in tlie finest countries in 

 tlie woi Id are proud to own and rear. J^t us forthwith inaugurate such a system 

 of farming as will pioduce on the farm all the fertilizers required for bumper 

 crops of all the staples every year. 



Let us inaugurate such a system of farming as will have homes comfortable 

 and sigiitly, sanitary and substantial, that our wives and daughters may do their 

 work witli more ease and have more life and energy left to give to intellectual 

 pursuits, that our mothers may rear more healthy children, and tliat the attend- 

 ance upon the public schools may be more in accord with the needs of civilized 

 progress. 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY FAEMER. 



A. L. FKEXCU. 



That the business of farming is undergoing a great change few thinking men 

 will question, and that the individual farmer who has not alrjeady done so must 

 chanye his practice to meet the changing conditions is patent to students of the 

 times, 'that we as farmers are not pieparing so rapidly as I believe we should 

 to meet the conditions that, in my judgment, will press* hard within a very few 

 years is my excuse for taking a few minutes to-day upon the subject assigned me. 



The pioneer (American) farmer of the nineteenth century was a power in hi!^ 

 day. He did his work of clearing away the forests, establishing homes, building 

 and maintaining the little country schools — in which his children studied the 

 questions that were vital to that generation — worshiped his God in and out of 

 the rude country church, and attended to his political duties in a manner that 

 arouses yet and always will the admiration of students of history. And if he 

 did not give the heed he should have done to the care of the soil, we can not blame 

 him, because the need was not pressing in that day, and that was not his problem. 

 The care of the soil is the problem of the twentieth century American farmer. 

 In their struggles for a livelihood our fathers — from the time the first axe was 

 struck at the root of the forest tree— were obliged to skim, as we may say, the 

 cream of the fertility of their soils. And we of to-day find ourselves with a vast 

 amount of the skim milk of the soil on our hands, to which we must add the 

 cream before we can hope to reap the fat. This sad condition of soil seems most 

 inopportune to us, as the world is calling to-day for greater returns from our 

 •'skim milk"' soil than was asked of the fat soil.s of our fathers' day. This, as 

 we see it, is ahoiit the soil problem of the twentieth century farmer, and hence 

 we believe that a difTerent brand of farmer is needed to-day — where we must build 

 soils and at the same time harvest a greater crop per acre than was needed in our 

 fathers' day, when a small crop was required from virgin soils. And the twentieth 

 century farmer is being called upon for many things that are real necessities to 



