The Bulletin. 51 



home conditions on the farm. The bulletin issued this rtummer by our Agricul- 

 tural Department on "Canning Kriiits and Vegetables in the Home," created 

 quite a commotion among the good housewives of the State, and I venture the 

 assertion that it has already accomplished as much for the helping of the homes 

 as all the farmers' bulletins issued for men by that department in five years. 

 And the reason is solely due to the fact that the women are not only willing, but 

 eager to learn. ThankGod, their worth in the home, the church, and the State, is 

 boinf more and more recognized, and shame upon the slovenly nuin wiio would 

 not bid them God speed with all his heart, and forthwith .set himself to work to 

 imitate their good example. When such a day shall come, the homes on the 

 farms in the South will speedily regain whatever of prestige poverty and the lack 

 of scliools has cost them, and ice shall go on producing that noble race of chival- 

 rous men and pure women for which our State has long been famous. 



It is no longer a matter of pride or sectional sentiment that makes improved 

 farming methods desired, but a matter of cold necessity. Slovenly, unbusiness- 

 like methods have brought farming face to face with the question of better 

 methods, or disastrous failure. Our free lands have been exhausted. In one 

 veneration we have burned the humus out of the soil of a continent, and while 

 our population is steadily increasing, the productiveness of our farms is rapidly 

 decreasing. Our people consumed more than three hundred pounds of meat per 

 capita in 1840, but in 1900 our supply was only about 180 pounds, and last year 

 in spite of the high price of meats the supply of cattle in this country decreased 

 more than two million heads. In 190G we exported a surplus of 733,000,000 

 pounds of beef, but last year this surplus fell to 419.000,000 pounds, with the 

 price steadily going up. The great ranges of the West have reached the high- 

 water mark of production, the cattle and corn producing lands of the East are 

 not getting any cheaper, and the demands for meat and bread are becoming more 

 insis1;ent each year, and with one or two crop failures this new country would be 

 on the verge of a famine nearly as distressing as the one Joseph foretold in Egypt. 



In all this I can see nothing but the best kind of an opportunity for the intelli- 

 gent, industrious North Carolina farmer. From the coast to the foot of the moun- 

 tains the clovers, vetches and peas grow in luxuriant profusion, and the cattle 

 ranges of the mountains are famous. Corn, oats and rye are staple crops in 

 nearly every county in the State, the winters are mild, and there is generally 

 enough moisture in summer to keep pastures doing good work, certainly in the 

 eastel-n part of the State, and we, an agricultural people, have to pay freight on 

 most of our beef, pork, oats, corn, hay and other staple farm products for more 

 than a thousand miles. There was not enough corn on the farms of some of the 

 eastern counties on the first day of June to last one week, and like the widow who 

 fed the prophet, they only had meat enough of home production for one meal. 

 Now, all this means' that we are mighty poor farmers or else we have mighty 

 poor land. 



What is the real trouble? Is the land poor? No, we don't drain it. We don't 

 break it properly. We don't plant winter cover crops. We don?t plant enough 

 legumes. We relv upon chemical fertilizers purchased on time very largely. We 

 don't begin farming operations until about the middle of March, and then we plow 

 with one spavined mule, the most of us do, and break the ground in streaks four 

 inches wide and from one to two inches deep, making a succession of clods laid in 

 ridges that never felt a harrow and never will until the man behind the plow 

 gets the scales knocked from his eyes and he begins to realize what a farce his 

 farming is becoming to be regarded. The production of tlie farms on the coastal 

 plain of this State°can be doubled next year by drainage and thorough plowing 

 in the fall. Their vields can be increased three hundred per cent in twelve months 

 by draining, fall plowing, the sowing of winter cover crops, and the turning in 

 next fall of a heavv legume crop. Add to this program the helpful influence of 

 ten cattle for each "forty acres in cultivation, ten good sows, four good percheron 

 mares, a small flock of sheep and a pound of dog poison, and prophesy fails to 

 foretell the glorious transformation that would take place in five years, where 

 enerf^y and intelligence of average grade directs the operations. But we will 

 never accomplish anything but a failure as long as we rely upon ticks to fatten 

 our cattle, and lightwood knots to improve the breed of our hogs. Rather will 



