July 10, 1917 



\ iOTiiaaM^i>^iiMiiaii TO ^ll^i>l^JiWil^ ' ^l»MW3 Sy 



Inspiration at Land ISAeeting 



The semi-annual meeting of the Southern Alluvial Land Associa- 

 tion, held at the Hotel Chisca, Memphis, June 30, represented the 

 most important conference ever held in this city looking to the de- 

 velopment and colonization of the vast area comprised in the allu- 

 vial land region of the lower Mississippi valley and to the estab- 

 lishment of a new empire in the richest portion of the globe. The 

 speakers were eiithusiastie in their relation of the vast possibilities 

 of the lands controlled by members of this organization and of the 

 opportunities for successful development lying before them. But 

 they were equally emphatic in setting forth the problems that must 

 be solved aild the nl)staeles that must be removed before this sec- 

 tion can be made what, in the language of Secretary F. E. Stone- 

 braker, -"it deserves and was intended to be — the garden spot of 

 the world. ' ' 



And when, after morning and afternoon sessions, the association 

 adjourned, the members had a far clearer conception of what thoy 

 have to do than ever before. Drainage, labor, health conditions, 

 schools, churches, road building, cattle tick, boll weevil, land clear- 

 ing, experiment stations were outlined as some of the problems and 

 processes which must be worked out if the association is to estab- 

 lish the new empire of which its members dream and of which its 

 officials talk unceasingly. I 



"There is no place in the world where God has done more for a 

 country and man has done less than in the Mississippi valley" and 

 "there is no soil in the world that will yield such rich returns if 

 cultivated intensively and intelligently and none that will yield so 

 little if slip-shod methods are employed. ' ' 



These were the startling words of George W. Sheldon, formerly 

 governor of Nebraska and now a farmer at Wayside, Miss., in the 

 heart of the Yazoo delta, the principal speaker of the day. He has 

 given ten years of his life to the development of lands in the delta 

 region-^nd his words carried conviction not only because he is a big 

 man but because he had sufficient experience back of him to give 

 weight to his words. 



Mr. Sheldon deplored the fact that negroes were flocking to the 

 North at the expense of the labor supply of the South but argued 

 that no obstacle be put in the way of those desiring to leave. He 

 urged that machinery should be inti'oduced wherever possible and 

 declared that ' ' with every negro left, we will do the work two 

 negroes did before and do it better. ' ' He thanked God that the 

 time is coming when the people of the South will look with greater 

 respect on the white man who does manual labor and asserted that 

 more white labor is needed in the South and that this section will 

 grow both more rapidly and more surely when such labor is avail- 

 able. Continuing he said: 



"When we toll our northern friends our soil will proiluce all the crops 

 that can 'be grown in other sections, anil profUice thoni in greater abund- 

 ance, we are tcllins the truth.* But we can't make tbom lielieve it. Why? 

 Because they look around and see shacks of squalor wliere there should 

 be flue homes ; tumbled down sheds where there should be big, fine barns ; 

 poor schools and churches where there should be brick buildings ; 

 poor roads where there should be macadam highways, and they can't 

 believe the things you tell them. They think something must be wrong. 



And something is wrong. We have encouraged our negroes to spend, 

 spend, spend, when we should have urged them to save, save, save. If 

 we could have kept in the South all the wealth that has needlessly gone 

 into the Xorth, the South coulil have w^eathered the storms of 1911 and 

 1914 without a murmur and when the Liberty Loan was issued the South 

 could have taken the whole without feeling it. 



We have got to change our ways. We have a damnable system of ag- 

 riculture that must he changed — that is changing. The one crop system 

 In the South is doomed and in its place is coming diversification. In all 

 the history of the South there has never been a period when land values 

 were so stable as they have been since 1914 and diversification is the 

 reason therefor. 



For many years after I came to Mississippi, I would not invite my 

 old friends in Nebraska to come down to this wonderful alluvial land. 

 Why? Because they would not have been contented with conditions 

 here. But, thank God, conditions are changing. A better day is dawn- 

 ing. The press has been leading the fight for diversified farming, for 

 better schools and communities and for law and order. And the South 

 is coming into its own. 



J. H. Page, Commissioner of Agriculture for Arkansas, filled the 

 place on the program assigned to Governor Brough, who was de- 

 tained by war engagements. He congratulated the association on. 

 Its wonderful foresight iif substituting organized effort for individ- 

 ual effort in developing the alluvial lands of the South and was full 

 of statistics regarding the productivity of Arkansas lands as well 

 as regarding the vast area in the lowlands of that state now lying 

 idle, approximately 4,000,000 acres out of a total of 6,000,000. In 

 Poinsett county, he said, only 15 per cent was in cultivation while 

 in the remaining 15 delta or lowland counties only 30 per cent was 

 being cultivated. 



He asserted that the value of farm products in Arkansas low- 

 lands was approximately 100 per cent greater per acre than in the 

 highly developed agricultural states of the Middle West but he 

 emphasized the impossibility of reconciling these claims of pro- 

 duction per acre with the prices asked for these lands. Continu- 

 ing, he said: 



Since you cannot reconcile these claims with the prices asked, you 

 cannot attract settlers here by advancing such figures. Your most 

 effective method of attracting the class of settlers you wish lies in bring- 

 ing prospective farmers and land owners down here and showing them 

 the timber grow'th on your lands and the crops that have been, and are 

 being, produced. Show them that there is greater productiveness here 

 because there is greater soil fertility, a greater range of crops and a far 

 longer growing period. Show them that there is great opi)ortunlty not 

 only for growing cotton but also for raising grain, forage, alfalfa and 

 other crops, as well as for raising live stock. And above all, show them 

 that only drainage and modern methods are necessary and you can bring 

 the most attractive element in the country here to settle your alluvial 

 lands. 



Clearing lands is one of your big problems. Labor is hard to get and 

 clearing lands is menial labor. Your association should therefore em- 

 bark on the plan of clearing and establishing small farms, say 80-acre 

 tracts, with half the land cleared for cultivation, and start this coloniza- 

 tion movement. YOll CAN'T UEI'END ON PIONEERS TO COME AND 

 CLEAR YOUR L.VNDS FOR YOU. YOU MUST DO THAT YOUR- 

 SELVES AND THE SOONER YOU START. THE BETTER FOR ALL 

 CONCERNED. 



Dr. H. A. Morgan, college of agriculture, Knoxville, Tenn., de- 

 clared he was keenly interested in the Southern Alluvial Land Asso- 

 ciation because the dominant note of patriotism is back of it and 

 because it typifies the spirit of the times in merging individual 

 into co-operative effort. It has responded nobly, he said, to the de- 

 mands of the nation for increased foodstuff production and prom- 

 ises to be an important factor in feeding the people of the United 

 States as well as of the allies. He thought the association had 

 timed its efforts at land development and colonization most for- 

 tunately, in that the agriculturist lias before him today the greatest 

 opportunity in the history of the world, the opportunity of vastly 

 increasing his own fortune and at the same time the opportunity 

 of developing the human element which will make the United 

 States strong where its enemy — Germany — has always been strong 

 — in the powQr to feed itself. 



Dr. Morgan believed that emphasis should be laid on the advan- 

 tages possessed by the alluvial lands, a plentiful sujjply of nitrogen 

 and lime, a long growing period, a wide range of crops and exceed- 

 ing fertility of soil, but he did not believe that much progress 

 would be made until the problems to be solved were faced manfully 

 and energetically. He named these in the following order: 



1 — Scarcity of labor, which made it both necessary and desirable 

 that these alluvia! lands should be offered to prospective settlers 

 cleared instead of in their natural state. 



2 — Drainage, which is greatly simplified by the co-operative work 

 the association is carrying on but which is indissolubly connected 

 with still another problem, that of health. 



3 — Malaria control, which must be learned if the future of these 

 lands is to be what you gentlemen intend that it shall bo. There 

 are simple expedients, he said, which can be learned without diffi- 

 culty but he urged that they must be learned because the pros- 

 pective settler is interested in health first and in soil fertility 

 seconil. 



