58 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



part of the cotton crop, raises three cows to every bale of cotton she produces. 

 Until the farmers of the South Atlantic cotton country change all this and 

 get to the same proportion between stock and cotton there will be no real 

 and permanent advancement in the development of their agricultural capa- 

 bilities. ISTo matter how valuable and convenient the commercial fertilizers 

 may be, nor how much they may accomplish for the improvement of the soil 

 in the hands of the wise farmer, they will never, with the great mass of the 

 farmers, avail as much for permanent improvement as home-made manures. 

 The great evil connected with the failure to grow forage and feed live 

 stock in the South, is the continuation of the ruinous credit system. If our 

 farming was more diversified and systematic, and there was not that sole 

 dependence on the cotton crop, which is still largely the case, notwithstanding 

 the great improvement made in many places; there would be sources of in- 

 come from the stock that would enable the farmer to get on a cash basis in 

 his farming, and thus immensely reduce the cost of the cotton crop to the 

 'grower. Tn a section where the most valuable forage crop is at the same time 

 a soil improver, and where nature has been lavish in the great variety of food 

 crops that can be produced for the feeding of cattle and the accumulation of 

 manure, the cities and towns are supplied with beef from the west simply 

 because there are no cattle on the farms to make beef from. The cotton 

 farmers are annually buying nitrogen in their fertilizers because they neglect 

 the sources from which they could get nitrogen without money and without 

 price; and not only get it free of cost but make a profit in the getting of it. 

 Millions of dollars are spent in the cotton states of the Atlantic border for 

 nitrogen, which, if spent for live stock and the growing of the cow pea, would 

 remain to bless the land with fertility and swell the purse of the farmer. 

 While an individual may here and there be able to show a profit in his crops 

 grown without the aid of the domestic animals; the result on the community 

 at large is poverty of soil and purse. Then, too, farm life without stock loses 

 one of its chief attractions to the young, for boys, as a rule, are fond of ani- 

 mals ; and if we want to keep the boys on the farm and to have them devote 

 their energies to the improvement of the land, we must make homes instead 

 of mere cotton fields, and a farm without cattle and other stock is far less 

 homelike than one on which due attention is paid to these sources of profit 

 and pleasure. We do not blame a boy for wanting to get away from a farm 

 where he has only a mule to drive and a pair of wheels to ride on, and the 

 greatest difficulty we have in inducing young men to study scientific agricul- 

 ture lies in the fact that they have never seen any real farming done at home, 

 and they have come to consider the life of the farm hopeless; so the young 

 blood of the South, more than of any other section, is rushing away from the 



