1 
H. G. Hastings Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
It Is Time to Quit Eating 
Your Crop Before It Is Made 
This may seem a rather queer way of putting it, but it’s exactly right if comfort in the farm homes of the South is to follow. 
For nearly fifty years we of the South have been eating our crops before they were made. This is no fairy tale, no exaggerated or 
lying statement either. It is exact, indisputable, every day fact that you have your share in and we have ours in. 
You may ask. How can such a thing be possible? and a fair, square answer you are entitled to. There is a trouble here in the 
South along this line that must be done away with if the South, the individual farmers and townspeople as well are to come into 
their own and enjoy the comforts and luxuries of life that they are entitled to, measured by the natural advantages that Nature 
bestowed on the South. 
Our present troubles, our present bad economic and financial habits began in the period following the Civil War. There seemed 
no other way then. The South was absolutely stripped of everything necessary to carry on industry, agricultural or otherwise. 
We had land capable of producing a crop, cotton, for which there was a world wide demand, and human labor. 
Without going into all the details this combination of land, climate, human labor and its consequent product, cotton, was put in 
pawn, so to speak, as security for food to keep us going for a year. We got our food, doled out to us, it’s true, but we got it, just the 
same, largely if not altogether before the crop was made and delivered. 
Nearly fifty years ago this, at the time, necessary system was established, and in large measure it has continued to this day, 
and its continuance has kept the South, as a whole, poor, and you, as an individual, poor if you have been dependent or re depen¬ 
dent on the pledging, either directly or indirectly, of your cotton crop, or vegetable crop, orange crop, or any other kind of a so- 
called “cash crop” for your food and grain supplies as a basis of credit at the supply merchant's or country banker’s. 
We believe absolutely in credit, if rightly used. If not rightfully used it is a millstone tied about your neck, and it is no mis¬ 
statement to say that there is a large and able-bodied bunch of these millstones tied around the necks of our people, cotton growers, 
orange growers, peach growers, vegetable growers, etc. 
The South as a whole is poor; you are poor; your neighbor is poor compared with the financial condition you all ought to be in 
had you worked vour farm business in a plain common sense way instead of the extravagant, nonsensical way that you have been 
carrying it on. The plain unadulterated truth is that you and your neighbors, or such of you that have felt the pinch during the 
past year, have been eating your crop before it was made, via the supply merchant route. When your crop of cotton or oranges or 
peaches or tobacco or anything else was made you OWED it instead of OWNED it, and therein lies the whole trouble. 
Store bills eat you and your crop up before it is made. The credit way seems, at the start, an easy way, but it strangles five out 
of six of you before the ena of your life’s journey is reached. 
Are you going to stay in this credit rut, or are you going to get out and be a free and independent man, a man that need not 
stand, hat in hand, so to speak, and ask supply merchant or local banker what you can do next season with your land? This is an 
absolutely fair question and on its right answer depends whether or not you are going to be a free man or essentially a slave to sup¬ 
ply merchant, landlord or banker. 
There Are Too Many Supply Stores in the South 
Information came to us a few days ago that opened our eyes to this situation, and it ought to open yours if you are a buyer of 
food products and grain products that can be and ought to be produced on your own acres. 
There are thirteen states in what is generally termed the South. In the entire United States there are forty-eight states. In the 
thirteen Southern States there are more general merchandise or supply stores than in all the other thirty-five states of this country, 
in spite of our comparatively small population and wealth. 
We recognize fully the value and convenience and proper place of the general merchandise store in any community, but we do 
submit as a plain common sense proposition that more stores of this character, operated on a credit basis, in thirteen states than in 
all the other thirty-five states, represents not legitimate merchandising, but a parasitic condition. 
We are fighting to get rid of the cattle tick in the South. Why? Because the tick is a blood sucker, that prevents the cattle 
reaching full growth for their age and food. Just as the cattle tick drains the blood of the range cow and keeps it poor and “sorry 
looking,” just so does the average mercantile store that is carrying cotton growers and other kind of growers on credit suck the 
financial or money blood from them. 
One parasite sucks blood, the other sucks money. The result is essentially the same, the blood sucking cattle tick leaving a 
scrawny, ill nourished cow; the credit extending merchant leaving a “busted” or nearly “busted” cotton grower or some other kind 
of a one crop grower at the end of the season. 
There is a difference and that is in favor of the cow. The range cow can’t help it. The ticks are there and the cow can take no 
steps to escape them. The cotton grower can, if he has got energy and backbone enough to grow on his own acres so far as possible’ 
the things he now buys at the store. 
We have no grudge against a single general merchant in the South, but there are too many of them. 1 hey live absolutely off of 
the cotton growing, food buying farmers, and this is not right. It’s a poverty producing system, l;hat needs changing, but it will 
not be changed until you and your neighbors and all the rest of us produce food any! gharri instead of buying it on a double or triple 
price basis. Start right in food production this fall. A real fall garden, patches of oats, wheat, rye, etc., will start you on the road 
to full farm prosperity. 
