1074 
•lane 12, 1920 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
We ran across Tennessee in the night. 
Many of us fail to realize that this 8tate 
is about 3,000 miles long, and that it cov¬ 
ers all sorts of soils and natural con¬ 
ditions. At one end they grow maple 
sugar and apples; at the other end may 
be found the greatest inland cotton mar¬ 
ket in the world. I suppose the Ten¬ 
nessee River is one of the most remark¬ 
able waterways in the world, but few of 
us ever think of it after we get through 
our school geographies. That is one great 
trouble with this big country. Most of 
us are s'o desperately interested in our 
own section that we can have either no 
notion at all or at best a very hazy 
one. of the rest of the country. It seems 
to me that the rich limestone lands of 
Kentucky. Tennessee and Northeast Mis¬ 
sissippi are in time to dominate the Mid¬ 
dle West. There are sure to be great 
local markets' in the future, and the 
waterways will give good transportation. 
If this country had been “boomed” as the 
Far West has been advertised, -there 
would today be a “garden spot” as large 
as France, unequaled in fertility and pro¬ 
duction. The man who hurries through 
and sees its apparent advantages wonders 
why it has not been “boomed.” Perhaps 
I can explain that before we are done. 
***** 
Morning found us in Northern Missis¬ 
sippi, and we stopped at Corinth to 
change for the South. The morning pa¬ 
pers stated that the New York tempera¬ 
ture was about 50. Here the mercury 
stood at about 85, with a clear sky and 
gentle wind. Coming through Fast T eu- 
nessee I had noticed but few colored peo¬ 
ple. but there were enough of them here 
to make a high average. It was Satur¬ 
day. and many of them were in town for 
“supplies,” including “rest and conversa¬ 
tion. Great lines of them were perched 
on fences or gathered in groups in the 
shade. Their mules or horses were tied 
to fences or posts, waiting with all a 
mule’s patience for the next movement. 
Someone told me in Virginia that the 
limestone produced the highest color in 
apples or in humans, the biggest bone 
and the finest teeth. We began to get 
full evidence of it here, for I never saw 
a crowd of blacker men than the speci¬ 
mens who lined the streets of Corinth. 
The world will soon be suffering for food 
because of a lack of production. Yet I 
counted at least 50 lmskv black men sit¬ 
ting on fences, while in front of the hotel 
a dozen big white men were pitching 
pennies on the sidewalk. And in the 
North thousands of equally husky young 
white men were demanding “daylight 
saving.” Saturday holiday and an eight- 
hour day. so they could have more play¬ 
time. The Southern man has the advan¬ 
tage in this competition for playtime. 
It costs him less to live, and his soil is 
stronger. And, after all. why should 
these black men, sitting in the shade, con¬ 
cern themselves about feeding a lot of 
distant people, whose chief concern is to 
capture extra playtime? All over the 
country I hear the question propounded 
in various ways: Why should the farmer 
work beyond his strength to feed people 
who have an industrial advantage? 
***** 
We had strawberries for breakfast at 
Corinth. They were about the size of our 
Jersey wild berries, sour and of very poor 
appearance. One of our Marshalls would 
have outweighed half a dozen of them. 
Apparently the big and superior varieties 
do not thrive in this country, and it 
seems to be much the same with apples. 
Most varieties have been tried, but they 
go down with blight. I saw several ap¬ 
ple trees badly stricken with the disease. 
In most of the larger towns .apples were 
on sale. They were Ben Davis or Wine- 
sap and as a rule very poor specimens, 
yet there is a strong demand for the fruit. 
Fried chicken is the great dish on South¬ 
ern tables, and they surely do know how 
to cook it to perfection. Out of some 
35 different meals in the South we had 
fried chicken at least 32 times. On the 
dining cars and in the restaurants “fried 
chicken” cost from 00 cents to $3.25. but 
in these Southern homes they piled your 
plate with “white meat” and new pota¬ 
toes. green peas, boiled rice, gravy and 
biscuits. They acted as if that was what 
food is for—to" eat—all you want and the 
best at home. Inbred feeding habits are 
strong, and I hunted every bill of fare 
for baked beans and fishballs. Not a 
bean to be found anywhere. At St. 
Louis, on our way back. I found fishballs 
tucked away in the smallest type, but 
they seemed like a rather poor and per¬ 
functory performance of salt fish and po¬ 
tatoes. But Ma had no thought of beans 
and fish after she entered Mississippi. 
She was “brought up” in that country, 
and the food habits of childhood are never 
forgotten. Fried chicken, rice, bacon and 
then hot waffles and sorghum syrun! The 
high cost of living does not trouble the 
Southern people as it does us. because 
they do not buy “groceries” as we do. 
Too manv of ns practically live on the 
groeerv store, while with their chickens 
and their garden the Southern family 
will be far more self-supporting. The 
chickens that I saw seemed to be mostly 
of mixed breed, with Leghorn blood pre¬ 
dominating. Many R. T. Reds seem to be 
coming in. and T should think such a 
breed ought to suit in a country where 
chicken is such a popular meat. I would 
like to see our Black Jersey Giants tried 
there. 
Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
It was a hot, dusty ride down from 
Corinth to Artesia. reminding one of an 
August day in New Jersey. At times the 
air fairly “sizzled” with heat. I did not 
realize before how fond the Southern 
people are of a popular drink which is 
really a chemical coffee. The trainman 
had a tank filled with ice and water with 
nearly 3 00 bottles of this stuff cooling- 
in it.’ He would take half a dozen at a 
time and go through the train peddling 
them. At the end of about 300 miles 
they were nearly all gone. It seems as if 
some attention and advertising given to 
bottled milk would develop a similar 
trade. We journeyed through a flat prai¬ 
rie land, evidently underlaid by limestone. 
Here and there one could see a gully or 
some great ditch cut down below the 
upper soil. The pure limestone showed 
white and dazzling in the sunlight. There 
had been much rain, and the water stood 
in puddles in many of these fields. The 
corn in some places was 18 inches high, 
but the cotton is short and backward. 
All this country along the Mobile & Ohio 
was fighting ground during the Civil War. 
There was a great battle at Corinth, and 
raids from both sides swept over ^ the 
country and practically ruined it. When 
I came through this country before, about 
38 years had passed since the close of 
the war. That seems a mighty stretch 
of time to youth, but to age it is only a 
collection of yesterdays. When I went 
through before, this country seemed like 
a land ruined and deserted. There was 
little to be seen, except one long succes¬ 
sion of gullied “old fields” with rough, 
unpointed houses and a general air of de¬ 
pression. 
***** 
That was in the day of seven-cent cot¬ 
ton. In one county at least that I know 
of fully 60 per cent of the cotton crop 
was mortgaged before it was planted, so 
that practically all the proceeds went to 
the money-lenders. Cotton is now worth 
-10 cents and more. At the time 1 speak 
of (here was practically nothing but cot¬ 
ton for sale at a cash price. Now this 
country produces cattle, hogs, butter and 
half a’ dozen other things, all bringing 
in money and all helping in their way to 
increase the yield of cotton. You can 
imagine, therefore, the wonderful change 
on the the face of the landscape. Where¬ 
as in former years you seemed to be look¬ 
ing upon the sour, unhappy face of a 
roughly discouraged country, you now 
looked' out upon a great smile of con¬ 
tentment. Where once gullied “old 
fields” stretched away in dismal monot¬ 
ony, now were pastures thick with Blue 
grass and White clover as strong and 
thrifty as any in the famous Blue grass 
section of Kentucky. For a great finger 
of limestone stretches down out of Ten¬ 
nessee, and these fields of Blue grass and 
Alfalfa are like diamonds sparkling on 
that finger as it points the way to pros¬ 
perity. For years and years the cotton 
planters fought this Blue grass and clover 
a-- it worked in from the North, consider¬ 
ing both as weeds and “undesirable citi¬ 
zens.” because they interfered with cotton 
culture. Finally they learned to let the 
grasses alone, and in that way they are 
finding wealth. 
***** 
Years ago in this country I saw the 
most remarkable hay-making on record. 
A white man sat under a tree with a 
heavy cotton hoe across his knees. With 
a heavy rasp or file lie sharpened the 
hoe edge ami then swung it like a scythe, 
hoeing off the grass and dumping it in 
little piles. I never saw anything like 
that before, yet I was told that the 
greater part of the hay crop of Missis¬ 
sippi was cut in that way. In 1884 the 
total hay crop of the State was less than 
l.T.000 tons. Last year the total hay 
crop was nearly 700.000 tons, and this 
year it will be nearly one million tons. 
I thought of that old hay-maker with 
his sharp hoe as we passed one great field 
of Alfalfa beside the railroad. At least 
80 men were at work with every new 
form of hay machinery, including trucks 
for curing the hay in rainy weather. 
They were cutting Alfalfa. The crop 
seemed to be wilted in the swath and 
then loaded on wide, light trucks. In 
case of rain these trucks are run under 
shelter, and thus protected from the wet. 
On a sunny day they can be hauled out 
into the air. Thus they are cured on 
the truck, which is the same as curing 
them in big cocks nr small stacks, pre¬ 
serving the color and flavor. Thousands 
of tons of such hay are baled and shipped 
each year. Johnson grass is another fa¬ 
vorite fodder crop. On this strong, lime¬ 
stone land it gives an enormous crop, 
well suited to this plan of farming where 
the hay lands are rarely plowed. This 
Johnson grass is a relative of quack 
grass, and has some of the bad habits of 
that pest. It spreads like a scandal, and 
becomes a nuisance on farms where a 
rotation is wanted. A good many years 
ago Tiie R. N.-Y. was in the habit of 
sending small packets of choice seeds to 
its readers. Some of our Southern read¬ 
ers praised this Johnson grass to the 
skies, and many packets of it were dis¬ 
tributed. On many farms it ran away, 
and while it gave good crops of fodder, it 
spread out until it became a pest, like 
crab-grass, and it may still be found in 
some of these old sections. In Missis¬ 
sippi, however, it is a great blessing. All 
farmers in that country have too much 
land anyway, and there is plenty of room 
for the Johnson grass to spread and en¬ 
joy itself. It makes a coarse, highly 
prized hay, which costs little to seed or 
care for. and which improves the soil and 
fills it with organic matter. I presume 
A Coffee-like 
everap e 
in flavor and appearance 
Instani 
Fbsium 
but Postum is different be¬ 
cause it contains no health* 
disturbing drug. 
A saver in many ways. 
«« 
T/iere's 3 /Reason 
Made by Postum. Cereal Co., 
Battle Creek:,Mich. 
) 
Boons GmoerNo.4 
/ s-J 
n 
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