Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
f 1216 
| HOPE FARM NOTES | 
When you go back to <a section or coxm- 
try after years of absence, you are quite 
sure to look for evidences of money and 
manhood for comparison. Modern civili¬ 
zation writes its progress in two general 
lines. They usually lap over and run 
together, and the most interesting thing 
for the student and observer to see how 
far the increase of money has dominated 
manhood, or how far manhood has been 
able to harness and drive money. I lived 
in the Far West many years ago. It was 
at that time a country rich in possibili¬ 
ties and mighty poor in cash. Most or 
’many farms were mortgaged, and conse¬ 
quently poorly worked. They were large¬ 
ly financed by money sent from New Eng¬ 
land and other North Atlantic States— 
operated through banks and trust com¬ 
panies and loan agents. This money 
came in large part from farmers or fac¬ 
tory workers* or estates left to widows 
or children. Most of this money should 
have been kept at home for investment 
in farm prosperity, good roads and similar 
needed things. New England country life 
suffered through the shipment of this 
money, and Western farmers suffered 
through the 'way the banks and brokers 
doled it out to them. 
* * * * * 
1 I saw that from both ends of the dollar. 
I saw New England farms grow up into 
huckleberry bushes, and Yankee boys and 
girls run from the hills because father 
thought his dollar was safer in the hands 
of the money-lender than in the lime and 
drains, good' equipment, and good roads 
on his own farm. For years the Eastern 
banks made a great parade each Summer 
of the necessity of sending money out 
West to “move the crops.” Now the 
West is largely able to finance its own 
crop movement, and much ojf that Eastern 
money has come back for investment. I 
eometimes think that about the only way 
for New England to hold her own in in¬ 
dustry is for her to invest that money 
in farm improvement, and thus make hei 
people more independent in their food 
supply. But, at any rate, the change ot 
the Far West from a debtor section to 
one of self-support has changed the char¬ 
acter of the people as well as their busi¬ 
ness Too many of our so-called leaders 
in the East fail to realize how money and 
manhood have walked am in arm over 
the Western prairies. Formerly man was 
the slave of money, and it has left a gall- 
ing memory. What comes hard for so 
many Eastern people to believe is the 
fact that the Western “radicals and pro¬ 
gressives intend that hereafter money 
shall no longer be the master, but the 
servant or partner of manhood. 
***** 
In much the same way prosperity is 
coming to the South, and our people of 
the North and East must realize what it 
means to have what was formerly a debtor 
section come back to full self-support and 
a surplus. This progress of money and 
manhood, and the relation the two assume 
on their upward journey, is, after all, the 
most important thing for Americans to 
understand. Of course, these’ things were 
in my mind when we went back to Mis¬ 
sissippi after 37 years’ absence. I here 
could be no question about the growtn 
or development in money. The rise of 
cotton from nine cents to 40 cents had 
provided for that, and the development of 
grass and live stock had made the future 
sure! As for manhood, it can only be 
brought out and made worth while 
through labor. A respect for honest la¬ 
bor is the only thing that can keep money 
in its place, and prevent its eating up 
manhood. Tabor is the only power that 
can change money from the predatory 
beast to the faithful friend. All the way 
down the Mobile & Ohio Railroad I was 
thinking of the first idea of Southern 
labor I got 37 years before. I went 
South in a roundabout way, because that 
was all I could afford. By boat, second 
class, from Boston to Savannah, Ga., and 
then by slow train through Ceorgia and 
Alabama to Southern Mississippi and up 
the State. I could tell some strange tales 
about that slow and weary journey At 
one place a man and boy sat out in front 
’of a little tumbledown house, just simply 
j loafing. A woman, thin and worn, but 
with a flash of industrial fire in her, 
came to the door and scolded the man 
because he would not do some work, She 
gave him a good lecture, but all he did 
was to light his pipe and shrug his shoul¬ 
ders He was an old soldier. lie fought 
for his section and fate, having decided 
against him. what more could he dor ho 
the woman took her head inside the door 
and wearily went at the work herself. 
After she had retired from the front the 
bov asked: . , 
“Say, pa, why don’t you go to work, 
.like ma says?” . , „ 
1 “Son, I ain't (;ot no time to ivork. 
There have been times in my life when 
I wished that I could meet pointed criti¬ 
cism as easily as that. On my way across 
Alabama I saw six men digging post holes. 
One black man was digging and five white 
men stood telling him how. In that group 
I think there were two majors, two colo¬ 
nels and one judge. The black man stood 
resting on his spade, waiting for that 
board of five directors to decide how the 
hole was to be dug. Some enterprises are 
over-capitalized, some possibly have too 
much labor for the output—that one was 
certainly over-directed. 
***** 
That was my first glimpse at the indus¬ 
trial section of the South. It was true of 
a certain element, but not true of all, and 
must not be held up as typical of the 
Southern people. The year following 
that the Agricultural College of Missis¬ 
sippi graduated its first full class. There 
was a great gathering of white people 
from all over the State—attracted by the 
novelty of a college which undertook to 
train white men for labor. There w r ere 
many who came to scoff. Perhaps the 
chief scoffer was a man of one of the 
old families who had fought through the 
Civil War, and took defeat and the loss 
of his property hard. He told me that 
when he had occasion to write “nation” 
he xised the smallest “n” he could make ! 
This man said it was folly to teach agri¬ 
culture, because you never could make a 
science out of it. Food production was 
hard, menial, brutal labor. You could 
not mix brain and brute power any more 
than you could mix oil and water. When 
I suggested that you com make oil and 
water mix by using a caustic with them, 
this man said that might be true, but there 
was no way of mixing or combining the 
old relations of master and slave. At 
that time one of the students had started 
a barber shop at the college, and was 
saving enough to pay his expenses by 
shaving his fellow-students. lie was a 
member of an old Mississippi family, and 
could not see that he was destroying the 
pride and prejudice of a tyrant stronger 
than Samson as he shaved the hair of those 
students. My bitter and unreconstructed 
friend, prowling about the college for 
things to criticize, ran upon this barber 
shop. He stood and watched that stu¬ 
dent at work, asked for his name and 
family, and talked with him, and there 
suddenly came to the old soldier a thought 
he had never known before. There was 
youth—a new generation cutting free 
from old traditions and dead ways of life, 
just as his grandfather had cut loose 
from the old life in Kentucky 50 years 
before, and came to make a new home and 
a new life in Mississippi. The old man 
was honest if he was prejudiced. I know 
that he turned to one who stood near him 
and said : 
“That has converted me. It shaves 
away the last hair of my opposition. For 
when the scion of an old Mississippi fam¬ 
ily is willing to do the work of a menial 
in order to gain an education, lie puts a 
glory and dignity into labor which I did 
not know was possible !” 
I am inclined to think that the agricul¬ 
tural colleges have really done their best 
work in the Southern States. Probably 
the Northern colleges have received more 
advertising and been more in the public 
2ye, but the influence of these colleges at 
the South in giving character to labor 
has been of tremendous value, to the na¬ 
tion. Mark Twain said, in his humorous 
way, that Sir Walter Scott was largely 
responsible for the Civil Wal*. His ro¬ 
mances were freely read at the South, 
and such life as is described in “Ivanhoe” 
was but an exaggeration of much of the 
Southern life before the war. 
% % :Jc $ 
As we rode about through these won¬ 
derful Blue-grass and clover pastures in 
Northeast Mississippi 1 fell to thinking 
what would have been the history of this 
country if it were possible to maintain 
such pastures and grow such crops of cow 
peas and velvet beans in New England. 
Suppose Vermont and New Hampshire 
had three extra months of such pasture as 
we waded through ! Why, I pulled one 
plant of White clover which measured 
26 inches long, and was tender to the end ! 
If the New England people could have 
had such grass and such a climate, would 
they now he the richest and most famous 
farmers in the world, or would they be 
merely sleeping on their money—lazy 
from a surplus of fatness? Suppose in- 
July 17, 1920; 
stead of “her hard granite, which guards 
its potash like a prisoner, New England 
were underlaid with the thick, fat layer 
of limestone which stretches down into 
Mississippi! Would that corner of the 
country have worked off into manufac¬ 
turing, or would it be famous throughout 
the world as a farm section? Suppose 
this limestone section of Mississippi had 
to endure the New England or the North 
Dakota climate ! Would her people be the 
better for it? Is it not true that after 
all necessity is the determining force of 
life? I think few men go far on am¬ 
bition alone. They are seldom led—they 
must be driven if they are to climb up 
the heights. It has always been my be¬ 
lief that if the Pilgrims had not been 
driven out of their course and forced to 
settle at Plymouth, history would have 
buried them in two generations. They 
started for Delaware, and in that milder 
and richer country I think they would 
have lost their energy and stubborn de¬ 
termination to conquer. Limestone and 
legumes are wonderful for agriculture, 
but somehow we are usually glad that our 
ancestors were obliged to struggle with 
sand and granite in order to hand a fair 
sample of energy along to us. It is, how¬ 
ever, small satisfaction for a poor man, 
under the heel of necessity to think that 
his grandchildren may be glad he had to 
work. 
sjc * ifc # 
We must remember that the Southern 
people have for years been driven hard by 
necessity. Most people at the North fail 
to realize just what that necessity really 
meant. Many young men at the close of 
the war had a hard labor inheritance. It 
was necessary to work through that, and 
also to realize fully what the State really 
had to offer them beside cotton culture. 
I was a “war orphan” at the North, but 
I can easily realize that the Southern war 
orphan must have faced a harder outlook. 
