The Tarboro' Southerner

[COMMUNICATED]

Mr. Editor:-

A very serious drawback to our present prospects is, that the substantial men among us do not to a sufficient extent combine theory with their practice, in other words they are not enough a reading class of people. Let a man be gifted with ever so much of the essential qualifications, common sense, still what experience and knowledge he acquires by his efforts, uncombined with the comparisons of his views with the trials of others, is often purchased at an expensive price. No more prominent instance need be cited, than the wild schemes of investment entered into by our agriculturalists in buying fertilizers during the past season. And in almost any avocation, if a person does not compare the experience of others with his own views, in many instances of a praiseworthy effort, at the end, he will find himself in regard to a knowledge of the point, from which he started and perhaps deeply involved pecuniarily.

In the present straightened condition of our people, we can ill afford an experiment. A man now must think for himself or some shrewd scion of the "blue noses" will think for him, and often to his detriment. In numbers of instances our unsuspecting farmers have been made the dupes of the most flagrant swindles in the purchase of much vaunted phosphates and other fertilizers. If you ride over a cotton field and have pointed out to you two rows of cotton, one containing the precious earth and the other none, for the life of you, you are unable to determine which has received the manure. Admitting that guano will increase the yield of cotton, is this a fit time to allow this army of speculators to reap their harvest by their monopolizing and often worthless patents from our already threadbare pockets? But some may ask how we can remedy ourselves; the soil already impoverished by continued and exhausting crops will not produce a sufficiency to pay the tax on the land. In the first place the southern man will have to lower his feelings of grandeur a few degrees. Let him keep his hogs comparatively fewer in number, in a close pen in such a position that the strength of the manure may not run off and waste, constantly filling it up with vegetable matter, reserving a dry compartment for the hogs to sleep in. This favor they will appreciate and use. There are not enough nuts or mast in our woods to keep one-tenth of the hogs alive that run in them, and while we are daily dealing out corn to them, why do we let the valuable manure go to waste? Let farmers arrange their stable-lots in such a position, that while they haul dirt in them it may be moist and not continually mixing with manure from the stables.

How many men think of forming a compost of the animals they may lose. These agents will supply him a larger amount of valuable manure, while he is incurring the expense of fertilizers at from $50. to $75. per ton. At the end of the year, instead of having to lay aside perhaps every third bale of cotton to pay for guano advanced at an exorbitant price on the prospect of the coming crop he will have the consolation of knowing that his crop is almost an entire gain and only from the result of a little foresight, and economy.

Somebody may say, very reasonably, that we cannot make sufficient manure in this way to improve all of our land, and what shall we do with the balance to make it pay its taxes. They do not consider that every enterprising member that is added to the community increases the value of each man's property to an incalculable extent. But it is a truth in political economy and it would be a source of more pecuniary profit to each man and to the country at large to even give away in parcels one half of the land, than retain it under the present system; for the property remaining in his possession would increase in value in proportion to the influx of immigration.

Large land-owners in New Jersey are now reaping immense fortunes by selling cheaply alternate sections of the land, and that often of an inferior quality to ours. Those who come and settle of course have left friends who are awaiting tidings of their prosperity; and was there ever a European among us before the war who did not desire to become a part of us? We will have to be up and doing, for the present condition of affairs cannot last long. There seems no way of making our present system available and it can only be changed by force of circumstances. We can compel neither by moral power or force of might, so we must inaugurate a new system by intruding a new class. Surely we cannot be made any worse by the change.

Respectfully,
IOTA.