The Van Buren Press

CRAWFORD COUNTY
Crop Prospects - Improvements, &c.

Van Buren, Ark., March 23, 1873.

During last week I had occasion to take two or three trips through different parts of the County, and was forcibly struck by the evidences of industry and improvement going on. Although we hear the cry of hard times and the want of money, our farmers seem to be determined to take advantage of the few weeks of good weather, and I found many who had finished sowing grains and planting corn, and are now engaged in preparing land for one of the largest cotton crops ever raised in Crawford county. There will be more new land cleared up and cultivated this season, in this County, than in the last five or six before. I might venture to say that there will be near one-third more land cultivated in the County this season than last. Our farmers seem determined to not be discouraged by the universal cry of "the hardest times I ever knew here," and the frequent visits of our unswerving tax-collector, but to make one great effort to save themselves, families and the country from bankruptcy, by a year of hard industry and frugal economy. What I know of farming is not much, but I know a corn field from a cane brake, and I predict that with anything like a fair season, the people of Crawford county will see more plenty of staple of life produced this season than any since the war; and that money will be more plenty than at any time heretofore. We all have found out that we cannot pay out money all the time and have much left if we do not provide some means of replenishing our funds. If we buy all the articles we consume and have nothing to sell to pay with, it is not very probable that we will pay. So if the country imports all the time and has nothing to export, a great scarcity of the "wherewithal" to pay taxes may be expected. Our farmers have found this to be the case and so look out for a huge crop of Oats, Wheat, Corn and Cotton in old Crawford next fall.

MARK.