The County Record

The Way To Success.

The idea advanced by Dr. H. A. Morgan, president of the University of Tennessee, of a program for the readjustment of agricultural conditions based on regional, rather than national distribution of products, may lead to the solution of some of the problems of the farmers of the south. He refers to high freight rates as a barrier to wide distribution and calls attention to the facts that the south has not met its obligations in the production of meats and other food essentials for home consumption, and to the construction of modern highways which will tend to facilitate regional distribution and the development of home markets for home grown beef, dairy products, poultry, hay, corn and other things that the south should raise for its own use.

There can be no question about the importance of raising on the farm nearly everything the farmer requires, with a surplus for nearby markets, where freight rates will not be burdensome to the producer and where money will be put in local circulation to stimulate business and supply the needs of all classes of workers; and, as for a change to regional systems of distribution providing a way for the adjustment of present inequalities, the trend is undoubtedly in that direction. A change may come in the system of distributing farm products before the farmers in the south are prepared to take full advantage of it. The important thing before us just now is to adopt the slogan suggested by Dr. Morgan for the Southern Cattlemen's Association: "Home Production of Livestock," with this addition for general farmers: "and everything else required to enable the farmer to live at home."

The one-crop system may be profitable on large plantations, but even on such big farms money is lost during periods of deflation in prices for the crops produced, because supplies must be purchased, with profits of producers, shippers and transportation companies added to the cost. But, on small farms of the south, the raising of livestock and the diversification of crops along with improved methods of soil improvement and conservation is the only system that will pay.

Let's lime our lands, raise clover and other legumes, raise livestock--drive farm products to the market on foot and return fertility in the form of manure to the soils of fields from which they are harvested--encourage the development of home markets and the consumption of home products--live well at home on a variety of choice food produced on the farm, and have a surplus of everything to sell. Under such a system, farms will increase in fertility year after year, and the farmer will have something to put in the bank, whether the money received for his products be much or little.

Let us read again the statement made by Henry W. Grady in 1888, and profit by the truths which inspiration and clear knowledge of facts enabled him to teach:

"When every farmer in the south shall eat bread from his own fields and meat from his own pastures and disturbed by no creditors, and enslaved by no debt, shall sit amid his teeming gardens, and orchards, and vineyards, and dairies and barnyards, pitching his crops in his own wisdom and growing them in independence, making cotton his clean surplus, and selling it in his own time, and in his chosen market and not at a master's bidding--getting his pay in cash and not in a receipted mortgage that charges his debt, but does not restore his freedom--then shall be breaking the fullness of our day."