The Semi Weekly Leader

To the Public

After thinking over what was said at the mass meeting in Brookhaven last Saturday, relative to the petition adopted by the Lincoln County Farmers Union, I feel like there was a wrong construction placed upon the meaning of said petition and being one of the three delegates elected by the County Union to present the petition, I am in position to explain the matter and make it clear to all intelligent minds or at least I hope to do so. In the first place, inasmuch as the delegates composing the county union were our most intelligent and enterprising farmers, who take various newspapers and are posted on the boll weevil problem both as to their nature and the preventives, and since it is the prime object of the Farmers' Union to educate the farmer along agricultural lines and in fact in everything pertaining to their interest, we deemed it unnecessary to ask the board of Supervisors to appropriate $600 to put a man in the field to tell the farmers how to destroy their cotton stalks, or in other words to tell them how to circumvent the boll weevil. We believed as Hon. H. Cassedy said in his speech in the mass meeting, the boll weevil is a Godsend and will add further, that his mission is to make the farmer reduce this cotton acreage, something that has not been done, and judging the future by the past, it would not have been done had the weevil not made its advent. Hence the weevil is a blessing in disguise, instead of being a curse. It was not the object of the county union to antagonize the efforts on the part of the business men of Brookhaven who manifested an interest in the farmers by offering to donate their own money if needs be to fight the weevil, for we well know that the business men realize the fact that their welfare and future success depends upon prompt and intelligent action in this matter, for when the farmers succeed, as a matter of course, the balance of the world is benefited thereby. I want to say right here in behalf of the farmers of my county, we thank the business men of Brookhaven for manifesting so much interest in our behalf, and solicit in the future your co-operation and assistance in all matters pertaining to the better interest of the agricultural classes.

Now a word to my brother farmers. I am glad that so many of you are awakening from that sleep of lethargy and are availing yourselves of the opportunity that is now being offered in the way of modern improved implements, and are giving more attention to the raising of better stock and to diversified farming. And right here I want to say to the man who says away with your new-fangled ideas, that he must remember that we are living in a progressive age, and that conditions as well as people have changed, and unless, as I have already said, we avail ourselves of the golden opportunity that did not exist in our fathers' days, we will some day repent in sack cloth and ashes.

One other thing I want to impress upon the farmers is to educate your children. And since the boll weevil is upon us this is one of the blessings made manifest to me. A large cotton crop keeps the children out of school, and when farmers plant less cotton, as they will have to do, our children that God gave us and made it an indispensable duty to educate as well as to administer to their physical wants, will, instead of picking cotton, be in school, and instead of being brought up in ignorance, be an intelligent, progressive and prosperous people. Such are most conducive to law and order and to the betterment of our country in which we live.

Having been assessor of my county one term, I had ample opportunity to learn the condition of my brother farmers, and by so doing I feel an interest in them that possibly no other one does who never enjoyed the hospitalities around their firesides as did I.

And now in conclusion I want to say to one and all, let's wake up and get busy. Do the things only that will best promote our interests, and weevil or no weevil, success will surely be ours.

C. W. MAXWELL.