The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-10-30
AGRICULTURE In ARKANSAS
A Benighted Land Where the Cook
ing-Stove Has Not Penetrated,
And the Hog Doesn't Know What To Do
with an Ear of Corn-Cotton Culture
the Curse of the Country.


Gus that a State like Arkansas, larger in ter
ritory than the whole of England, already
fortv-seyen years a State in the Union, hay
ing a remarkably mild climate, Astounding
in the most valuable timber, having abund-
ance of coal and a fair supply of iron, and
capable of growing the grains, fruits and
roots in vast abundance, should be
of so little consequence among the
sisterhood of States. This is a reflection
which has been forced upon your correspond
ent's mind during, and at the close of, a jour-
uey of several hundred miles through the
State.
. An enthusiastic citizen of Arkansas. burn
ing with anxiety to induce people to come in
and assist in developing the lands, says, tri-
umphantly, that he does not know a region
in the world where a man can gain the means
of subsistence with so little labor. Just
there, | am convinced, he touched one of
the true causes of the hardness of progress
in Arkansas. Another great cause has been
the surprising lack of ambition and enter
prise among the people who settled IN the
State before the war. 1t is amazing the num-
-ber of these who have absolutely resisted,
with all their might, any distinct indications
of progress. In southern and southeastern
Arkansas there are hundreds of farm-houses
in which there never has been a cooking
stove, the entire work of cooking being done
in pots and kettles of the most print
tive pattern, in the wide fre-places of chin
neys built of mud and sticks. Just this
morning a civil engineer assured me that he
had surveyed 10 miles of railroad in the
State, and had stopped for fifteen days con-
tinuously at the houses scattered thinly
along the way, without seeing sugar, milk
or butter. More than this said he, 'these
beggars absolutely resisted the granting of
the right of way because, they said, the rail
roads scared the game out of the country"
I have myself ridden sixty miles through
this State in a section where white men have
lived for more than fifty years without see
ing a stack of grain, and that at this season,
when one would naturally expect never to
be out of sight of one. Hundreds of men are
wasting their time-I do not say their ener-
gies-upon cotton-raising, and are buying
every bushel of grain they eat or feed, buy
ing potatoes and meat for their own use, and
yet living on a soil and in a climate where
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year, and where it is scarce
ly necessary TO put up winter feed
for cattle, buying salt-meat-not ham or
shoulder. mind you-where good pork would
make itself on the nuts in the woods. As
an experiment threw an ear of corn to a
hog in a southern Arkansas county, andQ am
telling a sober truth) the animal did not
know how to cat it. 1t never had seen all
ear of corn before. When l told this story to
a farmer who had come in from Ohio, he as
sured me he had more than once seen the
same thing in this region.
Cotton! cotton! 1t is undoubtedly a curse
to southern Arkansas, and l fear to many
other parts of the South. 1t is raised ap-
p~arently because it brings cash; but the men
who cultivate it seldom have half enough
left, after they have harvested one crop, to
support them and their families till the next
crop is harvested, so that, as soon as a crop
is started. they are obliged to mortgage it for
the means to live. Consequently the cotton
grower in southern Arkansas is generally
poor and destined to remain so as long as he
raises cotton. A landowner who rents his
Iands-as many do-to poor men to raise
cotton, and takes a mortgage oil the crop to
secure his rent, manages to live we'll and
take things easy till his land is worn out;
but the renter is in for it. He will never be
rich and will never have easy times.
What has been said here is of things as
thew may be found in this State. OF the
capabilities of southern Arkansas a very
different story may be told. The soil may
never prove to be very valuable for grain,
but. generally, it will produce fair crops of
wheat and corn, For the rearing of cattle
it has great capacity, and fruits. can be grown
in almost endless quantity and variety. Oc-
casionally a German may be found who has
proved that the grape will flourish most
l"uxuriantly. A reliable man assured me
that he has seen one of these Germans pro-
duce 81, 900 worth of wine on an acre along
side of an old Southerner who was scratch
ing away the whole season, with no pros
poets before him, and scarcely producing $45
an acre in cotton to fill the hole made by
money which he had already spent. Peaches
are eminently at home in this soil and eli
mate, and there is scarcely a limit to the ca
pability of their production. All the small
fruits are at home, and strawberries may be
grown in the open air and ready for the
market in March. The black
berry and raspberry are equally easy of cult
walton and figs flourish beautifully.
Without saying more than this, it is easy
to infer that the pursuit of agriculture or
horticulture, or both, in Arkansas, offers an
easy means of obtaining a comfortable sub
sistence, and even wealth. The bad reputa-
ton of the State has been achieved through
the former bad or Indifferent character of
the State government and the shameless in
dolence of the people. A marked improve
ment is beginning to appear in both, though
there is yet great room for improvement.
1t is needless to tell a citizen of Indiana, or
any other State like it, that farmers living
on a soil like that of the Arkansas and White
river valleys and now, in the month of Oc-
tober, paying a dollar a bushel for corn and
seventy-five cents to a dollar for potatoes,
both shipped from some of the Northern
States, are destined to be poor, and that the
State which has many of them can not be a
great State so long as these practices are con-
tinued; but just this shiftless policy is prac-
ticed perpetually in this State as it has been
ever since it was a State. Occasionally one
of these hopeful citizens picks up ar idea
from the skillful farmers who
are arriving from the North; but for the
most part they are content to slide along in
their old rut. Many of them eat corn bread
and salt meat, with molasses and black
coffee from January to January, varied only
NTH q littla fish and nama for docs mud