The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-06-30

good of the mass of the people, you
will get abuse by the a load.
Devote yourself to working for some
special interest, Go to Congress as the
representative of manufactures, as
scores of others have done, and you
will get credit for intellect and integ-
rity. Go as the representative of rail
roads, as so many do, and you will at
once be accorded sincerity and
capacity.
But if you dare to say that you are
going to devote every energy you pos
sess to the welfare of the common peo-
ple-that immense quiet labOring class
who are the bone and sinew of our
national prosperity, you will be de-
nounced from one end of the land to
the other as a demagogue.
Young gentleman, if you wish to be
a politician, and of the better type, be
one! The country needs you! The
people need you! Justice and good
government needs you! If the notion
strikes you come quick, for time presses.
If this country is to be rescued from
thefoul domination of a foul ~plutocracy,
there is not a day to lose. Every hour
makes our chains heavier and strength
ems the letters that bind us. If l could
send this feeble voice like a trumpet
through oil this land, through every
walk, into every condition, it's alarm
should be-: "Rise up and smite your
enemies! Your homes and your liber-
ties are leaving you"
Do you think of being a farmer?
Ihope some Of you DO, but I doubt
it. There is no charm in agriculture
now. The country mansions have
gone to decay; the fields are worn to
sand or scanned with gullies; the bitches
in the low ground have filled and the
meadow, ali! the green flower scented
meadow we children loved has become
a marsh.
The negroes have moved into the
big house" They have propped the
chimney with a pine pole. They have
mended the windows with guano sacks.
A bag or two of western corr lies in
the piazza.
Three yellow dogs sleep around the
steps and only at drowsy intervals,
rouse up and demonstrate with the
feas.
The white picket fence is gone. 1t
made good kindling wood. The flower
yard is gone-sacrificed to the old
brindled COW.
And yet once upon a time, the hum
ming bird would leave it's cool nest in
the woods to come hither and linger
hour by hour, slipping the sweets of
the pinks and feasting from the bosom
of the imperial rose. Once upon a time
little white maidens, pure as the lilies
they loved, would gather here dainty
offerings of courtesy or of tenderness,
and every blossom that doomed was
by sacred association a forget-me-not.
Gone is the orchard with it's snow
drift of apple blossoms, it's aroma of
velvet peach, and the spring at the foot
of the hill where melons used to cool is
checked with weeds and the path that
led to it has had no footsteps upon it
this many a year.
Where are the "old familiar faces?"
Gone. There was a mortgage; there
was a lawsuit; there Yves a sheriff's
sale.
This is a short and simple history of
farm life in the South.
Ousted from the country, the family
broke up" and moved to town."
That's the epitaph for a thousand
dead farms in Georgia.
What drove them to town? The
fact that it was well nigh impossible to
prosper IN the country. The pittiless
burden of unequal taxation, the impos-
sibility of buying or selling except at
other peoples prices. A currency sys-
tenn which made him and his lands an
outlaw from it's benefits; these, and
causes similar to these, broke his for
tune and broke his spirit-took his
home and took his hopes.
This system is false and it shall die
Eighty thousand men in Georgia, good
and true, have sworn that it shall die,
and their brethren from sea to sea are
registering the same vow!
There shall be no peace and no truce
until this foul outrage upon human
rights is obliterated from the face of
the earth.
Younggentlemen, thereisno grander
work for Southern patriotism than the
upbuilding of rural life to it's true dig
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