The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1898-07-28
(Danville Register.)

Danville Register.)
The New York Journal of Com
'nerce of recent date has leading
editorial on the reported movement
among Southern farmers to plant
less cotton and make wheat their
money crop. We copy from the
Journal:
1.-The story comes from Rome,
Georgia, that the farmers of that
section will not plant much more
than half as much cotton as last year,
and that some of them are going into
wheat and others into the truck farm
ing. The statement may be true of
very limited area; if it is made for
a considerable section it must be ac-
cepted with more than a grain of
salt. Reports from various parts of
the South of the sales of fertilizers
and other indications of the coming
crop, together with the we'll known
habits of the Southern farmer, COM
bine to make it probable that the
area devoted to cotton this year will
be very little less than usual, and
that the farmers who are not going
to plant any cotton at all are few and
far from numerous. Undoubtedly
each farmer would be glad to have
all the other farmers to curtail their
cotton area, and if each one thinks
that all the others are going to do so,
each one will proceed to enlarge his
own area of cotton and there will be
another record breaking crop. The
Atlanta Constitution, also a Georgia
authority, it will be observed, re-
marks that when the Southern farm
er finds his financial proceeds from
cotton less than expected because of
fall in prices, he tries to get even
the next season by raising more cot
ton, and we attribute higher degree
of credibility to the Atlanta view than
to the Rome view. In the aggregate
the Southern farmer knows, as the
Constitution says, that crops of over
$4,000 600 bales depress the price, but
how are they to cooperate; if few
reduce their planting of cotton they
lose in quantity without gaining any
thing in price.
'And yet there is remedy for the
over-production of cotton, a remedy
that each individual farmer may put
into operation for himself with the
certainty of deriving the benefit of
it even if other farmers do not adopt
the plan. That is for every farmer
who is buying hog and hominy to
raise his own supplies. If he will re-
duce his cotton area enough to pro-
vide himself with food he will find
that the lessened value of his cotton
will be comparatively unimportant
to him. He will gradually get him
self out of debt, partly because he
will have to run in debt for his food
and partly because cotton is the only
crop he can get advances upon. He
can in most parts of the South pro-
vide himself and the stock on his
place with the staples of subsistence
without purchasing. If he has no
debts to pay out of the proceeds he
will find the proceeds from his cotton
tolerably satisfactory even if he has
no great quantity and the price is
low. But the price will not remain
lOW, uOI Ic"dlIl dG OE DclOW Guc COSG
of production if the farmers of the
South will raise their own corn and
pork and fodder and treat cotton as
the money crop"
What is said in the above in regard
to cotton applies as we'll to tobacco.
The Register has always preached the
''Hog and Hominy'' doctrine but we
have never taken any stock in the
sometimes threatened movement on
the part of our farmers to abandon
tobacco altogether. The farmer in
this section who raises plenty of
eat and then tobacco for money crop
will get along well while the one
who raises only tobacco and with the
proceeds from it buys bread and
meat will sooner or later 90 bank
rupt.
The farmers in this immediate sec
tion can 60 still further and be still
better off, as we undertook to show
last week, by raising more grain
than he consumes, that is to say,
enough in the aggregate TO supply
his home markets with grain.
Don't give up tobacco raising but
plant more grain.