The age-herald., 1899-01-08
PROFITS OF HAY, FRUITS HND EGGS
 COMPARED WITH COTTON GROWING
The Losses Planting Cotton Which Gan be R6GDerd6d bu the Far Turning Their Attention to Food Crops Some Interesting
 Instances of Profits bu Few Southern Farmers.

There is one-half as much cotton in the nelds of Alabama today as has been picked since the 1st of last September. In trayeling through east Alabama recently I observed that fully one-third of the crop is yet in the field and is rapidly becoming "rag-tail." Even if picked now it will not sell for moro than 3 cents a pound. The farmers are getting only about Az cents for middlng. That is what they have received all this season. In hundreds and probably thous- Rnds of cases throughout the state farmers have left tAeir cotton in the field for the 'advancing merchant to pick. or course this is only the case with some small tenant farmers who have neither courage nor con- science. They claim that at tho present price ef cotton there is not enough in their fields to pay what the merchants advanced them.
 It does look strange that the farmers Of Alabama will continue to plant cotton when they got nothing for their crop. How much better it would be to turn their attention to food crops. Alabama could be made one of the greestest fruit producing sections of this country Thousands of Georgia farm- CTS began raising fruits several years ago, and many Of them have gotten rich from the crops. I know of one man over in that state near Fort Valley who made fortune in one year raising peaches His name is 8. H. Rumph. He began planting peach trees in 1887 or 1885, In the spring Of 1891 he sold sufficient number of peaches, to- net him, after the freghts, commissions,f z etc., had been paid s55 900. He showed me at hot tat ments from his commission merchant in aew York. I remember one in particular showing the return from the sale of one carload of peaches. After freight and com missions were deducted, the commission merchant regnitted him $1, ,76O as net returns from the sale of this single car It is true he raised a fine peach. He packed them in baskets and shipped them to the larger markets in refrigerator cars And this man had only about two hundred acres in his peach orchard.
 But he was not like a farmer whom I once knew down In Lowndes county, Geor- gia, who had grown something like two hundred barrels of potatoes which were lying rotting in his barn. When l asked him why he didn't sell them, he said that there was no sale for them there. Asked why he didn't ship them, he replied:
 ''I aint got no barrels.
 And he let his potatoes rot because he was too lazy to make or buy barrels in which to ship them.
 Some German farmers around Culman in this state have made money at farming, and lots of it., but they don't raise cotton. They raise chickens and eggs and fruit, and more fruit. They raise everything they eat and raise things to eat for sale. There is one little German woman living near Gull man who makes more clear profit per mum from the sale of eggs, than nine out of every ten cotton planters in Alabama. But it takes intelligence and application to produce eggs as it does everything else known to the human mind in which there is a profit. This little German woman seems to understand the nature of the hen. In fact, she has supreme knowledge of the weak nesses and pride of the female sex whether 1t be in the hen or the human. The we'll dressed woman shows herself conspicuously to the public. The more gaudy her raiment, the more it is paraded.. So she argued would be the case with the hen. She usually keeps about 110 hens, Ten are se- lected each year for setting purposes. The remaining one hundred are kept as layers, or the producers of eggs. In the tails of each of these one hundred layers is affixed to the large feathers a graceful and deli cately cut strip of red flannel which waves over the feathers of the tail as though it were hoisted flag.
 From experience the little German housewife has learned that the fag-be- decked hens never set, but continue to lay from day to day throughout the year. She argues that they are so proud of their fam ing red caudal appendages. that their pride will not permit them to hide the same from