Connecticut western news., 1901-11-21
THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 21. 1901.
CAROLINA FARMING.

Our Correspondent Gathers a Few
 Points From His Plantation Ac-
 quaintances.
 One would naturally think that dairy farming would pay in the country dis. tricts surrounding Raleigh, North Car olina. as there is only one purely dairy farm in the section. This farmer raises S5 per cent. of his feed, buys the other 15 per cont. and turns it all into milk which brings him his entire income. The product brings him from 90 to 30 cents gallon. The largest consumers, hotels, boarding houses and the ice- cream-and-sods men (drug stores), pay hve and six cents per quart and private families six to seven and . half cents per quart. This looks tempting to the New England farmer selling his milk for two and three cents, but there is no milk market; no shipment of milk to any point. the supply throughout the state being local. Tho before mentioned farmer is not the only ono supplying milk to Raleigh trade, however, as numbers of the cotton and ''truck" farmers produce milk as a side line. Neither can any milk producer in She region about Raleigh dispose of his entire product in the winter on account of the subsidenoe of the ice.cream- and soda business. and he must turn the product into butter which brings nice price but is in comparatively small de- mand; the poorer class having sohooled themselves to do without butter and milk e without beef or white potatoes, substituting respectively on sorghum syrup, sweetened water, pork-and- chicken and grit, thominy.) Cream brings the fancy price of 50 cents per quart but brings not as good returns as milk. e few of the COWS produce milk of enough richness.
 Again ono would suppose with the cotton crop short this year that the pro- ducers could demand an advanced price, but as . matter of fact the price is lower this year. I asked Q farmer acquaintance of mine why they would sell their cotton It the low figure when the crop was shorter, and he replied {: "We've got to take the buyers price. So many of us have the growing crop mortgaged that we have got to sell an d get the money. We have no capital to hold it All of us tenant farmers of the plantations are coming out behind this year, and our being forced to sell keeps the price down where even the planta. their share. They've got the land, but not enough of them have got the capi- tal to come to our relief. The few owners who rent their plantations out right may get their money if the tenant is worth 1t, but it will hit the tenants pretty hard" One fact he did not mention is the condition throughout the country of the cotton goods trade, which is not first class. and the manu- faoturers have an over supply of lint and would not meet any advance in price for the 1901 crop. The cotton farmer's misfortune in North Carolina is the light crop more than it is the market price.
 Corn is light crop on account of the vet season and this hits the Carolina farmer hard on his own food supply and stock feed. The yield is almost entirely for local consumption. and the eatables that the southerner prepares from corn meal arc ''too numerous to mention"
 Tobacco lin oomparison) is tho most remunerative crop this year, and some of tho moro progressive growers are successfully experimenting with the cigar wrapper grade, now being grown in this country almost entirely in Penn sylvsnia and Connecticut Carolina tobacco is of the filler and smoking tobacco grades. J. G. B.