The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-13
Old Lawyer.
Our Farm Crops.


 To the Editor of The Advertiser:
 When 1 first saw Montgomery county, fifty years ago, the land that is cleared ana ana cnd5iiyated ldis now was cultivated then. of population, town and country, white and black. It Is hardly $40 now.
 ,oatt,s At this time. in 20 per cent only of the white men, 80 per cent. by negroes, as the census shows.
 There is nothing in the way to prevent make the business profitable to farmer and laborer. It would be time wasted to
 For the f1fSt several decades of the set clement of the county, agriculture con- sisted of two co-dependent objects of ton ton for market. and md the % rearing O of iUe ne- groes from infancy to increase the bulk of cotton crops. Separate the two. and neither carried great prosperity on it's
 Can substitute for that division of agriculture which formerly consisted in rearing negroes as chattels. be now in troduced to the agriculture of the
 What relation does the value of agri- ty from other States, that may be as cheaply produced here as in those other States. bear to the. value of the natural increase of negro slaves annually for the last decade of slavery?
 Without burdening your columns, I do not hesitate to say that, this county now
 
 provisions, eggs. poultry, butter, hides, wool. etc., not better in quality than the land here will readily. produce, five times the market value of all negro infants born in the county, year by year, in the last decade of slavery. In slavery days, each plantation supplied those articles In large or sufficient quantity Ter it's own consumption.
 Assuming that the labor now here is farmer who lives on his land and oper- ates it, the question must be answered, can a substitute for the profits of rear ing chattel slaves be found?
 The substitute is present in every milk wagon driven ey a negro on the streets of the town or Montgomery. The sub stitute may be enlarged to cover the market for all garden vegetables, all or, chard fruits, not tropical exclusively, all kinds of farm live stock. all kinds of feed, eN., etc, sold in this market from abroad. If the market value of slaves born annually in this county in the last decade of slavery, when the property of before. was $t,O00 900. then at least $5,0O0,- 0OO can be saved to this county, includ- ing the trade that goes out from the now being imported. may be produced within with perfect success.
 How shall the farmer begin to intro duce the substitute of live stock, pork, beef. mutton, wool, feathers, honey, etc, for the rearing of chattel slaves, while he continues to make cotton and corn as
 Let me illustrate England has a his- tory in agriculture to the point. The to ' m produce s wheat W in NfV fnii crops, % because they were tired of wheat alone. The turnip was introduced and gI asses and clover. The field from which the wheat was harvested in summer was imme- diately. put down to turnips, or clover or winter grasses. Sheep and catle came to pasture on turnips, and the other fall crops. :. The cattle and sheep. consumed the fall crops and in consuming them, fertilized the wheat field of the next sum- mer.
 The consequence was, the best breeds of sheep and cattle were established on the wheat fields and the wheat harvest the world in agricultural returns.
 We have a better climate in Montgom- cry county than the Downs of England, same 100 acres of land. A farmer in this county may now, in this month of Au- gust. SOW in his 100 acres of cotton and corn, on which the crops stand unhar- vested, the hairy yetch, burr clover, scar let clover, rye, all or severally. and by tieId of green thai his own iudgment wifi tell him how to use. The fall crops will cost but little to put in the ground. They will make the soil we call huinus, and If they contributed in no respect to visi- ble profit. but to make humus and ar rest the washing of the land, they would pay many times the cost of the seed:
 The point in working a reform is, to prevent idleness in land. idleness in the farmer, and most of all, idleness in the About one half the miners of the coal region in this State are negroes, and in no mining region of the world is the in duStry more prosperous. The farm ne- gro. as things now go begins to work about March l, and stops about eight months later. short of; He has saved ed religion and politics. His schooling, in his long months of enforced idleness, is or 13 a Ss nd or bs morals s If climate. land, labor and ready mar ket be considered, there are twelve months industry on the farm in this county. Every month in the year will justify in its returns the feeding and pay | Ing of labor. D.