The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1904-11-08
WORK srocK-1rs CARE AND FEEDING
DIR. TAFT Butler on When, How, and What to Feed
A Notable Article Which Every Man Who Owns a
Horse will Find Worth the Cost of a Years Sub
scription.

III dCLII hdN0 UCOh AOuAhN hOoPOA OH
man labor. On the efficiency of our farm work
stock, therefore, largely depends the results of our
farming operations. 1t is not my purpose to dis
cuss the farm labor question, further than to
state a few facts which have a bearing on the
question of the necessity for more and better farm
work stock.
Laborers have left the farms because they
thought they could get more money elsewhere
and they probably will not return unless the far
mers pay them more money, but you can't afford
to pay these laborers more money unless you can
make them earn more, and this can only be done
by the use of
MORE AND BETTER MULES
and more machinery, thereby enabling one man to
do as much as two formerly did. Not long since
1 took dinner with a North Carolina farmer who
complained bitterly of the lack of farm laborers
in his section. After dinner, 1 accompanied my
host to his fields and there saw six negroes, driv-
ing six mules, hitched to six plows, breaking light,
level land. Here were six negroes doing the work
that two negroes with the same mules and two
large plows could have done better, and when L
told him he either had two many labOrers or too
few mules, he replied that he had mules enough,
but he must employ these four extra negroes in
order to have them and their families to pick out
his cotton crop in the fall. My reply was that
it seemed to me there was something radically
wrong in a system of cropping that compelled
him to keep three times as much help as he needed
nine months IN they ear in order to have what was
necessary the other three months. Some other
crops ought to be cultivated by these four extra
laborers during the nine months they were not
needed in the cotton crop, and to do this would
require more mules. Here is another fact bear
ing on the question of whether we can make horses
and mules do the work that the laborers that have
left us used to do. The State that is pretty gen
orally recognized as the best in the Union, agri-
culturaly, has only about
ONE HALF THE FMRM LABoRERs
that North Carolina has in proportion to the
land cultivated. Her crops may be such that they
do not need as much man labor as ours do, but
this is not the point I wish to make. 1 have
merely stated it to emphasize one which be-
lieve is pertinent. This same State, while having
only about half the laborers we have, has nearly
twice the horses and mules in proportion to the
land cultivated. She is, therefore, making horses
and mules and machinery do what human labor
is doing for us. If we are to solve the labor
question, [ believe it must be along the line indi-
Gated, by making horses and mules take the place
of men in doing the work on the farm.
Our washed and quilted fields, so common in
many parts OF the State, also call in no uncer-
tain manner for deeper and better plowing. but to
do this we must have more and better work stock
HOW ARE WE TO GET IT i?
How have we been getting it? We have been
buying it! Now, 1 believe we could raise +
more cheaply than We can buy it, but that is not
the subject under discussion, and [ must reserve
1T for some other time, but let me make this state
ment, which can be easily substantiated: No
country ever had satisfactory work stock that did
not raise it. While the welI-to-do fornon -