The Pickens sentinel-journal. (Pickens, S.C.) 1903-1906, 1905-05-03
SOIL SUICIDE.
The South's' Golden Opportunity Neg.
Neglected Says a Michiqander.

progressive EarUcr ana cotton
Plant, an excellent agricultural
journal published at Raleigh, N.
G. a highly suggestive letter from
Michigan farm,r on the golden
opportunity for stock raising in the
South. Our people have really
chad cotton pulled over their
eyes," as he says, or they would
not have been 90 blind to the op>
portunities about them. "Soil sui
eide" is a good wcrd that he gives
us to describe any system OF farm
ing which leaves out stock raising.
Read the letter which follows:
Prof. B. w. Kilgore,
Raleigh, N. G.
Dear Sir:-I find the Progressive
Farmer very interesting. So many
things are vastly different from
our methods. 1t seems as though
you arc favored. Today (March
12th) the sun is shining on fields
glistening with snow. Here and
there the earth breaks through and
looks appealingly upward to the
sun. Not two hundred feet away
are drifts all OF four feet deep.
There are a few bare spots in the
roads, but runner vehicles are all
in use still, and this is the seventy
seventh day Of continuous, unbro.
ken sleighipg. There were few
days of sleighing previous to that,
but there was an interval of bare
ground. For seventy-seven days
the snow has not been wholly
melted from my house roof.
DO the planters sell their cotton
seed to OIL L,ills and buy back the
fertilizer meal? Isn't this meal Of
moro value to feed farm animals
than for fertilizer? Certainly with
your bermuda and crab grasses and
vast store of cotton seed it docs
seem as though you might luin
the beof trust by growing beeves
and mutton for the great city trade
Of our Eastern markets.
Feeding lambs is followed to
some extent hero; farmers with so
to 100 acres Of land feed twenty to
fifty lambs, where 80 situated as
to pasture tho ewes prof tably.
The industry is at low ebb this
season as 60 number fed, and the
, price to farmers is close to 8 per
4 cent Give wcight all this winter.
You may be assured there is good
: profit in that.
: Tho United States consumed
461,0O0 pounds Of wool in 1903;
: three eights Of it foreign grown
= say 10000 tons. What ails the
South. with lis widespread hills
se and l2untain lands clad in pereu>
LAP nial gras-7ideal home for sheep
ny to go on maing cotton and tobac-
'e> co, all hard wGk and soil.snicide,
N" when sheep are gil conservators,
D. easily tended, and pnS large profit
#. as mutton' quite indo19gSdent Of
at wool?
or You arc nearer New York ttSsnl
T. ls Iowa, and | just read in O.,
at Iowa farm papor Of one farmo
or who is feeding $4,000 sheep, a msr
I handful to what he usually foeds
The beef trust discouraged him an.
he sold largely Of his corn crop
rather than feed bceves and sbee,
$, as he has heretofore done. Bu
(. you soc he is at the mercy of tn
beef and railroad trusts, while yo,
g people arc mere step to the Sen
J. bord, and thence to market, indie
pendent of the trusts
o If | We're physically we'll I'd lik
I. to try the South. 1t does sean
as though your blessings are in
S Unite as compared with us, feeding
8 farm animals with q fork six
months in year.
The South appears t. be in the
grasp of the tobacco trust and cot.
ton sharks, Still, it's people go on
lmpoVerishing their soils growing
those crops; still trying to keep up
fertility with phosphate rock and