The Forrest City times., 1906-10-12
New Castle Times.

MT. Editor:-As it has been rainino
 m this part of our beloved country TOT eight days and nights, and we nave all been housed up until we are mildewed, I will send you few items Tor your valuable paper, for know 1t mas been so wet you could not get out to collect anything.
 It Is the most distressing time that your humble correspondent has ever witnessed. Our corn has bowed down flat on the ground, and is sprouting in the shuck. I heard one man say he had POO bushels lying in water six inches deep, and it had sprouts as long as his finger on 1t. cotton has been blown down and every open boil has seed with sprouts on them one inch long, and those polls that are not open, are as soft as mush. One man said he had cotton Tn the bottoms in which there were rom live to twenty bolls on every stalk rotten.
 But God does all things for the best, we are told, and we all should be thankful it is no worse. But here 1t is the first of October, and lots of people have not got a bale of cotton picked.
 We have several very sick people in our community. Dr. Robt. Oliver is confined to his bed very sick at this writing; Rev. s. J. B. Milton has a very sick wife; L. II. Pippin is very sick, and MT. Joe Logan has a very sick grandson.
 Our New Castle merchants have the longest faces that you ever saw hung onto any human being.
 MT. John Tankersley has about forty loads of hay in the field that has taken all this rain, and is spoilt. Robt. Smith lost about twenty loads. Walter Murrah has lost fine crop of hay, and many others too numerous to mention. Lots of peas in the field that have never been picked. W. o. Pirtle, the pea man of Johnson town ship, has saved about one hundred bushels, but has lost lots of his peas on account of wet weather and lack of labor. There has not been more than half enough hands to gather i hn in z we had got in every day this fall, and here 1t is the first of October and nothing done yet. It certainly looks gloomy to the farmers as well as the merchants.
 Say, if Hon. Jeff Davis would come on home and get the sheriifs and con- stables after the loafers and dead beats around our towns, as he has promised to do, and send them to the country, we could gather our crops with ease. It has come to point now that something has to be done to solve this labor problem. There are many big, able-bodied men, both white and black, loating around in our country who don't do three days work in a week, and when they do work they want two prices for it. We heard them say that they did not have to work. The merchants and good times have ruined the labor of our country, for one meal day will do them, and at the prices we have to pay them, they can work one-half of their time, and fish and hunt and loaf around town and the country stores the rest of the week. They have the farmers by the tail, with a down hill drag on them.
 The work on our church is at a standstill this week. We have the frame up and sheeting on and are now ready to cover it, but we cannot get the shingles.
 Dr. J. K. McDougal is having his house painted this week.
 It is with a sad heart that we chronicle the death of Mrs. Baxter, who passed away last Tuesday. She |had been in failing health for some