Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1906-09-05
Why DO BOYS LEAVE The FARM 7
o

7 comment on the replies. . .
l shall be content if they challenge
my reader"
The reasons assigned seem to us
totally worthless. They may be sin
cere, and they may explain the aban-
donment OF the farms by the boys
who offer them, but they are not
satisfactory in themselves, because
they do not present the true condi-
ton.
Four boys out of every ten of the
deserters for instance, give as the
reason for their flight that the
farm is not remunerative. Yet there
never was a time when farming was
so remunerative as it is to-day. 1t
may not be remunerative on the
rocky hillslopes of New England.
where lie so many abandoned farms;
but it is remunerative throughout
the entire South, the West, and the
Southwest. 1t pays we'll ever in the
somewhat crowded States Of the
North and Middle West. The pros
perity of the South to-day rests firm
ly upon the cotton fields and the
orchards and the truck gardens.
There are planters in this State that
makes incomes of $4,000 a year,
clear profit, upon their farms. That
means that the man who can do this
is rich; he is more than prosperous.
The farm-lands Of the South bring
in thousands of fortunes in each
years harvest. The seaboard is
being transformed into a garden and
is yielding independence and wealth
to many thousands of planters. There
is money in farming; the farm is
remunerative - more ~remunerative
than it ever was.
AS to hard work, the farmer has
a far easier time of it than the clerk
in the store or the telegraph opera
tor at his desk or than millions of
boys and men and girls and m
in the crowded cities. The nature
of the work on the farm-the grimi-
ness of it, the hours of labor in the
hot SUI, the lowly kind of work that
the boy on the farm has to do-this
has more to do with driving him in
to the fancied paradise of the city
than the hardness of the tasks on
the farm. But the farm loses little
by the desertion of those who are
afraid of hard work"
There is something to be said for
the social disability of the boy on
the farm. He is shut off from most
society, and shut out of some. 1t is
r hat he has a social circle of
his own; but if he be a bit ambitious
and not content to wait until he wins
opportunity, this condition will chafe
him. Here, also. the farm-boy of
the South has a distinct advantage
over the farm-boy of the North. The
farmer of the South is a tower of
strength, and stands "four-square to
all the winds that blow" He is
second to nobody. He is the peer
OF the best. This is largely due to
the old "~aristocratic' system of the
South, which had it's foundations on
the plantation. We have inherited
good, clean, honorable traditions
that dignity and exalt the calling of
the farmer.
The boy should not leave the
farm. He should own land as soon
as possible and attain independence
through his own labor. There is no
other condition SO pleasant, so prom
Using, so gratifying to the temper
and disposition and tastes of a
healthy manhood as that of farming,
1t is the true life and calling of the
gentleman" in the broadcast and
best sense of that word. 1t is almost
the only post in our complex civili-
zation in which a mar may be truly
Independent and enjoy in middle life
and age leisure and comfort and hap
piness.
Don't leave the farm. Stick to it,
and it will be the making of you, il
you will do there your true part in
the battle of life.-Columbia Is. c.