The times and democrat. [volume] (Orangeburg, S.C.) 1881-current, 1908-07-07
THE AMERICAN FARMER.
The Man Who Tills the Soil Has
Come Into His Own at Last.

Come Into His Own at Last.
If the American farmer went out
of business this year he could clean
I'D thirty billion dollars. And he
would have to sell hs farm on credit;
for there is not enough money in
the whole world to pay him half his
price.
Talk of the money-mad trusts!
They might have reason to be mad
Iif they owned the farms, instead OF
their watered stock. When we re-
member that the American farmer
earns enough in seventeen DAYS to
buy out the Standard Oil, aud enough
in fifty days to wipe CarneSie cad
the steel trust off the industrial
map, the story of the trusts seems
like "the short and simple annals OF
the poor
| One American harvest would buy
the kingdom of Belgium, king and
all: two would buy Italy; three
would buy Austria-Hungary, and
FIVE at a spot cash price. would take
Russia from the czar.
Tslk about swollen fortunes! With
the setting of every sun the money
box of the American farmer bulges
with the weight of twenty-four new
imaginations can conceive of such
torrent of wealth.
Place your fingers on the pulse OF
your wrist, and count the heartbeats,
one, two, three, four. With every
four of those quick throbs, day and
night thousand dollars clatters into
the sold-bin Of the American farm
er.
How incomprehensible 1t would
seem to Pericles, who saw Greece in
her Golden Age, if he could know
that the yearly revenue of this coun-
try is now no more than one day IS
pay for the men who till the soil OF
this infant republic.
Or, how it would amaze resurrec-
ted Christopher Columbus if he were
told that the revenue of Spain and
Portugal are not nearly as much as
the earnings of the Americans far
mers hen!
Merely the crumbs that drop from
the farmers table otherwise known
as agricultural exports) have brought
him to enough in foreign money
since 1892 to enable him, if he wish
ed, to settle the railroad problem
once for all by buying every foot OF
railroad in the United States.
Such is our New Farmer-a man
for whom there is no name in any
Language. He is far above the far
mer of the str'y+books rs a 1909
touring car is above a jinrilkisha.
Instead of being An ignorant hoemaD
in a barnyard world, he gets the
news by daily mail and telephone
and incidentally publishes 500 trade
journals of his own. Instead Of be-
ing a moneyless peasant, he pays
the interest on the mortgage with
| Iue VI u "CCAs I1NCh IulS
is less of an expense than it seems
for he borrows money from him.
self, out of his own bank, and spends
the bulk of the tax money around
his own properties.
Farming for business, not fol
livihg-this is the motive of the
new farmer. He a commercialist--
a man of the twentieth century. He
works as hard as the old farmer
did, but in a higher way. He uses
the four M's-mind, money, machin.
cry and muscle; but as little of the
latter as possible.
| Neither is he Robinson Crusoe
Of: the soil, as the old farmer was
His hermit days are over; he is a
man among men. The railway, the
trolley, the automobile, and the TOP
buggy have transformed him into
a suburbanite. In fact his business
has become so complex and many
sided that he touches civilization at
more points and lives a larger life
than If he were one of the atoms OF
crowded city.
All American farmers, Of course,
are not Of the new variety. The coun-
try is like the, city, has its slums.
But after having made allowance
for exceptions, it is still true that
the United States is the native land
of the new farmer. He is the most
typical human product that this
country has produced, and the most
important, for, in spite of his egoris-
tical cites, the United States is still
a farm based nation.-Herbert n.
Casson, in May Review of Reviews. q
Freak Chickens.