The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1908-01-11
SOUTHERN
AGRICULTURE
uP.To-pATE METHODS.
Mules and Machinery Are Cheaper
Than Two-Legqed Labor.

The lesson that is needed to be
learned by our southern farmers and
a lesson that the increasing scarcity
of human labor will teach, is that
mules and machinery are cheaper
than men, and that II ever we are
to reduce the cost of the production
of the cotton crop to point where
the growers will be independent OF
the fertilizer makers and dealers in
supplies" we must use machinery
and mules and less two-legged labor.
The farmers of the northwest, who
have always had to contend with Ia
Dor scarcity, have learned this lesson,
and in Iowa the labor of one man
produces five times the amount that
it does in the Cotton Belt, and with
crops not so valuable as the great
staple of the south. A successful
contemplating machine is yet in the
future, but there are implements for
cultivating the crop which economize
labor of men far more than the old
implements common In the south.
When one man can ride on cultivator
with two mules and do twice as much
work as two men with the mules to
seperate tools, there Is no reason Tor
using two men.
When by improved methods we
make bale or more cotton per acre,
and at the same time increase the
crop of corn and of small grain, why
should we laboriously go over five
acres to get the same cotton and buy
the supplies that keep us and the
mule? When, by raising an abundance
| of forage and fodder and ensilage, we
| can feed stock and get at least the
value of the feed and have the manure
| left for the land, why should the cot
ton grower always be short of cash IN
the spring and pay the fertilizer man
| and the merchant big profits? There
are many men in the south who are
doing these things, but there are too
many struggling along in the old ruts,
following the single mule with little
blow, and complaining that their
crops are poor because their land is
poor, and failing to realize that they
could improve it with the proper ef-
fort. We 2hear in the south farms
rated as one-horse, twohorse, and any
| number of horse farms, and people
seem to have a notion that on GER
tain sized farm a man should have
but one horse or two horses, and they
leave out of view whether the one
horse farmer could not more profit.
ably use two horses, even II he has
to go in debt for the second. In other
sections of the country we never hear
of farms rated by a certain number
of horses, but the farmer is supposed
to know how many horses he can
profitably use on his land.
If the cotton crop of the south 'oi
twelve million bales was grown on
twelve million acres, and the other
millions of acres now required were
producing cattle and forage for them
what a rich people the south would
be. We will see some rational i'm
provement when, as my friend John
son of South Carolina said, the farm
ers of our southern states feed three
beeves for every bale of cotton they
grow, instead of as now, three bale:
of cotton for every beef raised ant
fed. And when we feed three beeve'
for each bale of cotton, we will grow
more cotton per acre and grow 1t a
half the cost.-W. F. Massey. in Pro
gressive Farmer.