The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1908-01-24
Trucking Suggestions.

to obtain an abundance of fresh
vegetables. The market gardener
seems, for the most part, to be dead
Or to have emigrated There are
plenty of vegetables and truck to be
had, Of course-such as it is. The
produce merchant carries consider
able stock, as rule, and the best
that he can get; but where does it
come from? Bermuda tomatoes and
onions open the market in midwinter
and then come Florida and the Caro-
lima coast, successfully. This is but
natural. Yet later, when local truck
should be in season what do we find?
Why the same old thing. 1t ell
comes from distance Little or none
is provided by the contiguous terri
tory. And later clear from Chicago
and beyond come train loads of cab
bage and turnips and other truck
ers' supplies for the local markets of
Georgia and Alabama. The produce
man doesn't, like to handle wilted
goods; naturally he would much pre-
fer to ell|them fresh and crisp and
sound; but what is he to do? He
can't get them locally in large
enough supply to equal the demand
and he is compelled to depend on the
outside.
Now there must be something
wrong in such state of affairs. OF
course, given the experience and skill
necessary for successful trucking no
one is going to indulge in the bust
ness for pure fun. There must be
found profit, and reasonable one.
or it is unhesitatingly dropped. This
must evidently be true regarding the
major portion of the trucking in
terests around our larger Southern
cities. 1t somehow doesn't seem to
pay and is therefore not conducted
on scale large enough to meet the
eager demands of a multitude of
buyers.
But surely it ought to pay. The
Illinois and the Ohio and the Michi-
gan a2d the New Jersey man seems
to make It pay we'll enough to ship
his stuff thousand miles and sell
it in Atlanta and Birmingham. Why
can't the local truckers around these
TWO (and other) Southern centres
of population manage to keep up the
business SUCCESSFULLY Why don't
larger number come in to engage
In 1t, for gracious knows there's
plenty of room? %
\, Well, there are several reasons,
and all of them more or less sound,
but none of them, fortunately, incap-
able of removal The first reason
is that the trucking public-and by
this | mean experienced and skilled
gardeners, WHO know their business
and also how to hustle in conducting.
1t-haVen't yet been made wise"
to the facts. They haven't learned
what a chance there is waiting for
them; for naturally their local breth-
rem in the business are not going to
advise them of it, and invite a host
OF rivals in to share the feast. Be-
sides, men of experience and ability
in market gardening are doing fairly
well, wherever they happen to be,
and do not as rule care to leave a
good thing for the mere chance of
a better.
Then there's the item of labor.
The recent complete decentralization
of farm labor has also included the
market gardener and has hit him
even harder than it has the cotton
grower, since his labor must be neces-
sarily of higher and more depend
able type, and therefore scarcer.
These two facts account largely for
the failure of the suburban market
gardener to keep up with the de-
mand of the rapidly increasing popu-
lation of most of our cities.
But there is a third factor that
also suggests itself-and a very
serious one, at that. The two most
important growing months in the
spring for vegetable and truck crops
April and May-are two of the
driest in the year. In the last issue
Of the Cultivator it was also shown
that our mean annual rainfall was
gradually falling off This may ac-
count, to large extent, for the fail
ure of the truck growers to keep pace
with the rest of the industrial adj
vancement in our growing com
munities.
For it is risky business, under
the conditions normally prevailing in
vegetable growing, to put ones all
on the hazard of the season. An inch
or two, more or less, of rainfall, at
the critical period Of development,
may spell blue Ruin" in big let
ters! Profits may be large, but even
nervy man thinks twice before en-
barking in an admittedly hazardous
undertaking. Average conservatism