Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1909-02-26
EDUCATE THE FARMER.
Some Great FaIIacies and What They
Have Cost Us.

THE farmer the common laborer OF
any sort, needs no training. Educate
him and you spoil him. The poorer
YOU keep him, the richer will be the up
per class" These have been our great
pet falIacies. And a long time have
they been preached.
Hugging this vampire delusion, the
southern plantation owner has seen
vast areas abandoned to broomsedge
and gullies, in spite of the fact that
intelligent handling would have kept
them productive thousand years.
Preaching this fatal doctrine, the
merchant mas sold western meat and
scooters and tobacco, when with pros
porous patrons ne might have quad
rupled his profits by selling sulky plows
and harvesters and carriages and
pianos.
Deluded by this fallacy, the states
man has struggled against fate, only
to die and be forgotten by people too
poorly educated to read his biography,
and too poor in property to build a
monument to his memory, while small
er and meaner men in sections un-
shackled by these ancient errors, are
famed in song and story.
Writing editorials in support of the
aristocratic instead of the democratic
theory of industry, the editor has seen
his patent-outside weekly fail Of sup
port, when a properly trained and edu-
Gated people would have brought him
wealth as the head Of a prosperous
daily.
Fighting public taxation for better
schools and other methods Of training
and enriching the average man, your
manufacturer has struggled along
with a small business when a prosper
Gus average man would have given US
great Industries like those in the north
and west.
Still arguing that education and
training would spoil the working man,
and that cheap labor is what we
need, your banker has complained that
the south offers no opportunities for
the great financier, forgetting that
cheap, unprosperous labor means small,
unprosperous banks.
Opposing taxation for better schools,
the railroad, hauling cotton In the fall
and low-grade fertilizers in the spring,
have fought passenger rate reduction
as a life and death matter when
we'll trained people would supply the
various traffic and the heavy dividends
of the other sections.
Your LAWYER. doctor, preacher, teach
er-each falling in line with the an
cient heresy, has paid the penalty in
diminished fees, diminished salaries,
diminished influence.
Victims of the vicious teaching l am
pointing out, your men or talent-ar-
tist, sculptor, poet, orator-have too
often fled to other sections, or else
have died with vision unfulfilled among
a people unframed to appreciate their
genius-when but for these things you
might see statues of southern leaders in
every southern city, the work of south
ern artist in the worlds greatest gal
leries, the thought Of the southern
poet the common heritage Of mankind.
1t is not that we have had no mighty
dreamers; it is that they sleep in neg
lected graves trampled under foot by
war, and waste, and error.
Now, war and waste, thank God, are
behind us. Let us also put error be-
hind us.-From an address by Clarence
H. Poe. editor of the Progressive Far
mer and the Southern Farm Gazette
before the Southern Commercial Con-
gress, Washington, D. c.