The Starkville news., 1909-10-29

dreds of white employes-men, women
and children who have left the farm to
become the homeless hirelings of the
cotton manufacturers. The negroes, find
ing no place in manufacturing for them,
are left on the farm and are becoming
land owners in rapidly increasing num-
bers. Net only this, but the negro chill
dren are going to school and developing
healthy bodies in the open air and heal
thy surroundings of country life instead
of being shut up in cotton mill, over
worked, under educated, and poorly de-
veIoped physically as the tendency must
be in all cotton mills so long as the
legislatures of the South are too sub
servient to the less humane mill owners
to enact needed laws for restricting child
labor in the mills-the less humane mill
owners, we say, because there are many
thoughtful and far-seeing mill owners
who heartily favor stricter regulations.
"We have no ill-will toward the cotton
manufacturers; we have no ill-will to-
ward the negro; we do realize very
strongly, however, that the safety of the
South depends upon the presence of a
large white rural population. The drift
from the farm to the cotton mill not
only affects this directly, but also in
directly, because when once the popula-
tion of a community becomes predom-
inantly negro, the small number of
white people left may be forced to move
out in order to find sufficient numbers
for a society of their own. 1t was wise
saying of James divers, Happy is the
land that is titled by the man who owns
it, and the great need of the South to-
day is to encourage the holding of small
farms by white farmers. We repeat that
we saw this in no ill-will to the negro,
but because the best interests of both
races demand that the rural South main
tain its large white population. Unless
this is done the negro himself will not
prosper as rapidly as he will with white
guidance, and unless this is done the
cities of the South must inevitably go
backward.
"We urge every white tenant farmer,
and specially every whate man who for
any reason is thinking of becoming some
body's hired man in town instead of
owning his own home in the country, to
buy land. We must encourage the spirit
of homecoming with every man sitting
under his own vine and fig tree, and we
must especially encourage the develop
ment of great class of small white
farmers. The saving of the rural South
to the white race is one of the most inn
portant problems now before the people
of the cotton belt.
s1n this connection, there is another
thing that ought to be mentioned, and
that is the problem of immigration. The
Farmers Union and other farmers or
CARNATIONS are right in protesting
against the coming of large numbers of
Italians, Russians, Hungarians, Poles,
etc. This would only make a bad prob
lem worse and complicate matters stiH
further. What would help, however, is
the coming of a large number OF WIDE
awake Northern and Western farmers,
buying small farms among us and MAX
ing tseir farms object lessons in stock
raising and other lines of diversified agri-
culture. These Northern and Western
farmers will also set a good example foe
our Southern people in that they are
ready and willing ta do all labor. As a
Southerner reared on a farm and 1e..
scendant of generations of Southern
farmers, we must confess the need of
our people at this point, and the help
that we would get here from an in
creased number Of Wide-awake Western