The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1910-10-13
To the Officers and Members of the

which makes millions of farmers ten
ants upon the land from which they
must earn living.
Americans have fought to the last
ditch for their homes. 1t is humor-
Gus axiom that no man ever stood in
the last ditch for his boarding house,
and it is certain that no farmer is
going to discharge his duty, in times
of peace or war, if the roof that shell
ters him is the property of another
man, and the acres that feed him are
simply rented for year or a term of
years.
The entire nation is more or less
wrestling with the problem of ten
ancy. But it is probable the southern
state are called upon to face it in it's
most aggravated form.
I know of, not one, but scores of
instances in which southern farmers
actually rejected proposals by which
they might easily have acquired their
own farms. They preferred instead
to rent the land upon either system
of "cropping' or Of money payments
which, in a few years, would aggre-
gate more than the entire cost of the
place.
Such a policy, and it is pursued
in the south to a ruinous extent, leads
nowhere save to dependency or in
different prosperity.
So that one thing the Farmers I'm
ion has endeavored to encourage, has
been personal ownership Of the farms
of it's members, against that vicious
system of cropping" by which the
tenant is little better than slave to
the land holder
The man who does not own his
farm is likely to be almost con-
stantly in debt to his landlord. From
one years end to another, his obliga-
tions are perpetual and self-renew
ing. He must consult his landlord
regarding what crops and how much
of each crop he shall cultivate. Often
he is under debt for the very neces-
sites of life, and in a few case I
have known his type to drag out
hand-to-mouth existence.
| sound this warning now, so far
as regards the south as we'll as every
other section of the nation, that at
the galloping rate lands are enhanc-
ing, owning your own farm few
years hence will be a luxury. Today
only a certain amount of enterprise,
self-denial and thrift is essential.
The process is open to the humblest
and poorest farmer in America.
Hand in hand with homecoming
should go the policy of scientific and
diversified farming.
During the panic of 1907 I know
several wise farmers in the immedi-
ate neighborhood of my home who
raised on their places every product
necessary to the sustenance of man
and beast.
These men weathered the toughest
part of the panic almost in ignorance
of the existence of such thing. They
would not, in fact, have known of the
existence of panic had it not been
for the Strengthened circumstances of
their less wideawake friends, many
of whom had to borrow money with
which to buy food brought from out
side the state, when that food should
have been raised upon their own
acres.
We are not yet immune to panics
in this country. The visitation of
1907 will sooner or later be re-
peated.
= If you raise your own food sup
plies as we'll as food for your cattle
and stock you will not feel the pinch
In this connection it is hardly
necessary for me to say that diversi-
fed agriculture means you shall
make cotton largely surplus crop.