The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1910-07-06

shall last-the soil!"
How We Need To Spoil Field Hands.
We need to spoil" hundred
thousand field hands by giving them
such intelligence as to teach them not
merely how to plow but how to plow
so as to prevent washing and save
moisture and conserve fertility; not
merely how to plow deep and how TO
plow shallow but to know when each
method will help or hurt the crop
yield in the fall; not merely how to
put cotton seed in the ground but
how to select cotton seed wisely and
thereby get the s3,00O,000 year
which Director Williams says a prop
er policy of seed selection would save
to North Carolina alone; not merely
how to scatter out s50,000,000 worth
Of fertilizer in the rows but how to
use 1t so as to save the $s5,000,000
lost each year by ignorant handling
Of this s50,000,000 purchase; not
merely how to drop peas but how to
use them to enrich the land; not
merely how to give hay and grain to
cows but how to feed so as to make
the cows profit-bearing instead Of
eaters, not merely how to plant crops
but how to plant them In a land
building instead of a land-ruining ro-
tation; not merely how to set out a
friut tree, but how to combat the
pests and disease 80 as to make ii
fruitful after 1t Is set out-and to
have this sort Of intelligence on the
part of our field hands and farm la
borers we must have men who know
fertilizer formula from a doctors
prescriptions; men who have been
spoiled" by education until they are
able to read intelligently about the
principles Of fertilizing, crop rota-
ton, plant breeding. seed selection,
soil management, and a thousand
other things.
The Challenge Of Economic Law.
The south has repudiated long long
ago the fallacy that slavery was an
economic good, and it is to be hoped
that she is now ready to repudiate
once and for all time the no less mon
strous heresy that inorant glabor is
better than intelligent labor. Let
me repeat to you the frank bold state
ment which I made to the southern
commercial congress a few months
ago, 1 repeat it to you because it is, l
believe, the growing feeling of the
dominant south, repeat it because it
Is we'll know you should know the
FEELING and because, if it sound cruel.
then like Hamlet, 'I must be cruel
only to the kind" / gave you I'm the
beginning a quotation from Gov.
Aycocks speech as a message of the
white south to the negro race. 1t was
kindly and should have stirred your
sympathy. Duty to you demands also
however that ] should give you the
message of economic law to the ne
gro race-the stern message of a law
that knows Of sentiment of the gods. It
Is a challenge and should stir your
ambition. This message 1 would nut
before you in the same words 1 used
when l addressed a meeting of white
leaders in Washington city.
Il do not know what we are GOING
to do with the negro, I do know that
we must either frame a scheme of
education and training that will keep
him from dragging down the white
level of life in the south, that will
make him more efficient "a prosperity
maker and not a poverty breeder or
else ne Will get out of the south and
give way to the white immigrant.
No acre of land will long own as it's
master the man or the race who mis-
treats 1t. and makes it unfruitful. We
must either have the negro trained.
or we must not have him at all.
cheap, ignorant labor. whether of
white man or black, is curse to any
country and any community. And so
To-Day every man who Is telling an
acre of land in the South so that il
produces only half what intelligent
~ directed labor would get out Of it,
every man who is doing poor work of
any Kind, every man who is creating
ana earning only so cents or 75 cents
day instead of from three TO ten
tunes that much, vs. intelligent labor
would do; every inefficient man. no
h'atter In what line of work, is a
burden on the community is drag
gihs down the level of life for every
other man in the community.
ihdiherent Labor Hurts Community