The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-10-01
aE
qH0

OF personal experience is naturally of the highest
value.
Fallacies Of Sugar Planters and Cotton Planters.
In the first place then, the great sugar planters
Oh hawaii. like the great cotton planters of the
oid South (and l may speak of them freely, for
among my kinsfolk were Mississippi cotton grow
ers with their scores Of slaves, and North Caro-
lnians with smaller numbers these sugar plant
'rs, say like our cotton planters, have made the
fundamental mistake of pinning their faith to
cheap labor. Caspar Whitney observed this when
he came here ten years ago, and cannot forbear
making quotation from his book bearing on
his point:
THE planters cling to the fallacy that the
cheaper the labor the less the cost of pro-
duction ignoring entirely the contrary lesson
emphasized by their experience for to
what but to intelligent. high-class. better-paid
work. the study of irrigation, of fertilizers
and OF machinery. is due the enormously in
creased production Of sugar per acre?
The largest and therefore the most experience
ed employers OF labor. the world over, are
united in testifying that the cost of any pro-
duct is more question of brain than Of
cheap labor. The history of American COM
merce tends to prove that as rule high
wages indicate low cost of production. How
else may be explained the enormous exporta-
ton OF American high priced-labor goods to
plain the successful California farmer with
India where the cheapest OF labor abounds?"
This is only another illustration OF my perpetual
argument that cheap labor is a curse to any coun-
try because cheap labor means ignorant labor, as,
for instance. in the case of our Southern farmers
who have grown poor paying ignorant negro
fifty cents to take one mule and pillow one acre
of land or inches deep, while the Western
farmer has grown rich paying intelligent white
labor Sayeral timoS aS IN fak 4
and pillow three to five acres day or s inches
deep-and also because the prosperity of every
industry depends upon the prosperity of the aver
age man, and II this common man is poorly paid
there can be no healthful prosperity for society
generally; only few parasites may really be
enriched
The Climate DelusOn.
In the second place, 1t is interesting to observe
that as reason for not employing intelligent
white labor, these sugar planters have been &C
customed to give the same excuse with which our
Southern farmers so long deluded themselves-the
that "the climate is too hot for white
to work in the fields" in spite Of the fact that
for generations the delightful and equable climate
has attracted healthseekers from all parts Of the
world, and the average inhabitant will tell you
that the thermometer seldom goes above 90. The
Arabian, you remember, refusing to lend rope
because he wished 1t to tie up nine cubic feet of
saHu, explained MS attempting SO ulmcuit Ieat
by saying that "Allah permits man to do strange
things with rope when he doesn't want to lend
it"-and so. too. the Lord seems to permit men
to make strange excuses for policy when 1t is
their wish to follow It, An experienced planter
told me today that he has never heard of case
Of sunstroke or hydrophobia on the island.
The truth is that the big sugar planters wish to
keep class of Coolie labor; wish to keep laborers
who will be contented with hope of owning
land or homes Of their own; hence even the eli
matte excuse, one still hear even in the Middle
South today, although the Mississippi Commission
OF Agriculture as far back as 1876 knocked the
whole idea into smithereens by pointing out tina
in lower Florida and Texas, further south thar