The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920, 1910-08-27
A Word in Parting.

| am now off on my promised tour of the world
for you, and though absent from the office. it is
my aim to be as active in your service during my
next five or six months of travel as should be
II were right at home among our Southern farm
ers
No one else in human history, so far as I know
has ever made trip around the world as the
special ambassador and representative Of our
Southern farmer folk. and because shall 60 with
different viewpoint from other travellers, even il
for no other reason | should be able to report
some strange, interesting, and useful things which
other have failed to report The Chinese
for example. have been farming in the same
provinces for forty centuries and their land
where the best methods have been practiced is
probably rs fertile as it in the time of Isaiah
We should be able to learn some interesting
things from people who support a family on
three four acres OF land-and we should also
be able to get profit from some of their mistakes
the destruction OF the forests. for example, which
has made deserts OF vast areas once as fertile as
gardens
shall also be interested of course. not only in
everything bearing on Southern agriculture. but
also in everything else bearing on the development
OF the South: manufactures. race prob
lem, conservation of resources. moral and re-
ligious standards etc. etc,-first of ALL the
things OF practical value TO Southern farmers
and TO southerners generally. and then the things
OF universal human interest: the wonders and
beauties OF the strange. old lands, the habits and
customs OF these unfamiliar peoples, all the odd
incidents OF tour that circles the globe Japan.
a nation whose history stretches back until it is
Ino IN fba tgyb ~ satr
but which has been absolutely made over within
the memory of men now living; China, the Celes-
tial Empire older than Japan. and now promising
to duplicate Japan's own marvellous awakening;
India. land OF the mystic and the Mogul; Palestine.
the land OF Abraham and Joseph. Moses and David
and Solomon and Isaiah, home OF our Master. His
disciples and apostles; Egypt, whose pyramids did
indeed look down with the calm of forty centuries
upon Napoeon's men. and will look down on 9TH
men forty centuries hence when the far
horizon of our time Napoleon will then seem hard
ly more modern than Charlemagne or Caesar
To make this trip has long been an ambition
OF mine, and am glad that am now associated
with such STAFF that all the agricultural features
of the paper will be kept unsurpassed in my abb
sence. In fact The Progressive Farmer and Ga
zette represents the labors of many men
in many different lines that one man
claim credit for its achievements. DR.. Butler.
my immediate co-laborer, probably puts more in
formation to the square inch in his articles than
any other agricultural writer in America, and is
probably the foremost Southern authority on live
stock subjects; Professor Massey for a generation
has been looked up to as the South's first author
ity on field crops and horticulture; Mr.. Miller
coming directly from Southern farm to The Pro-
gressive and Gazette office, did myself, COM