The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1910-09-20
%. Seaman A. Knapp Writes Letter
Which Should be interesting to
Farmers Of This Section.

A DR.. Seaman A. Knapp, special agenj
IN charge of the Farmers co-operativ.
demonstration work in Mississippi.
has addressed the following letter to
agents, demonstrators and co-opera-
tors:
I'VE pay larger tax every year for
stumps, brush, weeds and grass than
is required to support our municipal
country, state, and federal govern
ments, to endow all the colleges and
educate all the youth of the land; and
We get no return. A stump not only
occupies valuable space, but it pre-
vents the use of improved implements
Tor better and more rapid tillage of the
soil. The cost of farm labor is on tie
increase with the certainty that this
will continue till the equation of
wages on the farms and in the town
and city is more equal. The remedy
for higher-priced labor on the farm is
the use of better teams and nipple
ments. If the day wage on the farms
of the South advances from rs cents
to $1.50 then each farm hand must
plow, plant and cultivate twice as
many acres in a, day as he did before,
and this is, an easy problem. But the
stumps must go, and the farmer who
does not try to get rid of them will
soon be back number. The stump
farmer pays about $500 an acre every
year for the privilege of having stumps
In his fields. In addition, there are
generally few feet of unutilized
soil around every field stump which
produce foul weeds and grasses to
seed the land.
What has been charged against
stumps applies with still more force to
trees, shrubs and brush patches in the
field; dig, burn, destroy; they are
natural enemies of the farmer.
Straighten out the sides of the field.
square up the corners and avoid the
short rows as much as possiblep they
Farmers have become 50 &C.
customed to lighting weeds and grass
in the cultivated fields that they regard
it as matter of necessity. They think
the land is full of foul seeds and of
course they will generate when 1t
rains.
he viz 0ir
placed in cultivation they are compare
lively free from weeds and grass. and
that they become foul is due to faulty
management on the part of the farm
ers. 1t is not difficult to discover the
real causes. First, careless cultiva-
ton, which allows weeds and grass to
mature seed in the cultivated fields. |
Second--little attention is paid to the |
highway, the brush patches, the fence
corners and the pastures, and they are
almost universally breeding grounds |
for foul weeds and grass. 1t has been
charged that the Southern farmer is
careless. 1t may be true in some
things, but in one thing too many of
them stand first among the farmers of
the world, they never fail to raise a |
crop of weed and grass seed large
enough to seed their own fields and .
their neighbors.
1.-THE cost of this universal weed and
grass seeding amounts annually to
more than five dollars for each acre I
in corn, and ten dollars for each acre
in cotton. In 1909, in the States of
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, North Carolina,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas and Virginia, there were 4o,965,.
900 acres in corn and 30,693,000 acres
in cotton, which would show a yearly
loss of over 511 millions of dollars.
This loss can be greatly reduced by in
tensive cultivation continued as late in !