The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., 1910-03-26
What Are You Going to Do About 1t?

ENNJ or the expensive way? The kind that
wastes as much of your hard work as possible or
the kind that makes every lick of that hard work
count for something? The way that will make
as much profit as possible. little as possible :?
The way your grandfather farmed. the way the
host twentieth century. farmers farm?
The truth is. though, IL you are an unprogres-
sive farmer. IT is doubtless slander on your
grandfather's memory to say you farm as he did.
He probably farmed according TO the best meth
DDS in his day: he was probably true to the very
best light he could get from every source. Doubt
less he was doing better than his grandfather
In other words. your grandfather probably prac-
tced the very best farming methods OF his time.
Are you praetieing the best farming methods
OF your timer
Suppose you should find a merchant who said:
mo. don't want any of your modern improve
ments. My grandfather's ways good enough
for me. All this stun In the books and papers
about modern business methods and the course
o, prices and how to make money by advertising
and all that don't take any stock in It. These
fellows that write can't teach me anything. I'm
practical. am. And ain't going to any Of
these ncw-fangied machinery and inventions.
either-raroads and telegraphs and such like
I'm going TO stick to hauling my stuff from the
seaport In wagons like my grandfather did, and
I'm going 10 send man with my letters when
want message sent"
what would you think OF such n merchant?
And yet. he would not be more pitably foolish
than ia the farmer who likewise refuses to
modern implements and machinery and modern
scientific practices.
We are reminded OF all these things by very
simple practical illustration. There Just two
ways OF making your 1910 crops One is the old
fashioned way-to wait for the grass TO get good
nrm grip the crops and then hire hoe hands
and stop the children from school and all go into
tho fields and chop from early morn till dewy
ovo-and by the time you have finished the first
chopping the grass Is already laughing Mt you
The other plan is TO get weeders and harrows
where you started and higher than before.
aud Kill the grass before IL up, and keep on
killing II In the same way. reducing hoe-labor to
a minimum and getting your work done by cheap
horse power instead of expensive hand labor. a
Tennessee farmer. Mr.. A. o. Ring. of Franklin
County. put tho matter none too strongly when he
wrote the other day:
when the ground IL I'm good condition,
and weeds and grass just starting, one man
and one mule with weedcr can kill more
grass and conserve more moisture than two
men and teams possibly do with plows,
more than four men and mules can do with
old-fashioned one-horse plows."
And this is only one illustration. In greater
less degree you will nnd In all lines OF farm
work the same difference between old-fashioned.
labor-saying. money-wasting methods and modern.
economical. labor-Ravi practices. And even II
you are willing yourself TO waste money and labor
on out-of-date policies. you have no right TO rob
your wife and boys and girls OF the profits and
comforts that would come by an intelligent change
In methods.