The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1910-01-07
A Call That Should
Be Needed More.

Back to the farm. A citizen of this
county remarked to the ediotr a few
days since, that there had been more
blowing done in this county than he
had ever known before at this season
of the year." This shows that our
farmers are waking up, and that Col
bert's agricultural outlook is better
than 1t has ever been. With the con-
slant increase in prices of nearly
every article that is consumed upon
our tables, it is time our people should
wake up and realize what kind of a
proposition is facing them. Merchants
are failing in business while the farm
ers are getting rich.
Too many people are running to the
towns, trying to run some kind of a
store, when they could invest their
time so much more profitably, holding
the ribbons over old Beck's back
Back to the farm" is now the watch
word of our nation, and never will we
have the good old times we once en-
joyed, until the farms are put upon
that high plane, where they justly be-
long, and the sturdy farmer is looked
upon as being the powerful prince OF
the earth. God will bless the hand
that tilleth the soil. We need more
producers and less consumers.-Tus-
cumbia Acknowledgment.
It is true, as our Tuscumbia contem.
porary so forcefully maintains, that
the expression back to the farm is
being worked for all it is worth-and
1T should be worth a great deal-in
every part of this country where there
are farms worth returning to; but
the probability, in the absence of def.
mite figures on the subject, is that
there is not yet such an exodus from
the city as to be noticeable. The
farmers, particularly the men that sold
cotton at Is cents, are pretty well OF
from monetary standpoint, although
not all of them have bought $1,000
automobiles to start the new year
with, the way 80 successful planters IN
Georgia have done, and there is every
encouragement in their prosperity for
young men in the city who tire of shop
wages and store wages and who, if
they knew when the were well off,
would get back to good old country air
and sunshine for the money as well as
for the health that's in it, Some few
Of them, indeed, go back, but thus far
the shift from city to country is net
nearly what it should be, nor is it
what some over-optimistic newspapers
would try to make you think it is.
The false glare of city life still holds
many in the city who, deep down in
their hearts, know the country would
bring them financial, physical and
moral betterment.
Our Alabama contemporary is per.
fectly logical in its conclusion that
more producers we must have and
that fewer consumers we need not
have. 1t means, we believe, that many
who are today underpaid consumers
in the city, earning little and spending
every cent of it to live, ought to be.
come producers and through produc-
ton work their way, slowly but per.
manently, to good, satisfactory rural
independence. Still. it's a fact not to
be gainsaid that the existence of com.
paratively few producers as against a
continually multiplying army OF con-
sumers is the fundamental reason ror
the present high water mark in the
farmers finances.
Back to the farm" would be a good
watchword for the nation for the next
10 years and there never has been a
time when the call could be more
alluring than it is today. 1t should re
needed by hundreds to whom it never
Will make any appeal. Life on the
farm is paying better than it ever paid
/ efore and life on the farm, with the
telephone and the rural delivery and
the better roads and the daily news.
paper that comes the day of publica,
ton, is not so monotonous as it used
to be. At the same time, working
hours on the farm are necessarily long
and pleasure hours on the farm are
enevitably short. And what man
among US is going to be humbug