Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-02-01
1.-THE NEXT WEST"
The Time of the South Is Now at
Hand.

All through the cotton states there
Is an enthusiasm for agricultural prog
ress which seems at once contagious
and infectious. II wish could live to
see what modern scientific agricultural
methods will do for our country In the
next ten years." an old Union county
farmer observed the other day; and he
went on to say: why, young fellow
In my neighborhoed makes as mucn
corn on an acre as his father used to
make on whole two-horse farm, and
he makes 1t on sandy land that we
used to think was not fit for corn at
ALL" Again, there was all the pathos
of Markham's Man with the Hoe In
the remark another old toilworn, white
haired farmer made to me last spring:
this old man has passed his three-score
years and ten and unable to work
longer: 81 sometimes think 1t is not
fair" he said sadly, that did not
know the things they know today
about how to enrich the land and i'm
prove the seed and manage crops and
save the wastes. With this knowledge
thirty years ago my whole life would
have been different!" Get your con-
ception from these incidents Of how
genuine is the agricultural revolution
In the south; our young men athrill
with new inspiration and our old men
regretful that they can not live their
lives over in the new era into which
they have now come!
No one force is responsible for this
change, but a dozen distinct forces.
most of which have sprung into ac-
tivity within four or five years, and
which together are doing work little
less than marvellous. Most notable Of
all perhaps Is the Farmers Co-opera-
tive Demonstration work Of the United
States department Of agriculture, un-
der the direction of DR.. 8. A. Knapp,
in which 300 men scattered throughout
the south are now regularly employed.
Boys Corn Club.
The plan is to get tine most success
full and progressive farmer IN every
county or district to visit all the farm
ers in his territory and give practical
instruction in all lines Of improved ag-
riculture from the best methods of seed
selection to the best methods Of har-
vesting the finished crop. A few weeks
ago I was at a roundup meeting Of oil
the demonstration agents Of my state,
and their reports made one think Of
them as the heroes of a new Crusade,
and their enthusiasm was hardly less
than that of the old Crusaders them
selves.
Most recently Of all we have the
Boys Corn Club work, in which $4,000
southern boys are now enrolled, and
which is doing more than anything else
yet conceived of to solve the hoary
problem of "how to keep the boys on
the farm" In each county prizes are
offered-bankers, merchants, newspa-
pers, everybody. contributing-for the
boys and the adult farmers whe make
the biggest yields, and after harvest
come corn judging days." in which the
prize-ears are brought for exhibition
and the successful contestants honor
ed as If they were victors in the Olym-
plan games,
A 13-year-old Granville county boy,
weighing seventy-six and a half pounds
made seventy-six and a quarter BUSH
els of corn on an acre last year. A
Rowan county boy with improved
methods made ninety bushels per acre
on part Of a field in another part OF
which a tenant using old methods,
made only ten bushels per acre.
Steadily increasing, too, Is the inter-
est in agriculture as a public school
study, and the old misfit list Of text
books and scheme Of instruction-made
by city people for city people, "its
arithmetic, its geography, its penman-
ship, its bookkeeping, its reading books,
all dominated by clerk and trade point
of view," as DR.. John Graham Brooks
has well said-is at last giving way to
a curriculum suited to the needs Of the
country people and athrob with the
new spirit in rural life.
go west, young man." said Horace
Greeley q half century ago, go south,
young man." would be his message If
ne were alive today, and with even
more reason than that on which his
former advice was based. For In the
south today are pioneer opportunities
without pioneer privations. It is land
old enough to have all the advantages
of a well-rounded civilization, and yet
without Industrial possibilities as daz-
cling as those Of the golden west to
which Greeley called attention.
The average acre of land in the south
today sells for only one-third as much
as land Of the same fertility in the
west, and as surely as water seeks Its
own level, so surely will these land
values also adjust themselves. Only
this week there has come to me the
complaint of an Indiana man who Is
making only thirty bushels Of corn on
land worth $500 an acre. A few weeks
ago I rode from my Office to see field
of North Carolina corn which produced