The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1910-01-19
SOU THERN FARMERS MUST
GIVE UP THE ONE CROP IDEA
Damage to Cotton by Boil Weev Twenty Million Dollars
Government Experts Say Money in Corn and HOGS

WASHINGTON, d. C.-Regardless
of whether he wants to break away
from the exclusive cultivation of cot
ton or not, the southern farmer has
got to adopt crop Investigation or
lose the battle with the soil. This
is not the dictum of a super-theor-
lied mind, but a palpable fact, es-
tablished by the unchecked march of
the Mexican boil weevil through the
great cotton producing region of the
south. United States department of
agriculture experts say that the dam
age to the cotton crop each year as
a result of the encroachments of the
boil weevil amounts to $4,000, 900.
w. J. Spillman, agriculturist in
charge of farm management, bureau
of plant industry, places the annual
cost of the devastating insect above
that amount. Therefore, experts of
the department of agriculture are
agreed that the only available horn
of the dilemma thus presented the
southern farmer is crop diversified
ton. They insist that in this policy
lies the foundation of a permanent
prosperity among the great agricul-
tural class that the boil weevil can
not affect. The first step toward crop
Investigation is the abandonment of
cotton as the exclusive money crop
of the south. 1t is argued that the
farmer of the cotton region will not
only get better prices for his cotton
because of the decreased acreage, but
he will have more resources of reve-
nue. through diversity of marketable
products, and in addition to this pc
cuniary advantage he will be saving
his land by contributing to its vi
tality.
Professor Spillman, who is a prac-
teal Missouri farmer, sees in the
cultivation of corn upon a more lib
eral scale a panacea for most of the
ills that aff1ict the farmer whose ex-
elusive money crop is cotton. He
sees no reason why the cotton re-
gions of west Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana
should not take prominence as a
great cOrn-producing and live stock
raising territory. The price of corn,
which in the states named has not
been below so cents a bushel in the
past four years and which is now
bringing stiff prices all over the
country, according to Professor Spill
man, will remain high The demand
Cor live stock-notably hogs-is way
il excess of the supply, and the man
who has hogs and corn to sell is now
regarded as having the edge on the
man whose sole dependence for cash
is his cotton crop.
This may strike some as a strange
note in view of the prevailing high
price of cotton, but the man who
plants cotton exclusively exhausts his
land from year to year, and more
over has to buy out of the returns
from his cotton the things that the
man who raises corn and live stock
has produced at a decided advantage
to his land.
Prof. Spillman holds that man
with one mule on an average farm
in the cotton region can make more
money by cultivating corn intelli-
gently than he can by cultivating a
cotton crop by himself Unaided one
man with one mule can cultivate
twenty acres of corn adequately, and
forty bushels to the acre ought to
be the yield, and the price at which
corn now is selling the money value
of the twenty acres would be $500.
One with two horses can cultivate
forty acres of corn and make $1,000.
Prof. Spillman insists that one man
cannot possibly do as we'll in making
a cotton crop.
But in order to make the average
land yield forty bushels of corn to
the acre the land must be built up
and kept vitalized by intelligent and
methodical treatment Experts at
the department of agriculture lay
great stress upon the growing of
green stuff, which must be plowed
under and the ground narrowed or