The Mena weekly star. (Mena, Ark.) 1904-1977, 1911-01-05
LESSON FROM GERMANS
Their Courage and Tireless Energy
Wiz Success and Prosperity Where
American Farmers Fail.

The first and among the best les
sons in good farming and also in pa
tient industry that ever learned was
from colony of German farmers who
settled in the rugged hill country Of
Southern Ohio over so years ago, and
these lessons stand me in good stead |
in my present undertaking of resur-
recting a worn out farm.
The hardy Germans came direct
from the Fatherland, and they brought
with them that spirit of courage and
tireless industry that has character
lied their race for thousands of years.
Some of them bought old worn out
farms that had been almost abandoned
and others bought small slabs of the
steep rocky hillsides that frowned
down upon the majestic Ohio river.
Those hillsides fairly bristled with
heavy timber and thick underbrush
and presented a most forbidding aspect
to the ordinary home builder, but they
failed to daunt or discourage the in
trepid German settler. for they at
once began to clear the land and build
houses. The women worked as well
as the men and they not only cleared
the land. but they dug out the juttine
he, for
so the soil would not wash away.
Talk about patience and industry
Why Brother American Farmers, we
do not know the meaning of the words.
Across the intervening years of half
century can look back and see those
German men and women clicking away
with pick and shovel in the broiling
sun on those rugged bluffs. clad in
their blue blouses and wearing wood
en- shoes. The American farmers
along the river bottoms looked up
toward the tireless toilers and sheer
ingly referred to them as the Dutch
cliff dweliers, who would soon starve.
But the score soon changed. and
small fields of golden grain and luxuri-
ant garden foliage began to peep over
the terraced walls and far up and
down the hillsides festoons of purple
grapes glistened in the morning dew.
In fact, the bluff lands bloomed out
into great vineyard, dotted here and
there with cozy cottages, gray stone
barns and trailing vines that half hid
the heavy doors that barred the way
to long cool wine cellars were in great
| casks. aged. nectar fit fer gods and
good men. These sturdy people had
learned how to grow grapes and make
wine in the sunny hills of Rhineland,
and so the product of their presses
found ready sale in the great cities of
the New World. And so the cliff
dwellers" prospered and the hillsides
blossomed like a rose.
But how about tire poor unfortunate
Dutchmen who were inveigled by some
unscrupulous land agents into buying
those old worn out farms Did they
starve out and go back to Germany in
disgustY No. They went to work
systematically to build up their farms
by utilizing all fertilizing substances
they could get, and by rotation of
crops. and in few years they not
only owned all the poor farms, but
nearly all the good farms in that part
of the county.
So, coming down to present times,
why 10 it that, in every community. in
any state. we gladly welcome German
farmers? The answer, bluntly spoken,
is this: They are better farmers than
we are, and can get rich on 20 acres
of land, while some of US cannot
make a good living and keep out of
debt with 200 acres of land. They
are better farm managers. more in
du strious and more frugal than our
American farmers, and therefore they
are more prosperous.
In fact, nearly all of the foreign
farmers that land on our shores come
from thickly populated countries,
where every acre of tillable land is
not only cultivated closely, but very
valuable, and here. where land is not
only much cheaper, but conditions
more favorable, they find their in
tensive methods of farming far more
profitable The strangest feature of
the whole thing is that our American
farmers are so slow in adopting the
methods of their foreign neighbors.
But have said enough about what
foreigners have done and are doing
now. Let us consider what we az
riculturists of Polk county are doing
right now and what we are going to do
in the future. The PROCESSION OF
progressive farming is coming our way,
and we must fall in behind the band