The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-04-25
progress We Farmer
One Horse Or TWO?

NdS Idtilti dlIibsSd d. Ab' 49,
Mr.. Jones made some weeks ago lot
the o~ne-horSe man. He claims that
IN extra mule Will cost $l44 q year,
and that the mule is the most cosby
thing on the farm. My own eXpefl-
enCe IS. that the man hand Is the moss
costly thing on q farm. and thai the
man wiki two horses can work more
than twice as much land, and do ii
better than the man with but one
horse, provided he works the two al
the way through the crop, starting
with the smoothing harrow before tne
cotton is up, and then the Weedef.
and then the two-hOrSe riding Cultl-
vator. He can do more work than
two men, each with one horse. 1t is
the human labor that costs far more
than the horse labor. and II does not
cost S144 a yea to keep a mule, either.
L worked for years sixteen mules, and
know very well what it costs, for my
accounts then had to go before the
county court every month in the year,
as the farm ] was managing was a
school farm, and while six of the
mules worked only at hauling, the
ten worked in the cultivation of the
farm, and not a cents worth was pa q
for feed after We got the farm under
good way.
h great difficulty is the tenant
system Of the South. If Mr.. Jones,
instead of working his lane by ten
ants, had teams enough to work the
whole and hired the hands and farm
ed the whole land in a systematic way,
he would find that horsepower is
far cheaper than m~an-pOwer, and
that with plenty Of teams each man
could do a great deal more than he
could, working on the tenant plan, and
each man would be better off getting
wages than being carried as a tenant.
II i- fhiC w 9 oy1 6In n~0nninn method
that keeps the Southern lands poor
and the tenants poor and h land
owners poor A man may have q dozen
enantS each with a mule, scratching
the soil and getting small crops Of
cotton, while the land graws poorer
and the tenants make a poor living,
while if the dozen mules were in the
hands of the owner, and the whole
farm was run in a systematic way,
and farmed instead Of merely being
planted, the owner might make Il for
tune VIII le the land grew richer.
James Smith down in Georgia has
become q millionaire or over at farm
ing with hired labor, and his hands
are better Off than the tenant crop
pers. Men in North Carolina who
habitually make two bales of cotton
an acre do not do it with tenant crop
pers, but by regular farming methods.
Then, too, the method of blowing
that Mr.. Jones proposes with one
horse, would cost in human labor far
more than h cost Of another horse
by reason of the extra work for the
man. Read the letter of J. S. H,
who could not nah a living with
one horse, and now makes money
with five. l do not know, Of course,
NOW many tenants T. Jones has, but
/ am very sure that the same numbe
of mules and half the number of men
could do far better work than each
man with a mule, and the saving OF
human labor would ave far more
money than u saving of horse labor
would. 1t IS the tenant system that
is to blame, for that makes the con
dition Of the one-horse tenant prac-
tically hopeless.
What the appearance of the boil
weevil will do in a district where the
landowners live in town and have the
land scratched by tenants has well
been shown by the experience in
Adams county, Mississippi, near Nat
chez. where all the land was thus
parcelled out and the tenants car
rtd by merchants. The weevil came,
and the merchants closed out all the
negroes owned, n the farms were
abandoned and the negroes went to
work on plantations in the Delta, leav-
ing the quilted and wasted lis of
AdaiiS ouiltS " uift Even III lnt
weevil-infested sections, where men
farm Well. they 10 longer fear the
Weevil, but the weevil is doing one
good thing in destroying the cropping
system, the great curse of Southern
agriculture
Good farming can not be done with
d man to every mule; the man costs
too much to use in such a way. Two
mules cost less than two men. and
VT Ia wa WI H. $500
do more tina the two. One mans
labor in the Northwest produces over
$500 year. One IN labor in the
cotton section under the tenant system
produces less han $500 a year. be-
cause the man in the Northwest uses
more horsepower and better nipple
mentS.