The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1911-09-27
PRESIDENT WALLACE SAYS THEY
PLACE FAITH IN MOON SIGNS
RATHER THAN SCIENCE.
CALLS FOR BETTER METHODS
Days Of Cheap Food Stuffs Are Passed
But the Farmer Must Mend His
p, Ways If Soil is to Be Preserved and
Il IA Nation Fed.

Kansas City, Mo-, Sept 2I.-Declar- .
ing that many farmers of the present
day have more faith in moon signs
than in agricultural colleges and ex-
pertinent stations; more faith in ordi-
nary politicians than in college pro-
fessor and scientists, more faith in
yellow journals than in the best agri-
cultural papers, and that the nine
teenth century farmer was no farmer
at all, but a robber of the soil, Henry
Wallace, president of the Third Ma
tional Conservation Congress, deliver
ed an address before that body today,
strongly urging scientific farming as
the only means by which the cost of
living can be reduced. In part Mr.
Wallace said:
TT will be my object in this ad-
dress not to discuss any phase of the |
-; observation movement eXhaustively, |
{ Ait to outline briefly two drifts OF
| population: The drift from the farm
to the city, and the drift from the city
toward the land and the work of this
congress as related thereto.
Even before the daily press had
begun the crusade back to the land,
the movement toward the land had
already begun.
THE land hunger is not peculiar to
any class of people nor TO any state.
The merchant, the banker, the rail
road official of New York and Boston,
each longs for farm, possibly only as
a summer home. but is willing to pay
for it in investment, in improvements
and cost of management more than
it is worth in dollars or ever will be-
He, too, is bitten with land hunger
Many small business men of our cities
who cannot hope to secure farm and
live on it, invest greedily in acreage
in the suburbs. The workman in the
factory aims to secure two or three
acres on which he can build himself
a home.
The growth of large cities has
ceased to be in the business or even
in the old residence sections, and Is
Yentirely in the suburbs. The same
holds true abroad. If men cannot
nave country life in the country, they
are constantly aiming to get as much
as possible of the country in the city
While the steam railroads tend tf
concentrate population, as they nave
from the beginning, the trolley lines
tend to lure the people back towart
the country.
Latent in the heart of nearly ev
erv man, be he man of business, clerl
or other employe, or laboring with HI
hands there is a yearning desire t.
have a piece of land to call his own
Alongside of this movement bac
toward if not always to the farm tn
counter movement from the farm |
the town. which has been going on 10
fifty years. continues with increaslh
and accelerated force. Farmers d
ovar the older west move in grei
Numbers or retire to the coul''
ro,,,l. and Notwithstanding all the'
towns. as the late census reveal
have barely held their own ana olt'
have lost in population, the nat"r
increase Of the towns tAemacF ~
mourning into the larger towns az
cities. in which the majority I'VE WI
less comfort than the farmers VINO
main on the farms. Vast numbers
bows and girls fall prey to alluIl'
vices of the city, and many OF 'he
eventually lake their places with
~ down and out
6AComparatiyely few succeed anu
of he well-todo, The chiloren
gaiese few become weaithy' u"
Grandchildren usually spend gai'y
=" fortunes they never earned ana
turally the family dies out at 'e'
so far as force and power is conce
ed in another generation or at III
two or three. The city uses up II
and families as it uses up ho'T
-. chic Is true not only In thls