The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-26
ROGERS WRITES
 ON CATTLE TICK
Tells Why Sumter County Small Farmer Is Against
 the Work
To the Editor of The Age-Herald.

who furnished your correspondent, MT
 Harper, with the mass of transformation
 as to conditions in Sumter which appeared
 in the Herald of Thursday in an article
 headed, Sumter Countys Trouble, Wit
 Fight on Cow Ticks
 ' I assume that The Age-Herald want:
 to publish the truth and not falsehood
 Have Mir Harper come to Sumter coun
 ty 10 question every man who is raising
 COWS and find out the situation abou
 tick eradication. He will find. that it i:
 neither political nor moral issue, but
 purely a question of business.
 He will see men who are and have al
 ways been opposed in politics together
 against the tick law and those who art
 and have always been personal friends
 and political allies divided. He will learr
 that the opposition to tick eradication is l not the offspring of ignorance and oi
 injustice, but the result of IS months oi
 an experience which has cost the county | thousands of dollars with no commensur-
 ate compensation to show for this expen-
 diture.
 | In all of this time the advocates of the
 law have had no occasion to their ranks,
 while many who at first favored the law
 are now opposed to 1t. There are not
 more than 90 cattle rasers in the county | who favor the law not over 130 who want 1 the work carried on. The bulk of these l own neither land nor cattle. That class
 who have failed at everything they ever
 undertook but who know exactly how every other mans business ought to be run. We challenge the advocates of the | tick law to a show of forces.
 | Is 1t not strange that the people of l Sumter, who are as you say, generally
 upon as high plane of intelligence as any in the state, can be so easily led against their own interests by few de- signing politicians? Does not the stua- ton in Sumter suggest to you that there is something radically wrong in the ad- ministration of the tick law? If as you
 say the law is to be our ultimate salva- tion from the boil weevil and our people are so intelligent and progressive, why do nine out of ten of these progressive, intelligent cattle raisers oppose the law.
 Take the beat in which I live, for ex- ample. I have no figures at hand as to the actual number of cattle in 1t, but from general knowledge of the county be- lieve there are as many cows in Ganulle beat as in any beat in the county. Every land owner and cattle raiser in the beat is against the law.
 Do you suppose that hard-headed busi- ress men, who yearly receive handsome incomes from the sale of their cattle would let a shallow politician lead them astray?
 You called these men intelligent, but by implication you make them fools.
 These men, as you say, are doing the best they can in an independent way, greasing and dipping their cattle also their hogs and sheep, though there is no
 law forcing them to dip hogs and sheep. They expect to continue to do it. They rely upon their own efforts to better their condition and do not look to the govern ment to make them rich. They have more confidence in their own knowledge of animal industry than in that of any man who can afford to inspect cows at $50 per month.
 They know that surrounded as Sumter county is by thousands of miles of tick infested territory, and even the over flowing streams bring ticks on every freshet, that it is next to impossible to eradicate the tick and wholly impossible under these conditions to get such bill of health for their cattle as would lift
 the northern quarantine and get them the
 benefit of those markets. AS practical men they want the ticks cleaned out to
 the north of them from the line of Ten nessee this way and then they will give | their hearty cooperation to tick eradica- | tion, which is a good thing.
 l They know, too, that with cattle strag- | gling in from the free ranges of Greene, | Choctaw, Pickens and Kemper counties, | which last will not be brought under the | operation of the tick law in ten years If ! it ever is, they are threatened with con-
 stant and imminent danger of tick infes- | tation. That under these circumstances | 1t is better for a calf to get ticks on it
 while it Is sucking it's mother and when | there is practically no danger of it's dying 1 from tick fever than to wait until later
 and then get ticks on 1t, as 1t will then 1 be almost sure to die.
 | In Mr Harper's diagnosis of Sumter
 county's tick troubles, he sneers at the presumption of the poor man owning one l on the subject of tick eradication. MT. | Harpers views on this point are not diff | ferent from the view always taken by big | business toward little business. This is | the creed that grew the trusts, made | the millionaire, produced the pauper, and | that is daily hatching anarchists. l The poverty of the poor mas even been | their destruction, but the twentieth cen | tury Is bringing men who will not be si- l lent in a defense of the helpless. It Is l never pleasant to have approbrious cpl thets applied to one. to be called a poli- 1 tician, in an invidious sense, because he | lets a poor negros COW run on his land | after the crops are out to get a precarious | living in the winter time. When the ne- gro cant vote and when even to speak encouragingly of him is resented in some | quarters, the charge is only an evidence | of impotant malicious spite. Thinking I men know that a country is only perma' nently prosperous when it's wealth is dis | tributed among it's citizens, where there | is neither colossal wealth in the hands
 of the few nor abject poverty in tho l homes of the many. To keep the labor ol
 the black belt contented and prosperous | should be the aim of every thoughtful | person. JNO. Il. ROGEho. Gainesville, March "A, 1911.
 1 Rain Stops Game
 London, March 25.-Cambridge wor
 in the annual inter-varsity sports witt oxford at Queens club today with si, points to four.