The Port Gibson reveille. [volume] (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1890-current, 1911-03-02
"corroN BOIL wEEYIL."
A Sensible Article on the Effects
of the Pest.

entitled the "Cotton Boil Weevl
on the Y. & NJ. W." was written
some time ago by Robert L. Mont
gomery, agent for the road at Her
manvllle, and published in the IL
linois Central Employees Maya
zine:
"Queer things are happening on
the New Orleans division IN Old
Mississippi, caused by the com
mercial, industrial and economical
revolution taking place, due to a
wee little insect from the terra
callentes of Mexico, otherwise
known as the cotton boil weevil.
Vast acreages of the Magnolia
states most fertile hill country,
which were formerly covered
by the beautiful green cotton
plant, with its myriad of lovely
white and scarlet blossoms, chang
ing to fields of snow at harvest
time, have this season been sown
in forage and grain crops.
"The soft, grooming work songs
of the vast army of southern darkey
cotton-pickers, who, with turbaned
heads and white cotton sacks lent
music, color and unique feature to
the harvesting of the heecy staple,
have given way to the steady hum
and click, click of the reaper and
binder. Mississippi, which in years
gone by has sent its millions OF
money to northern and western
markets for foodstuffs, has this
year, according to government re-
ports, produced in round numbers
70, 900, 600 bushels of corn alone,
besides bounteous crops of oats,
wheat, barley and rye. The first
-four milled since the war has been
turned out this fall. She will ex-
port corn this year for the first
time in her history, and the nu'
merous packing and canning fac
tories that are springing up and in
contemplation give birth to the as
surance that she will soon be living
at home and boarding in the same
place.
"Tbis agricultural revolution,
this uprooting of the established
order of things which have OBJ
tanned since first the bow and the
scalping knife gave place to the
rifle and ploughshare, is bound to
result temporarily in many hard
ships; revolutions, whether they
are industrial, social or political,
nearly always leave in their wake
some wrecks, some RUNS, with
their quota of human miserles,
which are necessarily impossible of
elimination and which serve, if no
other purpose, as milestones to
mark the advent of the new era.
"Those revolutions which are
usually the most severe are over
quicker and terminate in a more
radical improvement of things.
The advent of the cotton boil
weevil has set the south by the
ears. The tiny little insect, using
his elephantine proboscis as a sur
geon's knife, has performed an
heroic operation on our body agri-
cultural, which will result in the
immediate eradication of the dis.
ease long known as the zone crop
system, and the wounds swathed
in the antiseptic bandages of di-
versihed farming, will soon heal,
causing the still, hale old body to
take on new life and renewed en-
ergy. The farmer, the merchant,
the manufacturer and the transpor-
tation company, are now feeling
the calling effects of the changed
conditions, but as the transition
becomes complete new song will
be put into their mouths. The
change from the condition of
one-crop system, and that crop
something to wear, to those of di-
versi6ed farming, where bread,
meat and raiment come responsive
to a minimum of effort, is bound
to result in much greater prosper
ity, and in the general farming
prosperity all classes must share.
Except in the northern half OF
the great azoo-Mississippi Delta,
where the very wet conditions pre-