The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1912-10-01
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1912.
Keep Your Face to the Sunrise.

Keep Your Face to the Sunrise.
This article will be read by men
who have never really believed that
the time will come when Southern
farmers will quit wearing out their
lands; when scrub livestock will be
the exception and not the rule; when
the cattle tick will have been eradi-
Gated and hog cholera reduced to com
partive homelessness; when silos and
gasoline engines and traction plows
will be common in every rural COM
munity; when the farmhouse without
q weather system and a bathroom and
good lights and neat surroundings
will be in the minority; when the
farmer who works himself and his
family all the year, living hard the
while and doing without many of the
comforts of life, will be almost a
thing Of the past. These men will
but that it will or al be, they can
nOt believe. Always, as they think,
there must be a great mass of farm
ers performing the hardest sor of
labor and receiving very poor pay for
1t, doing without many of the things
which men who work with equal
faithfulness in other professions have
come to regard as necessities. Few
good men and true, really believe
this.
We do not believe it-not for one
instant. That there will always be
poor farming and poor farmers, is
unquestionable. Trere is scant hope
that all of us, or any of Us, will ever
be perfect and do the best we know
and can. This does not meas, how
ever, that all Of us cannot do better
than we have been doing, and that
enough will not do better to raise the
whole standard of farm life, and
make the farming of the future a
widely different thing from the farm
ing of to-day.
The time will come when South
ern lands will cease to wash away
and when the old worn fields will be
reclaimed. Some day the Southern
farmer who has razor-back hogs and
nondescript cattle will be ashamed of
them. The one-horse former about
whom we hear SO much will one day
be a rarity. The rural community
with bad roads, a shabby schoolhouse
and a total lack of community spirit
will cease to be. These things are
bound to change-not because we say
So, but because the great bulk of
Southern farmers are men of intelli.
gence and force, who are giving their
children better training than they had
and thus preparing them t O do better
work and to get more for it. But be-
fore better things can come to the
community as a whole, they must
come to the individuals who make up
the community.
In every section can be found men
who are helping to bring about the
new era in Southern agriculture
men who have their faces to the
sunrise, who have high ideals of
farming and high ambitions for
themselves, who are learning more
about their work, who feel that their
families are entitled to more of the
good things of life than they have
heretofore enjoyed, and who are Civ
ing their best thought and energy
to the accomplishment Of this end.
In every section. too, are men who /,
are %hindering the progress of their
land and their calling-men who will
not believe that there are better ways
Of doing things than the ways to
which they have been accustomed, or
that it is possible for the great mass
of farmers to share equally in the
of the country with sue
cessful men in other lines of work.