The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-11-06
GROSS Refreshing
IN HIS FRANKNESS
ABOUT OUR FAULTS
Chicago Man Says We Must
Work More With Muscles
and Less With
Jaws

| Forget about the romanticlsm OF
| orange blossoms and magnolias and get
| white men as owners of small farms who
| are willing to work-men who are used
to using the muscles of their back and
their arms and not of their jaws" is
the fundamental and most important ag-
ricultural peed of the state of Alabama
in the words of President Howard H.
| Gross, of the National Soil Fertility
| League of Chicago Mr.. Gross made one
of the best addresses yesterday morn
| ing yet heard at the Alabama State Land
congress in this city.
| The report of his address is found else
| where in today's Age-Herald, but just
before leaving to catch the train Mr..
Gross discussed agricultural conditions in
| this state with reporter. Mr.. Cross
striking characteristic is his frankness.
in his speech yesterday he called black
black and in discussing the matter later
he did likewise
Don't get together and see what nice
things you can say about each other.
Don't make extravagant statements about
Alabamas being the best state in the
| union. 1t isn't. And every one of its
citizens knows it, But you have got
some very good lands here In some sec
| tions of the state you have just as good
land as there is in Illinois or Iowa or
any of the other leading agricultural
work.
What the farmers of Alabama must
do is go to work. You have too many
of them who are gentlemen By that
| mean men who think they are educated
above doing manual labor, or feeding hogs
or grooming a horse. They live in your
cities and $50 days out of the year II
not more bunch of 'niggers is running
their farms. Those are the kind of men
you must get on your farms and those
men must be on farms of few hundred
acres at most. Cut up these big planta-
tions Why isn't it better to raise so
bushels of corn to the acre on 10O-acre
farm than 10 or 20 to the acre on a 800 or
400-acre farm?
1.-The next thing, Is stop dreaming. You
can't raise two or three or four hundred
bushels of corn on your land and make
money and neither can anybody else. 1t
can be done on a small plot with utmost
care and attention, but it won't work in
practical farming on a larger scale and
you lose money to try 1t. Don't tell any
body they can come to Alabama and do
1t, because If you advertise that way
people will come here and get disgusted
and leave again. 1 mention corn, but it's
the same way in all other crops.
Get out onto these farms and live there
with your families, make good roads to
your neghbors, install telephones, and
modern machinery, build churches and
school houses close together and then
you will get the white immigrants to
! come here from the north and east who
are now going to Canada and the west.
| don't mean that to be successful a
man will have to have all modern ma
chinery to start with, but he must strive
| toward that end. He can start as low
on the scale as he pleases, but as he
makes money let him put it into improve
ments and modern machinery for his wife
and himself in their farm work instead
of building a town residence.
ITO do some of these things it may be
necessary to have few first class fu-
nerals and let some Of the younger men
get hold, but until 1t is done, neither
Alabama nor any other state will pro-
gress as she deserves"