Evening star., 1914-04-12

the welfare Of his people at heart would
have done the same thing. The need was
obvious, the situation cried for attention,
the opportunity presented ltself-and like
wise the particular man.
When Governor Aycock took office in
North Carolina he had ambitions beyond
just warming a chair. To him the State was
bigger than the grounds around the execu-
tive mansion and the capitol For one thing,
there We're a lot of farms in the State among
which there We're mighty few prize winning
producers. The reaction that came after the
war had paralyzed the Souths agriculture
The corn rows running phantomlike through
the forty ycar-old pines were distressing ev-
dcnces Of decay, not progress.
Aycock knew the farms of his State, and
he knew the people who were trying in
hazy, half-hearted way to scratch living
from the land. He knew too that most Of
them were making a sorry sort of starvation
stagger of it-and he knew the reason.
Most Of the farms were either exhausted.
reverted to weed fields and new-g growth pine
lands, or were yet unclearcd and undevel-
oped. What they needed most was scientific
treatment: And scientific agriculture hadn't
| penetrated very far among the North Caro-
lima hills and valleys at that time
True, George Vanderbilt by the expendi-
ture of millions, had resurrected the vitality
| OF collection OF wornout farms along the
French Broad River at Ashevilc and made
crops to spring from them amazingly
| three luxuriant cuttings of alfalfa a wear,
hundred bushels of corn to the acre, prize
winning Jerseys romping knee deep in clover
| fields, carloads Of vegetables acres of shrubs
and f1owers,-a Garden of Eden in New
World.
Vanderbilt had created wonderland
| farm at Bilt1nore, fit as a model for the
universe. But it was not on general exli-
bition. You had to have a pass to get
through the gates, and you had to have a
pull to get pass. SO the lank farmer with
his lean mule and his splintery skipjack,
scratching his thin soil along the rain
| washed gully on the hillside, Just kept on a
scratchin' along in the same old listless way,
none the wiser for the modern miracles being
wrought by the wizardry of agricultural
science on his rich neighbor's farm.
The outside reading world knew Of these
wonders through the reports Of writers privi-
| legged to investigate and observe. And oc-
casionallv the natives heard seventh or
| eleventll-hand story from some vacationiSt
of what was going on at Biltmore. But they
merely took firmer hold on the ricketv old
| sklpjack, and passed the story up as from a
piece of the same cloth from which the old
| mammies spun their fairy tales, and let it
go at that.
at CANT be did, Paid TIL ahn't no sich
thing as two craps in one yeah from this
yah no count yea tn! All CANT git s much
| 5 one, nohow.' That was the native farm
ers vision of it-having no real vision
Of it at all.
RUT the Governor had seen the impossible
- giraffe for himself, and you couldn't
make him believe that "there amt no sich
ani1nile" What Vanderbilt had done his
own people could do, if they were only
taught how. He would have them taught.
Hadn't he inherited with his office an agri-
cultural college and experiment station,
whose trained force of teachers and expert
menters was supposed to teach the farmer
how to grow two blades Of grass where they
were growing but one-or none? He had
After he had dug the State experiment
farm out of the weeds and brushed off
enough nildew to get partial view of its
cultivated patches, he discovered that he
hadn't found anything worth inviting his
rural constituents to examine or emulate.
The cleared spots stood out in the picture
uncanny-ike, little barren deserts in for
bidding jungle waste of pestiferous jumpers,
scrub pine, and weed-clogged gulleys, to
which even the most seasoned 'possum
hunter would give wide berth The Gov
ernor winced but he was not dismayed
Then he located the agricultural college,