The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1915-03-20

be here there will be no cotton picked
In the winter next season and no low
grade cotton 10 break the price on the
whole crop.
Fertilizer will be used very sparing-
ly too. so that not so much Of the re-
turns from cotton and tobacco will
nave TO be paid out for cost of guano.
This will make great difference in
the financial standing of the farmers
next fall.
| had two requests to organize To-
calls in Sumter last Saturday. If
these neighborhoods mean business all
they have to do is to notify President
Williams. Secretary Warren or myself
OF the date they will assemble to or
ganize and one of us will be on hand
with a we'll trained goat to be put
through the usual PAGES. We mean
buriness, and If the farmers will meet
us on the square and half way we will
ioe that there is not an unorganized
farmer in the county before the first
of July.
Rock Hill wants the next State
meeting and wants it bad, but they
Will have to want it to the extent of
showing the largest roll of paid up
membership of any county in the
State by June 1st or the greatest per-
centage gains. The executive COM
mittee viii pass upon the numerous
invitations sometime in May when
time has shown how the race is pro-
crossing. Sumter county union put In
an invitation for the State meeting,
but there will have to be many re-
cruits added to the "Old Guard" be-
fore L will vote to bring the annuar
meeting to Sumter.
wonder how the pessimists of last
tall feel now when cotton is selling
above 5 cents with 40 prospec, &C the
war ending in months. We werc told
by some OF our best informed 20
that the crop was so big that the
South could not expect over Z or
cents If there had been no war, and
that we would have to take what we
could get. And that it was foolish
waste OF time and effort to expect any
assistance from government. Well,
we did not get much assistance from
government. but thanks to the back
bone OF an army of farmers and the
backing OF the progressive and pa"
triotic merchants and bankers who
were for us and not against us, we
have pulled through some how. If
we could only have made 1t unani-
nous last September we could have
sold every bale Of cotton at 12 cents
per pound.
The very thing which some thought
would kill the state warehouse sys-
TEN, lack of funds. has caused Com
missioner McLaurin to devise the
greatest plan for financing cotton and
judicious marketing that was ever
dreamed of. 1 mean the small farm
ers State-leased warehouse. If the
legislature had made big appropri-
alton it would all have gone into
brick and mortar warehouses that
would have been SO expensive and so
far removed from the farmers cotton
that he would have sold rather than
pay warehouse charges.
At the meeting of the county union
at Salem school house on the last
Friday in August 1 urged the erec-
ton of cheap iron covered and sided
structures at every gin in the county
whore the cotton could be stored, and
the putting of it under State or fed
cral inspection. Nothing was done
with this suggestion which filled every
requirement of the secretary OF the
treasury for making cotton a security,
until after the legislature adjourned
the special session and Senator Banks
Of Calhoun built such a house and put
1t under the State warehouse system
Since then numbers of them have
been taken over, and cotton is more
safely and chcaply stored than ever
before in the history of the trade.
r
IL such q system had been ready
(and the Farmers Union has been
working for IL for three years) last