The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-08-25
PLAURIN AND HARRIS
SPEAK HERE
CONTINUED from page ~

!Dle pTOliI. Ale Sto1Su ~"
lot planted cotton in thirty-five
rears himself. He deprecated the
condition of the women on the farms
n some places, stated he had seen
White women with guano sacks
around their necks, scattering ferti-
izer through a horn with babe at
he end or the row in the shade of a
rec. He thought that such things
showed that something was wrong
md he did not wonder at the high
leath rate of children raised under
| ;uch conditions. Under the cotton
.aising plan he stated that he knew
| people who were not able to go to
| Church for the reason that they did
| not have sufficient clothes. He
thought the time had come for these
things to be remedied and that the
farmer should realize that he must
remedy it himself; the remedy being,
,1n his judgment, through the ware
house system and cooperation. He
thought that the farmer should not
demand anything but what is right
and that they should profit from the
lesson of the big corporations and
organization. He stated that the
farmers of this State had been los
ing s3OO,O 100000 per year for the last
ten years for the reaso they have
not co-operated and organized in
disposing of the cotton crop as could
be done through the warehouse sys-
tenn. He advised the farmers to for
tify their homes with meat and bread
raised on the farms so that it would
not be necessary to throw the cotton
on the market all at once in the fall,
and so that the same might be mar
keted. gradually and the farmer.
might be able to hold the same until
he could get the price he asked. He
stated the Bankers had been good to.
the farmers, as had the Doctors and
everyone else, and that it was the
fault of the farmers, themselves, that
they found themselves in the condi-
ton in which they were in. He had
little sympathy for the man who
pr aged for a drought in Texas in or
der to cut crops in that State so that
we might get better prices here. -
On the subject of fertilizers he
said that the best he knew is brains,
that every mar should think for him
self and plan for himself, and i'm
prove his land according to scientific
ideas, which he could do. He stated
he was in Abbeville in 1905 and that
farmers had been blowing on and
hoeing on, but that he found them
in worse condition now than when he
was here before. He thought the
man who advised the farmer to raise
cattle, hogs, grain, corn and no cot
ton was not giving good advice, but
that all these things should be rails
ed in quantities sufficient to supplythe
farmer, himself, and the surplus put
in cotton. He thought the trouble in
this country was not over-production
but under-consumption, due to the
fact that farmers are not making mo-
ney and haven't sufficient money with
which to buy the necessary cotton
goods for the home.
Honorable Jno. L. McLaurin said
that the price of cotton was regulated
by the law or supply and demand, if
left to itself, but that in the
last thirty of forty years the specu-
lators had so manipulated things that
the price of cotton was no longer
so regulated. This vas brought about
by the fact that the money and
credit of the country, under the old
banking and currency system, was in
the hands of a few men who could
contract or expand credits as they
pleased, and that this caused a loss
to the farmers in marking their
cotton, and in that there was no de-
mand for the cotton.
He stated that for the last thirty
years if a man mad bought May cot
ton in October and sold October in
May, that he would have been by this
time, enormously rich, due to the fact
that cotton is always low when it is
forced on the market in October and
generally reaches the high water
mark in the month of May after it
has passed out of the hands of the
farmer. He stated that the ware
house system was adopted by the
State in order to correct this evil.
He stated that last fall the South
was confronted by a panic, that
everything went down and everybody
said there was no money with which