The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-05-12
WORK FOR
BEST FARMING
Where Brain Work Begins, There
Profit Begins.
Progressive Farmer.)

Progressive Farmer.)
Says Prof. Eugene C. Branson, IN
a sentence full of warning for u
Southern farmers:
"a people with lower living STAN
dards will always prevail against a
people with undefended high living
Standards"
In other words, wherever two men
are doing the same work, the mar
who can live on fifty cents a day will
always crowd to the wall the man
whose higher civilization and higher
living standards require, say, a dol"
lar or more a day to maintain-un-
less that higher civilization and
higher living standard are properly
defended. A case in point is the
recent history Of California, where
the competition of Chinese and jap
anese has forced the white people to
take steps to safeguard their higher
living standards. Another illus
tration is given by the Columbia
State in it's remark that the Negro
who is thrifty and industrious, civ
ing at half the cost of his neighbor
of the same industrial condition,
can acquire land in, say, half the
time that the white man cam"
A peculiarly important problem in
the South, therefore, is this: How
can the white farmers living stand
ards be defended?
And the answer is: "By having
the white man do a better type of
farming than the Negro a do" If
he sets out to do the same sort of
work that the negro'does, he is pre-
destined to failure and defeat. If
he works like the Negro does, he
must sooner or later live like the
Negro does-as soon as he uses up
whatever capital he has.
Here is the warning which all
past history sounds to the race of
higher living standards in the South:
They must defend their higher stan
dards by doing a better sort of
farming than the race of lower liv-
ing standards can do. Thirteen
years ago the writer sought to make
clear these fundamental principles,
and on page 10 we are reprinting an
article we then prepared, "Where
Brain Work Begins, There Profit
Begins"
The most ignorant Negro can fol-
low the ~"one-crop" system of farm
ing, buy all his soil fertility, ana
nearly all his meat and feed. Brains
get but little exercise in that SORT of
work, and every time the white mar
sets out to do "all-cotton" farming
he deliberately puts himself and his
family into hopeless competition with
just such ignorant, muscle-only la
bor-the sort that pays no profit.
Recently a friend was complaining
to us that there was little chance
for a bright, ambitious boy to beat
ignorant labor growing cotton, but
almost the next minute he was tell
ing us of an up-to-date young far
mer neighbor who by diversified me-
thods grew 27 bales last year on 16
acres-almost two bales to the acre,
whereas the South's average. under
our general poor-farming methods
is little over one third of a bale an
acre. And there is just the point
as to what Intelligence, with diver
sifcation, rotation, brain-plus-brawn
methods will do. 1t will "make the
farm feed itself" and then raise as
a surplus crop as much cotton as 1g-
norance will produce or the same
farm under the "all-cotton" SOIL
exhausting plan.
There is just one point which the
writer briefly mentioned thirteen
years ago but to which we would
now give double emphasis. This is
the Importance of cooperation. And
cooperation, as all European expe-
rience shows, can develop properly
in homogeneous communications
munities in which the people are
practically of one ace and have the
spirit of brotherhood. By build
;np IN urhite communities in the