The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1915-12-16

And, furthermore, I told the men,
! Nov here, if you're going to be my
partner. you needn't think you can go
! down town looking like a rats nest.
You've got TO fir up." | told them
they would have to shave. TO have
their hair shinsled and put on a fresh
shirt, have their trousers pressed and
shine their shoes-let's go to town
looking like somebody. Well, that all
worked. Every bit of it worked. And,
; furthermore. we had a good many boys
on the place and we never raised a
single boy that would touch drop of
whiskey.
| We set right out TO have every man
have bank account. | said to them,
this thing of being so everlasting
/ lasting poor, there isn't bit of sense
in it," With good ground to work-if
you hear what I've got to say about the
rural credit business-the kind of
credit we need is better ploughing
We need to farm our farms as if they
owed us something, and not be scratch
inc around over the whole earth to get
little cotton. 1t is nonsense Why.
we have gone off in the South a per
feet tangent at cotton growing, and III
some places don't grow a thing on
earth but cotton. How folks ever got
that notion into their heads is more
than | know. Wouldn't even raise
! gadren. have been over good MANY
parts OF Alabama this year where they
were not growing gardens. The boil
weevil wouldn't hurt a man if he had
plenty to eat. would grow gardens and
cultivate them with a horse. One old
fellow rose up in an audience-he was
sort of bent over and had long white
Whiskers. and looked like a ghost He
said he always did want garden, he
! liked a garden, but his wife was too
blamed lazy to work it.
According to my idea. there isn't a
thing the matter with us in the South,
except that we just don't work. If we
manage our business as other people
manage their business, we can get
system is established | suppose we
will get the benefit of it. But our first
! Job is to get after ourselves and solve
our own problems. There is nothing
whatever in our soil or climate that
! forces us into a one crop system. We
can grow anything on the face of the
earth that will grow in the temperate
zone But still we do a lot of non
sensical things and | will tell you what
! have told the people of Alabama a
good many things. 1t may not sound
nice. but it applies to US, and that is:
! We Southern people can do more fool
stunts TO the square inch than any set
/ of people on earth We just get right
in our own way and keep a-standing
there. You meet yourself coming and
going
| ! will show you how very ridiculous
are great many of the things we do.
| In the first place, we send to st. Louis,
Chicago and Kansas City and buy ham
and breakfast bacon, and all sorts of
/ hog meat and pay anywhere from
twelve TO thirty cents a pound, when
we can grow all we want at two and
, half cents. 1t is fact. Get our agri-
lcultural bulletin and see that we can.
And we send and buy beef and pay all
sorts of prices for it-ten, twenty, and
some times forty cents pound-When
we can grow that same beef at four
cents and less. And then we send out
West and buy hay and pay anywhere
from SIS to SIG, ton: and SIG of that
tmoney. goes to the railroad for freight
land 81 goes to the middleman, and
1.-THE man that grows the hay gets So a
ton. But we don't care cent who
gets our money, just so we get rid of
lit We can grow that hay for $l.5e a
ton We have to work ourselves to
death TO keep from growing hay. We
have - kill the grass to grow the cot
ton to buy the grass and we are like
somebody going round on a merry-go-
rouAd We haven't had time TO see
what else we could do.
il had letter from the Bankers AS
sociatios. in which the writer said that
he believed the campaign which we
had put on this year in Alabama had
really saved the state Last year We
made 100000 bushels of wheat: this
/ wear over million, and our oat crop