The spectator., 1920-09-17

due to the planting inferior seed.
 Seed is bred to produce large yields on the kind of soil in which 1t is to be planted and to produce plants that put their strength into the making of bolls rather than stalk and leaf. Limbs bearing few bolls are bred out.
 Field after field of cotton wa seen in every locality visited where the plants were uniform in height with squares and bolls thick on the bottom limbs as well as those higher up.
 Corn is generally planted that has been bred to produce short stalks with ears not over waist high, the ears so heavy that they hang down.
 legumes and Cover Crops.
 The growers of high yields of cot. ton and agricultural college men whom we net were unanimous in stat. ing most positively that their large yields could not be secured only when the soil had an abundance of humus and decayed vegetable matter through growing and blowing under legumes and cover crops and blowing under the cotton stalks and leaves. The man who gets high yield never burns the old stalks. The cotton grower to secure high yields must put into his soil every year large quan. titles of vegetable matter.
 They find that the crop that en- roches the land the most and adds the greatest quantity of vegetable matter to the soil is velvet beans. The beans are planted in the corn and after the corn Is gathered the corn stalks and bean vines are turned under.
 In Sumpter county. Georgia, almost every field of corn was thick with vel vet beans that the first of August were so heavy that they were bend ing down the corn stalks. We found velvet beans in all sections visited. In Wilson county, 75 miles farther north than Little Rock. onefifth of the corn had velvet beans in 1t. Velvet bean seed cost less an acre than that of any other legume.
 Cow peas are planted in much of the corn where velvet beans were not growing and in practically all the fields where a crop of grain had been harvested.
 Soy beans were growing between the rows in hundreds of acres of corn because COW peas could not be se- cured A considerable number of cot ton growers SOW crimson and bur clover. Some of the growers of the highest yields of cotton SOW Abruzxi rye between the rows of cotton after the first picking. The commercial fer tilizer unused by the cotton makes a rank growth of the rye and il Is turn safe to plant the cotton.
 Effect Of High Yields.
 Twelve to fifteen years ago when the yields were so low in the sections we visited. land sold from $750 to $25 an acre. Now because the methods of farming have made the yields of the good farmers In whole counties a bale or more an acre. land sells quickly at Sl5O to $500 an acre when any Is of fered
 All Farming Not Good.
 Not all the farms we saw produced bale or more an acre. The places visited have their sloven and lazy cotton growers. but a large majority of the farmers raise these high yields ,hz A<~ t. lxr decreasing.
 Sometimes we saw on one side of a fence . field of cotton waist high, stand perfect; plants heavily fruited with . promise of bale to a bale and a half an acre. On the other side field of "bumble bee" cotton six to eight inches high with but little fruit on it. The man who had the good cot ton follows the best methods: the man with the poor cotton farms as they used to farm twenty years ago.
 See for Yourself.
 We are frank to say that had we not seen these farms and witnessed with our own eyes the character of the soil and the yields of cotton and corn raised on it, we would not have be- lieved what we have told.
 We urge every cotton grower who 10 in position to do so. to see all the country that we saw. or at least to see the farms in the sections around Americus. Ga., and Hartsville and Bennettsville. S c. Every Arkansas cotton grower who will do this will come back with the determination to make our fields in the hill lands bet ter than bale an acre and in the bottom lands more than two bales an acre.
 We ask those who cannot this sum- mer visit the cotton fields of Georgia to see the cotton and corn on the