The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1920-01-15

Alfred G. Smith, who came to
South Carolina and is making a
great financial success here, has the
following article in the last issue of
The Country Gentleman:
It is an old and a wise saying that
in some years most any kind of a
farmer on most any kind Of land can
grow a big crop, but to grow big
crop in any kind Of a year, even with
the best of land, takes a man with
gumption.
We have all seen this old saw
verified. Some years the seasons hit
just right. The land comes out Of
the winter in excellent tilth, the
weather warns up in the spring to
the hearts delight, the rains fall on
schedule, even the breezes blow as
though the farmer himself were at the
weather switchboard.
In such years the lazy man, the
shiftless man and the man on poor
land all harvest bumper crops with
the best of them. The Horn of Plenty
pours out it's benison alike on just
and unjust, the provident and the
wastrel. Then fields that perhaps
have failed to produce paying crops
for years yield bountifully and the
farmer who has merely been eking
out an existence has prosperous
season.
I have seen such years in both the
South and the North. Sometimes they
follow long periods of discourage
ment. Unexpectedly everything
breaks right and everybody succeeds.
But in those other years, in those
lean years when everything goes
wrong, it is only the rare man, wiser
and stronger than the rest, who pros
pers.
In the cotton belt 1911 was typical
of the year that suits farmers of all
kinds. In the eastern portion Of the
belt many sandy land farms that ordi-
narily only produced meagre crops
made bale to the acre. Clay lands,
on which the crops ordinarily had
been so short they didn't pay expens-
es, made more than the farmers could
pick. And Texas, always an uncer-
tainty in it's cotton production, made
crop practically double any it has
made since. 1t didn't require high
class farmer to make cotton that year,
everybody was doing it. Many man
who was classed in his community as
a poor stick ranked toward the top in
yield an acre.
We saw the same kind of pear in
the corn belt in 1915. The years Of
1912, 1913, and 1914 were of the dry
weather variety. Short crops, es-
pecially of corn, prevailed every
where. Land values went down and
corn belt farms sold at bargain prices.
But in 1915 the tables were turned.
The dry seasons and the consequent
short crops of the preceding years
had left in the land a store of unused
available fertilizer that had gradu-
ally been accumulating from the dis
integrat:on of the soil, and when the
ideal temperatures and rainfall hit
that part of the country one of the
greatest crops in it's history was pro-
duced.
I remember riding along the road
one day in the early fall of that year
with an old neighbor of mine whom 1
had known since my boyhood days -
a man who had grown up with the
country and had seen it develop from
the wild prar;e to land covered with
farms and fields Of waving corn. AS
we noted the enormous crops of corn
and the stubble from high yielding
fields Of oats and wheat, the old man
favored me with a running COM
mentary on the phenomenon.
eyes," he said, "it is the greatest
crop year we have ever had. I have
seen most of this land broken out of
the sod before it's fertility had been
reduced by continual cropping, but l
have yet to see another such crop as
we have now. Why, this year every
body and anybody on any kind of land
has good crops!
"You remember that field of Dave
Jarvis's, west of his house? Sort of
brick yard field, too poor to sprout
beans in most years-a patch that
wouldn't sell for half as much as most
of the land round here? Well, Dave
made Sc bushels of oats to the acre
there this time and you know Dave
never was considered much account as
MI