Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-11-26

VOW we'll advised it is that the business
II men of Georgia should undertake to
provide adequate markets for oil
versified crops may be inferred from the
fact that about half the purchasing power
OF the entire nation is represented by the
farmer. For a commonwealth so prevail
ingly agricultural as ours, the proportion,
no doubt is much larger. To the extent that
producers on the soil have the means ana
mind to buy, to that extent will merchants
have opportunity to sell, and Industries
fair field for expansion. Business must make
a market for the farmer in order to make
a market for itself.
Especially is this true at the present juno
ture, when Georgia agriculture, facing the
crisis of a boil weevil invasion, must turn
to harvests other than cotton, or else stand
idle and become impoverished. Food prod
ucts for which there has been hitherto but
the meagerest or crudest of home markets,
must take the place of cotton, must procure
the money which that crop has been wont
to fetch, must maintain the commerce and
industry which that staple has been wont to
prosper But how can this be If there are
not facilities for marketing food products?
Millions of bushels of sweet potatoes, i'm
mense quantities of vegetables, great herds
of swine and cattle, all represent wealth and
are sinews of prosperity; but they profit
neither the farmer nor the buSlne man
unless they are turned into channels of use
and trade.
For more than a hundred years Georgia,
in common with her Southern neighbors,
has been developing markets for cotton, and
we'll has historian observed that never in
history, perhaps, was an economic force more
influential upon the life of a people, But
cotton gins, cotton warehouses, cotton credit
facilities are of no avail in the problems
now pressing for solution, because they are
of no value in storing, grading, shipping,
selling and + ancing food crops. These lat
ter must be given market facilities not a
whit behind those which cotton has en-
joyed if the weevil-beset farmer is to come
safely through his difficulties and regain
that purchasing power on which business
leans as upon it's staff of life.
This is no vague supposition. 1t is the
testimony of thousands of competent wit
+. nesses throughout the commonwealth
bankers, merchants newspaper men, cap
tains of industry and of commerce. Speak
ing as Secretary of the Georgia Country
Gently described the problem Of markets
for food crops as reaching ito the very root
and foundation of the States continued
prosperity"
'1t means education and enlighten-
ment instead of ignorance and litter
acy. 1t means health and prosperity
instead of disease and poverty. 1t
means happiness instead of misery.
With the barns of Georgia overlooking
with ninety million bushels of corn,
thousands IL not millions of people in
this and adjoining States still have their
corn cribs in the West. With thou
sands of cattle and hogs in Georgia fat
and ready for market, still our pack
ers (for the most part) live in Kansas
City, Chicago and Omaha. With four
teen hundred thousand gallons of syr-
up of unequaled flavor in the hands of
the producer, thousands of our people
still eat colorless, flavorless syrup, i'm
Il ported into Georgia. With our ruta-
T bagas rotting in the field for lack of
sale, we are now shipping the same
vegetable in carload lots from Canada
to supply the local dema. :"
1t is to divide profitable outlets for
/. these and the still larger quantities, as well
as wider varieties of foodstuffs which should
be raised next season that the Georgia
; Farm Market Federation has been launched
This enterprise represents the most com
prehensive and altogether suspicious effort
= yet made to solve that problem which does
. indeed reach ito the very root and foun
= dation of the States continued prosperity.
= 1t affords Georgia's business rank and fix
opportunity to cooperate effectually in es
tablshfng the market facilities which mus
be established il the oncoming year is to be
u safeguarded against disaster. For withou
/. assurance of those facilities, farmers will MOI
produce food crops to fill the great cottor
z gap and will not recover the buying power
on which trade and industry depend. Sure
]. ly, then, it is the part of enlightened self
81 interest, as well fealty to the common
3 veal, to support to the utmost this mos
seasonable undertaking.