The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-01-22
Drainage m Alabama

the law Nhave been enacted legally. If we all knew the benefits to be derived from the sanitary benefits there would never be opposition to such improve ments. Malaria and all it's accompany ing ills disappear when the swamp CT a community has been sterilized, ahd' instead of doctors bills and mo icy wasted on taxes crops are made tc produce at profit. Health and wealth follow cleanliness in the order ma ned.
 few figures about Alabama's cotton
 crop might show something to the farm
 CTS and owners of swamp lands Ala
 bsma produces 700o00 bales of cotton on
 2,StN,p0 acres of land. It costs $15 per
 acre to cultivate this land, or $l2OOO,00p.
 It costs S.No,0o0 to fertilize it, making
 total of $3O,t19,C00, or SI0 per pale
 Any informed person knows that an acre of well-attended bottom land will
 yield bale of cotton without fertilizer Therefore Alabama ought to produce her
 I0J,OO0 bales of cotton on 100,000 acres of her insanitarJ swamp land. It requires
 no fertilizer, and at s20 per acre for cul-
 tivation, the 700,o0O acres would produce
 the 70o090 bales for total cost of Sl4,-
 0Oe,0O0, or S20 per bale, as against S70,
 where the poor lands are cultivated and fertilizers are used.
 Drainage means concentrated cultiva-
 tion. It means that the crop failure is a
 thing of the past Drained lands pro duce nearly an even crop, because suGh
 lands stand the excessive rains of wet year and dry ones alike better than the lands which have been cultivated with artificial fertilizers. The air carries more fertilizer thah any other source. When lands are drained. the air passes through the pores and the rich nitrogen is ;,b- sorbed by the expanding roots of the growing plants. 1t is ideal, simple, an,. the law of nature.
 Don't pass .hese figures and statements , up as foolish and those of theorist. but get on the train and go over into your neighboring states of Tennessee and Mississippi, G: any other state where
 drainage laws have been put into effect i extensively Lee county in Mssisslppi has no flies. no mosquitoes and no swamps. McNairy county, Tennessee. IS now working on it's fourteenth drainage district. Go up there and look; don t send comRission it would be believed in about the same proportion that the report of the committee sent out of Mis- sissippi to investigate the making of ice in the summer time.
 Mississippi and Arkansas have drained more of their bottom lands than any other southern states. Their costs have ranged from S4 per acre to $14 per acre.
 Missouri Iowa, Minnesota and Ilino,s have drained a great deal of land at an 1 average cost of from s4 to s16 per acre. North and South Carolina have re- claimed considerable areas; their costs have never been compiled, but it has been low in North Carolina. The state of Georgia has done a good deal of drain- age, but they have high cost mark
 set in that state. Their average cost has been S2S.52 per acre, and great many projects have been shelved on account of the high estimates of cost. Alabama 2 cost ought to range from $7 to sl0 per acre in the larger districts, and from 8 to $16 per acre in the small districts. The costs are covered as stated before. by bond issue. These bonds do not bear interest until they are five years old, then ofle-fifteenth of the principal and interest is paid back each year for fifteen years. So that the land owner does not repay any of the Improvements
 until he has had ample time to develop his land and put it in a producing con
 dition. When that is done, the frs, years profits pay all his drainage tax, and he forthwith remembers his drainage
 obligation with pleasure and goes to his tax collector each year with smile. Go into the drainage districts of your neigh bors and find out these things for your selves
 The writer reclaimed a tract of land in
 eastern Cuba of many thousand acres in
 extent. The project was put on foot in 1912-13. Within two years the health Of
 the district (some 25 miles square) had improved to such an Nextent that tito
 hospitals were bare of patients, when
 formerly there had been spinal meningi-
 tis, typhoid and other forms of malarial
 poison to such an extent that progress
 was difficult
 The cultivation of these lands is carried
 on without the use of the blow. The
 areas were fclled and burned clean then
 the cane joints were showed into the
 ground and there left to propagate for
 years to come, not to be cultivated unt'i exhaustion sets in and is indicated 5y
 the plant. A great many swamp lands
 in the south should be similarly treated.
 Keep traffic off the ground and give the soil the least possible disturbance in or der to get the seed planted; then keep the weeds down with hoe. JIn North Carolina and in Arkansas this has been done by what is termed the stuck corn process" the corn being planted in holes stuck in the ground with a stick. These lands have produced several years wisa- out cultivation and are still producing. Some lands should be cultivated anl some should not. The plant itself Will indicate when exhaustion is taking place, ,, then the plow may be used.