The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1921-07-22

Representative Hawley of Oregon,
another Republican member of the
committee, discussed the benefits
which, he said, would accrue to the
farmers through the agricultural
schedule He read statistics to show
that $4,000 farmers had left the land
in the last decade and inquired wheth-
err it was not time to let them know
that the government was interested
in their problems.
The emergency tarff bill has been
enacted ana is now in operation.
Those who advocated it pretended that
it was intended in the interest of the
farmers, though, as matter of fact,
it was intended only to fool them.
It has not added dollar to the sums
the farmers are receiving for their
crops. We knew that it would not
and we are confident that the large
majority of the men who voted for
it knew that it would not. In saying
this we are only presuming that con-
gressmen have as much intelligence
as high school boys. The duties on
agricultural products, with very few
only. They are intended to deceive
the farmers into the belief that some
thing is being done for other classes
at their expense.
Surely more than $4,000 farmers
have left the land for the cities in the
last decade. This movement has been
in progress for the last forty years
and the reason for it is not hard to
find. 1t is due to the fact that the
farmers are constantly taxed in the
interests of the manufacturers and
this. continued until farming did not
pay. The farmers were compelled
by the tariff to buy in the dearest mar
ket and sell in the cheapest AS re-
suit they played a losing game and
moved to the cities whose manufac-
turers they are helping to sustain.
They moved to the cities in the hope
of getting some of the crumbs from
the food they were supplying.
1t looks as if when a man gets to
congress he becomes obsessed with the
idea that the farmers are fools. He
makes the cheapest plays for them
under the impression that they will not
be able to detect his insincerity. He
is mistaken as to the class. The
farmers of the country are as intelli-
gent as the jewellers in the cities
We doubt whether one farmer in five
imagines that tariff can do anything
for him.
Politicians who pretend to represent
the farmers in many cases demand
tariff protection for them Political
organizations masguerading as agri-
cultural organizations make such de-
mands but the farmers, the real
farmers are not deceived Times.
Union
Did Corn Originate Here
While Florida does not cut much
inquire nationaIy as a corn produc.
ing state, there is good reason to be-
ieve that this cereal originated here.
Arthur Burbank has recently proved
by experiments extending over a,
period of eighteen years, that corn
is Simply development of the grass
called teosinte. His proof consists in
the actual production of corn by the
repeated process of selection. He
accomplished in eighteen years what
1t must have taken the Indians cen
lures to achieve There is a fun and
very interesting account of his latest
success in the current issue of the
Literary Digest.
Now, teosinte grows wild in Soutb
Florida. According to the article
quoted, it grows nowhere else in the
United States except where it is arti-
hcally cultivated. So far as we can
ascertain corn was not used by the
western Indians, but exclusively nv
those living in the Mississippi basin
and along the Atlantic and gulf coasts
as far north as Massachusetts. 1t was
extensively used in Virginia and the
Carolinas, and it is mentioned by some
OF the early explorers of Florida.
mere is no reason to suppose the
grass from whihc it was developed had
any wider range than it has now.
therefore. some progressive tribe
dwelling in this peninsula at some
very remote period must have begun
cuitlvating the teosinte, saving the
pest heads or ears, for seed, and
by a process produced a grain differ.
ing very widely from that of the orr
ginal grass, and vastly more valuable
as a food product. And the tribe
perhaps the Semindes, or possibly
tneir progenitors- must have been an
influential nation, carrying ON some
sort OF traffic with their northern
nolghD0rS, as result ne x,,h; ~ 49,.