Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-04-03
THE COUNTRY HOME
w. H. FELTON,

those few might have been behind the scenes
if the facts had been exposed. That people
of intelligence and good character can af-
ford to sit still and be thus over is past
understanding.
If this is the aftermath Of war, we seem
to be heading towards another French reVo-
luton, where JacObins kept the guillOtine
running every day in the week and Sunday,
too. The wife of Marquis Lafayette, Gen
eral Washingtons friend, lost her mother
and aged grandmother-their heads thus cut
from their bOdies-With a bowling crowd to
look at the execution, and dip their necktes
in their blood. And Lafayette, the promoter
of liberty in France well as in America,
was imprisoned seven years in OlmutZ
prison, for otherwise he would have lost his
own head. The decentralization following this
Worlds war cannot be revealed this side of
eternity in it's fulness with truthfulness.
The sacrifice of billions Of money does not
compare with the sacrifice of our young
men in foreign graves and the destruction
of morals, and this rule of the reds here.
THE FARMING OUTLOOK IN NORTH
WEST GEORGIA
a NEIGHBOR called to see me yesterday
~ and gave me a picture of farm con-
- ditions that would keep me awake at
night, if I could afford to take it so hard
and get sick over it.
A white family moved on the neighbours
place before Christmas, and they remained
until early in March and then moved off.
Not a single thing did these white tenants
do, for themselves or the landowner, but
burn wood, and go to town to amuse them
selves. They had no interest in cutting
bushes opening bitches or stopping gullies.
For nearly three months, the tenants did alb
soIutely nothing towards getting ready for
crop. They didn't even prepare a plant bed
for themselves in the garden, free of rent,
Here was a strapping white man, with
children old enough to help him with
good crop, and this lazy creature deliberate
ly deceived the landlord and did not have
the manners to say "thank you" when he
left the premises.
I have been too aiHng to expose myself to
the cold weather, and my neighbor said,
when leaving, "you ought to see how they
are wasting the wood on your place." I re-
marked, 81 cannot help it." I had been SO
badly treated last year by the same sort of
tenants, that I could only shut my mind to
it, and try to forget it.
This land of ours is enormously taxed,
state and county. To this is added an OPP
pressive local school tax to provide free edu-
cation for just such people as my neighbor
described to me and which l am detailing
to you.
1t would be silly to expect anything like
moderate crop under such conditions. [ am
here to say: such farming land is liability,
certainly not an asset. If you cannot sell
it, you wear out your strength and patience
to trouble with it. liza
l must divert my mind from such worries
% LOON up the COuSI eSSlOndI h6COrQ OIL
March IS, and which contained a speech by
Senator BOrah, in which he said: There
could be no task, more agreeable to this
congress, than that of lifting this stupen-
dous tax burden which is now crushing the
American people 1t should enlist our in
diVidual purpose and call for our most
earnest effort. Homes are being sold all
over this country because the owners can
mot pay the taxes. Business men are dis
tressed because they are unable to pay their
taxes. Farms upon which people have lived
more than half a century-(I have been liv-
Ing on such a farm more than seventy
years -gtVing their time and their industry
in the effort to raise families and make a
home, see them now passing away from
them, by reason of tax sales. The tax bur
den of this country is one Of the most dis
couraging and demoraHzing conditions
which confront us from an economic and
also moral standpoint. 1t would be diff
cult to command language to describe the
condition of the agricultural interests
through the great fifteen northwestern agri-
cultural states. In one agricultural state
there were 5000 items in a single newspa-
per advertising property for sale be-
longing to farmers. | have made this state
ment before. l have been written to, to find
if it was 600 rather than 5000 1t was not
an error, it was the truth. The farmer is
now approaching the time when he must
prepare for crop, and he does not know
what to do"
1 might so on for another page 20 remind
the country home readers of the state of
the country in the far west. What concerns
us, is the state of Georgia. And unless win
ter let's go, and the farmers can get time to
plant cotton by the middle of April, the cot
ton crop will be cut off to the minimum No
need to sound an alarm in the newspapers
to cut off acreage. In large measure it is
already cut off, without intending it.
To pay enormous taxes with corn and
fodder will mean virtual con1scation; and if
the price Of cotton had not been high for
a year past the sheriff weuld have to col
lect the taxes from the sale of the land
and then what?
The armistice came on November IL,
1918. We are paying the same old war
taxes; and although We have millions APP
proprlated for schools Georgias illiteracy
is the talk OF the nation.
To one who saw the uplift that came to
Georgia after the Civil war by reason of in
dustry and bedrock economy, it looks as if
the time has come to call on our Heavenly
Father to save US from a rolling wave of
bankruptcy and financial ruin.
OTTTT