Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1924-09-17
Starve the Rascals

what it should be. The farmer
is entitled to fair profit on ev-
cry pound he produces Of cot
ton. as well as other farm prod
ucts. In fact. if there is any one
who has right to expect a long
profit, its the farmer.
His profession is gamble
from the time he breaks ground
until his last ounce of crop is
sold. He CANDLES with hail and
bugs and worms and seed and
labor and many other elements
that go into the making of crop.
By all the laws of commerce, he
should receive the largest mar
gin-but he doesn't.
However, that's a condition
over which there seems to be no
immediate control. The one
bright cloud in the sky today is
that we have made a large crop
in Sumter this year. With cot
ton selling at today's market,
what a calamity it would have
been had things been otherwise.
Had we made short crop this
year, as last, and been COM
PEELED to sell it at 20 cents or
2 cents, the farmers would have
been in a deplorable condition.
1t would have locked the wheel
of every industry in the county.
While deplorable the price of
cotton today, we should thank
our good fortune that instead of
a l0,000-bales crop. we have
twice that amount, and maybe
more.
But for the work of the poi
son squad" on every acre in
the county, the crop would not
be what it is today. One large
farmer said to us the other day:
I am making better than three
times what | made last year; |
have poisoned seven times and 1T
HAS PAID ME. know what
am talking about. Almost daily
was over every acr4 of my farm.
| saw weevils today poisoned
the next day and the third day
the weevils were gone. They
would have eaten me up but for
calcium arsenate. I have raised
cotton all my life, but never
again will l fail to poison"
And others hearing this re-
mark. stated that their expert
ences were the same. Among
those four or FIVE farmers, the
Opinion as to the necessity of
poisoning was unanimous.
Next year we must produce
more cotton than this year. Ii
can be done. 1t must be done,
and now is the time to start.
Destruction of stalks now is the
all important task in front of us.
Other counties already have or
ganized countrywide stalk-de-
struction campaign. Sumter
should do the same. These
stalks must be cut down and de-
stroyed some time. If not now,
then in the spring.
All weevil experts agree that
stalk destruction is one of the
most effective and one of the
least expensive of the measures
necessary to control the pest. Its
value is no longer problematical.
1t is fact.
The Albany Herald, which
fought the weevil as persistently
and effectively as any other pa
per in the State, has this to saw
of stalk destruction:
Boil weevils remain in the cot
ton fields until frost drives them
s INTO winter quarters. They then
seek hiding places in woods,
fence rows and other places of
refuge adjacent to the fields
from which they fly. They go
no farther in quest of winter
quarters than is necessary for
them to travel.
If green cotton stalks are left
standing in the fields till the first
frost, adult weevils have an
abundance Of food. They there
fore go into Information 'fat and
ut, with excellent chances of
surviving winters cold. But if
their natural food supply is re-
moved through the destruction of
cotton stalks, one Of two things
inevitably follows: the pests are
either half starved when hiberna-
ton begins, making the chances
Of their survival of winter rigors
remote, or they fly far away
from the neighborhod in which
cotton stalks have been destroy
ed, seeking their natural food.
They will travel many miles on
such a quest. The result is that
when spring brings the pests from
Information, there are none in
the natural hiding places adjacent
to the fields from which cotton
stalks were removed early in the
preceding fall, and the new cot