The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1937-05-21
THE soUTHs RURAL OPPORTUNITIES


A staff writer for The Christian Science
Monitor sums up some observations on the
South with these paragraphs:
In all the South there are these opportunities
to establish, on fertile lands now unoccupied and
unproductive, farm homes for millions of men,
women and children who becoming habtuat-
ed to a charity system destructive as the dole
1t does not require generation, time is care
lessly measured, to produce a generation of these
classed first as unemployed and soon as unem-
playable. The careless mortgaging of the votes
of ten or twenty million men and women, with
the interest payable once in two or four years,
is threatening to bring the nation to actual
moral and financial bankruptcy
Are we to continue to invest in such hazard
Gus and economically unsound experimental pro-
cesses? We should take care lest we become mis-
led and deceived by the cry of overproduction
of orchard and farm crops and the consequent
destruction of so-caled commodity price levels.
Let those who become able to produce the addi-
tional crops consume them, as they will do large
", without greatly nterrupting the none too
stable flow of competing commodities There are
vast areas of rich land in the Caronas, Georgia,
Florida and their sister states that can be put to
better use than building sidewalks and roads.
The Times-News quotes the foregoing
because this newspaper believes certain
truthful statements are made and certain
logical conclusions are reached by this
Monitor writer.
Let us note some of them with the hope
of impreSsing them on any and all citizens
of the South who may read these state
ments.
First, there is the assertion that there is
the opportunity here in the South to es-
tablish on farm lands many families, who
might become reasonably prosperous and,
certainly, happy, in years to come in the
ownership of homes and in the production
of their own means of subsistence as we'll
as marketable crops.
This writer has common-Sense and fun
damentaily sound view of this matter. Let
us not be deceived by the inspired clamor
against ver-production. The people who
could be settled on lands now unoccupied
in the South would produce, primarily, for
home consumption. The basis of this rural
development would be the conviction that
farming is a way of life, not scheme for
conditions
The Monitor writer is evidently cOnsid-
ering this matter from the standpoint, in
the first place, of the unemployed popula-
ton of the South. Here is Opportunity
calling, he says, to millions who are be-
coming habituated to charity system as
destructive as the dole. The inevitable re-
suit will be the transforming of the unem-
ployed into unemployables.
The writer brands the present method
of handling the problem as "The careless
mortgaging of the votes of the ten or TWEEN
ty million men and women" with interest
payable in election years, and with moral
and financial bankruptcy the certain re-
suit for the nation. -r. ~
The predicted outcome of hazardous
and economically unsoundP experiments is
financial and moral bankruptcy. not only
in the South but on national scale; but
our study of the matter is confined to thu
South.
The South has fertile lands-and Other
lands, perhaps lacking fertility, but which
can be made fertile. We have some mil
lions of people of our own population who
ought to be living on, cultivating and pro
dueing abundantly on these acres. Fur
thermore, they ought to be the owners o.
these lands, or in a position to confidentl!
look forward to ownership. This, we know
and admit, is our problem. a.
That progress has been made in finding