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Established 1866.
THE FARM.
For the Rural Southerner.
Land-Owners and Farm-Tenants of the
South.
The harmonious adjustment of the business
relationship between these two classes, is
one of the most important tasks now before the
country. It is very poorly understood by
either, being an almost entirely new one in our
section —dating as it does since the emancipa-
tion of the slaves, prior to which
there were many hundreds, if not
thousands of our counties, in
which there was not one farm
rented for cultivation. The inter
ests involved in it are of the first
magnitude, being nothing less than
the production of our food and
money crops. It is a matter for
eight millions of white people and
about four millions of freed peo
ple to grapple with and regulate
with the least possible delay.
Our God-given heritage of rural
training and pursuits will languish
more and more, and soon fall into
decay, if the farm industries are
not carried on without jarring and
strife.
To possess one’s “ own ground’’
—and that a rural home—-is one
of the purest and most ennobling of
worldly aspirations ;• and it is a
longing decidedly characteristic of
our English ancestry. Lord Jef
frey, the eminent critic, essayist,
and jurist, has stated, that no
matter what an Englishman’s
avocation may be, he looks for
ward to a homo in the country, as
one of the chief objects of his ex
ertions, on which to spend tran
quilly his latter days. Cicero,
Rome’s patriot orator, and her great poets,
Horace and Virgil, have borne grateful testi
mony in their lives and writings, in favor of
country life. And so also has many a Southern
Governor, and several Southern Presidents.—
Moses, the law-giver, led for years “ a pastoral
life”—tending the flocks of his father-in-law.
Southern white people, by all their precedents,
are most strongly bound to country pursuits ;
and following them, they have spent the greater
part of this century in singular tranquillity and
agricultural usefulness. Also, the freedmen in
our midst, are the l>est trained class on the
globe, to endure the simplicity snd frugality of
PUBLISHED BY THE SOUTHEBH PUBLIS BEUST Gr COMPAHY.
farm life, as well as to be content with its plain
rustic sports. What citizen enjoys his gaslight
pastimes, as keenly as do the plantation freed
men of the torchlight and forest ?
Well, now, with the same country, and the
same land-owners, as a general thing—for owing
to the scarcity of money, it has been impossible
to sell much land since the war; and with the
same laborers, for the most part, for it has for the
identical reason, been impracticable for many of
them to move far from their old homes, or even
to enter homesteads of government land at the
cheap rates; why can’t we have a revival of
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LIGHT BRAHMAS—PROPERTY OF WM. McNAUGHT, Ji., ATLANTA, GA.
prosperity and happiness? It is for the want of
harmony, growing out of not duly understanding i
the rental system, by either owner or renters,
for the main hindrance. A minor, yet consid- J
erable cause, is the loss of temper by so great a
number of the ex-dhveholders : they feeling
that the northern Government had cruelly
despoiled them of a very excessive and unrea
sonable share of their property, lapsed into
bitterness and desperation of soul ; and at last
they came, very improperly—though too like
frail humanity when perplexed with deep dis
tress—to mistake the passive mediums of their
trouble, for the active agents of it, What folly*;
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, APRIL, 1875.
They are as innocent of it as so many Africans
in the jungles back of Saharah. The negroes
like the partially civilized Indians of Central
and South America, nat orally look up to the
w’hite man. They have committed some excesses;
but can any rational Southerner wonder at it,
considering'the suddenness of their change from
slavery, and the way they were misled by the
carpet bag tribe ? Suppose we change our tac
tics, and try to tutor and encourage them awhile.
See how the natives of Africa for years fed,
protected and honored the old explorer and
missionary Livingstone, because he was a pious
white man. Many a freedman knows far more
of the horrors he escapes, in living out of his
fatherland, and among Christian white people,
than the whites are genetallly aware of: the
terrible beasts and serpents, the remorseless
home slavery, and even the not infrequent hor
rid cannibalism. Although they cannot build
a great city like London, nor a ship like the
Great Eastern, nor span oceans with telegraphs,
they are a good people in their way, under the
instruction and guidance of white men. They
are patient, hardy, docile and almost inperturba
bly good-humored ; it is slated in a Northern
school book, that they have a skin and complex-
Terms, SI.OO a Year.
ion given them by Providence, to enable them
to endure work in hot climates, of which the
scientific explanation is given ; to all which,
add their excellent special training for the culti
vation of our crops, through their late slavery.
But the freedmen also, are to some extent
dissatisfied, owing both to deceivers already
mentioned, and to blunders of the Government.
They think that they should have been supplied
with gifts of land, live-stoek, and provisions for
the first year, when they were set free. But
this the rulers could not do, after a war which cost
the whole nation seven or eight thousand mil-
lions of dollars (or more, accord
ing to a late foreign statistician). —
The land-owners cannot afford to
do it, since their lands are all that
was left to them, and these have
fallen much below even the former
low prices of our section—indeed,
in many localities are unsaleable.
But the owners of the plantations
of course want them cultivated ;
and the freedmen need lands to
work, that are cleared, ditched
and fenced—or ready at once to
make crops on. Then, let the two
classes study and try to promote
each other’s welfare, as unselfishly
as possible.
Let landlords rent on long time,
and thus, as well as by kindly
providing for the comforts of ten
ants, lead them to feel like they
were ut home. Why, in England
and Scotland the usual length of a
farm lease is nineteen years ! And
instances are recorded of farmers
renting the same farmers over
again for such time, making 38
years !
Our landed proprietors would
do well to at least try seven years,
conditional upon dutiful conduct
of tenants, of course. Also to
scatter their houses, so that each
family might enjoy a decent degree of privacy
which is an inestimable privilege of country
life. And besides gardens, encourage them to
bring on fruit trees and vines ; and to raise
pigs, poultry and cattle—all on reasonable
shares.
When one does a wrong, if not a serious one,
first try the reproof of pleasantry, of some kind;
or point him to how hard the Caucasian people
can be on each other, and kindly warn him that
if he and his race should fail to do well, these
arbitrary whites, eager to live in a country
where cottton, rice, sugar etc., can be raised,
and lands are cheap, will crowd into the