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- ■ a aS®. JM w ’ 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 1 W I aw r -wSMfc / \ nlv 1 \v / A l A*i.i\ 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