The Henry County weekly. (McDonough, GA.) 18??-1934, January 31, 1908, Image 6

The Henry County weekly., January 31, 1908, Image 6

About The Henry County weekly. (McDonough, GA.) 18??-1934 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 31, 1908)

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Newspaper Page TextModern Farm Meiheds As Applied in the South. Notes of Interest to Planter, Fruit Grower and Stockman Second-Crop Potatoes. I see there is considerable discus sion in your paper about the second erop of Irish potatoes, and thought my experience might be worth some thing, especially to your Southern readers. You will remember that this crop Is hardly ever planted in the South «xeopt for home consumption, though there are some exceptions. I planted for family use a half bushel, one-half Triumph, the other Khrly Rose. They were planted at the usual time heye, about mid-Feb ruary. The crop was very good, making enough for a family of five persons, and when I dug them—some time in July—had five or six bushels. I took only the best ones and left the smaller ones, burying them pretty deep with the plow and plant ed the ground with Mexican June corn. The land had been well ma nured and in fine state o' cultivation; the corn grew rapidly and made a good crop. The potatoes began to come up by the time the corn wa3 laid by and I had them hoed clean. They look well now, with pretty good stand. We had our first mess on October 21; they were about the «iie of guinea eggs and of finer flavor. I have practiced this plan for several years and nearly always have plenty of fresh potatoes for fall and winter use. Last year I planted a small piece In potatoes in the spring and made plenty for home use all along and dug them in August. 1 left the small ones as usual. 1 gave the ground the fresh supply of manure and aowed turnips. These are line, hav ing enough to last, all winter and spring. In the spring the turnip 3 went to seed and I fed them to the rows and hogs. I then prepared the land again well, intending to plant Hubbard squash for fall use, but the continued rains delayed the planting about a month, when I discovered the ground full of young potatoes cooling up. As the land had been very thoroughly prepared I decided to leave the potatoes, plant hills of aqnashes among them and cultivate with the hoe. I got more potatoes and of better quality from that piece of ground than I did from the early planting. The quality was eminent ly superior to the others —in fact, I never saw finer. I doubt if this method would do in a more Northern latitude, but in the South it is the best way 1 have ever tried. ( have tried planting potatoes iu Ibe summer for the second crop in the usual manner, but have always failed to get them up on account of the hot, dry weather, but have never failed when I have adopted the plan described, and it seems that cultivat ing another crop like the Mexican June corn helps, as the corn shades them from the hot sun and that kind ©f corn matures very quick and ripens by the time the potatoes are ready to make. AU the weather prophets predicted .an early frost this year, but like all other prophecies men make there is no dependence on them. This is Oc tober 30, and as yet we have not had enough to kill cotton. There have heen two or three light frosts, hut no harm done. I saw green tomatoes In our garden this afternoon and we hive had plenty of them all along Hus fall. Chrysanthemums are in full bloom and our yards look as pretty as they did in the spring. We also have rose bushes and cape jes samine in bloom. Fall cabbage and turnips are fine, and with a little effort there is no need of a man in the South not having fresh vege tables on his table every day in the year.—John L. Evans. Franklin County, Miss., in the Country Gentle man. The Situation. The “outlook - ’ now is one of un certainty; none can tell how much of a panic we will have or how far reaching its effect will be. There is much talk “pro and con." and many schemes advanced to mend the situa tion. It is well that we check up and take our bearings. We have been going at too great a pace. The strain was too great. Every man was in such a haste to do —the labor was unequal to the task, hence wages be came demoralized and the laborer uncertain and hard to keep. This checking up is but the ‘ pendulum - ’ swinging back —obeying the great faw of nature. Our farmers should certainly quit many of their unbusi ness-like methods of obtaining labor. Do not go and pay indebtedness of hands to secure them, do not hire the hands of your neighbor. Get on the right lines. If you can not tend all your land by adopting right methods, sow it down or put in pas ture. Hay and cattle, oats and pea vines pay as well as cotton. Why should we strain every nerve to make so much cotton and then have such a hard fight to get a remunerative price for it? Go alow and go easier. If you will quit running after labor, labor will soon run after you. Every concession we have made has only served to put us more and more at their mercy. We gain nothing by the policy we have been pursuing. The majority of negroes want to rent or work on shares. Cut down thro amount of land per plow. No plow can cultivate well over twenty acres. If you rent them thirty, stipulate that ten acres is to be put in grain and sowed in peas. Do not rent your land and “let things go as they may,” insist upon terraces being built up, gullies being filled up, sprouting being done. The land being well broken and the work well done. En deavor to get up a spirit of rivalry among your tenants, a 3 to which Can make the most or cultivate his crop best. We notice in those communi ties where this spirit prevails, among tho landlords themselves, there you see the best farming. Make your plans better for 190 S, and do all you can to remedy the evils in our labor system. The scarcity of farm labor will not be so great. This industrial checking up will send many into the country; but do not spread out, only in grain and food crops. We do not want to raise any’ more cotton or we will not get over eight, or nine cents for it. Next sea son the struggle will be for ten cents, again.—Southern Culitvator. Cause For Thanks. Looking at the situation generally, the Southern farmers and planters, it seems to us, have much to be thank ful for as the result of the year’s work. The only dark spot on the re trospect is the tfhiount of money spent in commercial fertilizers. Fifty mil lion dollars spent in this way in the production of the crops is a large sum to provide out of the proceeds, and we fear that much of this has been unprofitably used. When our farmers and planters learn to make their crops by putting the land into a better physical and mechanical con dition by the use of leguminous crops more generally in their rotations and by the keeping of live stock to con sume all the fodder and forage crops which they make and can make whilst not materially reduc ing the area planted in staple crops, they will be able to dispense with much of the commercial fertilizer and yet make as good, nay, better, crops on their l*nd. Coupled with this, they must also learn to make better preparation of the land be fore planting the crops. The system so largely pursued in many sections of only partially breaking the land be fore planting and trusting to remedy this by subsequent cultivation is a bad one and ought to be abandoned. In connection with the use of legu minous crops as improvers of the land we notice in the report of the Department of Agriculture just re ceived that whilst in Delaware forty per cent, of the crop of cowpeas planted is plowed down, in Maryland thirty-five per eent. is plowed down, in Virginia twenty per cent, is plowed down, the average area plowed down in the cotton States is only from ten to fifteen per cent., thus showing that very much less of this crop so valuable for improving the land for the cotton crop is uti lized than ought to be the case. If the same proportion was plowed down as in Maryland or Delaware the sav ing on the use of commercial fer tilizers would be large.—Southern Planter. Dewberries. A bulletin from the North Caro lina Department of Agriculture says that the dewberry “does best on a soil that contains a large amount of sand.” If so, Florida sand ought to be as good as that of North Carolina to grow this twin-sister of the black berry. Some fine plates of dewber ries came up to the States’ Exhibit Building, at Jamestown Exposition, from two Of three of the Southern States, during the month of June, when the writer of this was acting as juror on perishable fruits, and they were fine eating, even off hand from the plates sent in for sampling. Moisture, humus, good drainage are essential in its cultiavtion, and a soil with a clay Subsoil is the ideal one. It is propagated by top layers and root cuttings and could easily be added to the small fruits of the home garden. Berlin authorities have passed a law putting a tax on cats, and now when one df them is found without the metal tag which shovrs that the tax has been paid it is chloroformed. THK 'PUL'PI‘I. A SCHOLARLY SUNDAY SERMON BY DR. N. M’GEE Y/ATERS. Subject: Joy in Work. Brooklyn, N. Y.—ln his series of sermons on “The Choice of a Pro fession,” the Rev. Dr. N. McGee Waters, pastor of the Tompkins Ave nue Congregational Church, Sunday preached on “How a Young Man May Find Joy in His Work.” He said in ihe course of his sermon: The story of labor is a checkered one. It is only in our highest civiliza tion that work is coming to its own. In his savage state man is the lazy animal. Indeed, it is not natural for any animal to work, save as it is driven to it by the whip of neces sity. This is the view of work we find embodied in the old Genesis story, where labor is set down as a punishment for Adam’s sin, where he is told, as he is driven from the Garden, “Thou shalt eat thy bread by the sweat of thy brow.” This is not only a very uninspired part of the Bible; but this sentiment certifies that it is a very old part. How labor was despised received its most signal illustration from the life of Christ. You remember how over the multitudes who heard Him, He cast a spell. All the people said that no man spake as He spake. The loftiest spirits pressed about Him and asked Him if He were the Messiah. Yet they scarcely could believe for joy. And what was the basis of their doubt? Their skepticism was all in that question of theirs, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” How could a workman be the real Saviour? They marveled at His wisdom. They con fessed that He spoke with authority. They followed Him as sheep follow a shepherd. But He was a carpen ter, and so the high and mighty set Him down for a fraud. It was be cause their eyes were holden that they mistook the dignity of toil for a disgrace. In some parts of the world that is still true. But increasingly the world is coming to honor the toiler, whether he works in a profession or a trade, and is correspondingly com ing to despise the idler, whether he be rich or poor. How much the United States has done with its democracy to bring this about, and with its great men, almost all of them coming from the cabin and the plow, we may never know. Certain it is that New England was the first country since the land of the ancient Jews in which it was counted respec table to earn one’s living. Little do we think, or have taken time to find out, how much our work contributes to our happiness. Work is a great character builder. I suppose most of us work in order to eat I suppose if we were gener ally asked, we would say that the first requirement we made of our labor was that it should clothe us, and feed us, and house us. That is the first requirement and tl.e lowest. The second and greatest require ment a man makes of his work, whether he knows it or not, is that it shall make a man of him. Your work must bring you bread, but no less it must bring you culture. Some how or other we are always pitying the boy who is born poor, or the young man who fails at college. It is a hardship and sometimes a pity. There is one man, however, more un fortunate than that young man, and that is the young fellow who is born in a silken nest and goes through col lege in an automobile. There is nothing wrong about a silken nest, and there is nothing bad about an automobile, except its trail. But you cannot raise an eagle in eiderdowm, and it requires far more of a man to amount to anything in college -who goes through it in an automobile instead of walking. We are so made that we must have struggle. The reason why rich men’s sons rarely amount to anything, is because they never develop their muscles. There is no teacher like work. It must bring him bread, but no less it must bring him culture. “The Man With the Hoe”-*—he needs not so much pity. Moses was a herdsman; David was a shepherd: Jesus was a carpenter; Benjamin Franklin knew no college —he was a printer’s devil; Robert Burns knew no leisure—he was a plowman; Lincoln wore no soft raiment; but these are our stars of the first magnitude. Even col leges can give culture only through work, and there are some things col leges cannot teach. Literature and history and the liberal arts are at last the ornaments of life; even read ing and writing and the rule of three are all named the “conveniences of life.” But these are fundamentals—in dustry, thrift, courage, honesty, truth, faith, hope, love. These are the threads which, woven together, make the eternal life of man. If you have forgotten these, “though you have gained the whole world, you have lost your own soul.” and these may be had for the receiving in every work and calling open to men. When you stand before a task, look for a teacher. Tf it offer thee not wisdom, despise its wage. If thy calling yieid thee not culture for mind and heart, it is but a coffin for thy better nature. Demand of your life work that it shall make a man out of you. Work is a great influence giver. And here we come upon another blunder. It is not the kind of work you do that gives you influence so much. That is what the world thinks. It is the way you do it. Quality counts for more than kind. It is true, of course, that there are some vocations that in themselves damn the worker. All labor that makes merchandise out of men’s vices is of that sort. It is true also that certain kinds of work give more consideration than others. The minister, because he is a min ister, occupies a larger place in the community than the day laborer. That is, he does if he ministers. His great calling will not serve in itself. Many a laborer in many a village has been more the voice of God to that village than the parson has been. For, after all, the thing that counts in influence is not money or posses sions. It is a quality, a thing, an at mosphere. It is personality. So the fineness of a man’s work, or the coarseness of it, is the thing by which he is at last judged in the community. There is a little town out in Min nesota called Rochester. A few years ago when I was thebe it only had a few hundred people in it. It was a nice little, commonplace, prairie town. It is not the capital of the State; it is not the seat of the uni versity; the penitehtiary is not even there; nor have they a church w T ith relic working miracles. It is not the home of a United States Senator, nor any politician. And yet it is the Pdecca of a pilarim host. From every State in the Union, from across the sea, from every capital and country of civilization men are journeying to Roffipster, Minnesota. And those who are going are the scholars, the authorities, the masters in surgery. What takes them there? Simply this: An old doctor by the name of Mayo has been practising in that little town for a generation. His two sons, now in early maturity, practise with their father. The fact is that they have been doing such marvelous things with the knife, and such fine ■work as surgeons, that the great mas ters from Paris, Berlin and Vienna, as well as this country, are singing their praise, and go out to that little town to sit at the feet of these men, and pay homage to the superiority of their work. It is always so. If you are re membered at all it is by the things you have done well—whether you have raised a field of corn, sewed a patch on an old garment, made a pumpkin pie, or written a poem. Work is the great happiness bringer. You all know what a game of nine pins is. You set up so many pins, and you roll tw r o balls, and you make a “strike” or a “spare,” or else you don’t. The game is to knock over as many pins as possible. Men become very skillful in it and gain a great deal of pleasure by doing it. That is the philosophy of all nlay. It is the erection of artificial difficul ties or barriers and learning to over come them with ease and skill. That Tnakes the exhilaration of tennis, and baseball, and howling and golf. I am told, and I do not know any thing about it myself, that therein lies the mania for making money. That is a great game. Now, in reality, work is just exactly the same thing. The difficulties to be over come are not. artificial, to be sure, but very real. But they are there, and work is the game of bridging them over with skill and ease and joy. In its final analysis, for a healthy man there is no game in the world so exciting and so exhilarating as his work. I suppose you long suffering folk who sit in the pews and are more or less at times tempt ed to somnolence, have never real ized that there tvas anything exciting about the preaching business. And yet I want to say to you that I know of no keener joy than when well and ready I take a theme and look it through and analyze it, and illustrate it, and mark out the points to be made in its illumina tion, and then sit down to write a sermon. Your fingers will not fly fast enough. If it turns out well there is a great exhilaration and state of happiness and joy. Making a sermon is a great game. Now the reason that there is so much happiness in work is because of this fact. All true work is a man expressing himself. We have gener ally thought that work is drudgery. We want to think about work as ex pressing a man’s message. Stephen son’s engine is Stephenson's thought dressed up in steel; Tennyson’s poem is Tennyson’s thought set down in letters; Watts’ “Hope” is Watts’ heart hunger put on canvas; St. Paul’s is Sir Christopher Wren’s praise to God put into stone. Why, then, shall not the house builder make his house declare his thoughts? Why shall not the blacksmith make his hammer and anvil express his hope? Why shall not the farmer pub lish his secret? Almost any man can learn the technical part of any w r ork from carpentry to poetry—but no man hath mastered a trade till it be comes a language through which he can express himself to all men. O, the drudgery of life lies in the fact that we bend above our work like dumb driven cattle with never a secret of our heart told in our work. And this shall be the joy of our life, that we make our vocation proclaim to all the world the truth that God hath put into our hearts! The Narrow Way. Matt. 7:13, 14. Narrowness is Christ’s idea of the way of life, a straitened way, the way of truth. For a moment pause and ask: Coif Id it be otherwise? It is 11 o’clock, the orthodox regulator at the watchmaker’s points with exactness to that hour. “Very narrow.” exclaim all the cheap timepieces of the neigh borhood, and they persistently point to all hours from 9.30 to midday, but their boasted liberality is only inex actness, which is another word for untruth. So orthodoxy in the harbor channel marks with exactness each rock of sunken hulk, and puts its danger sig nals out. A liberal pilot might be careless of these signals, but the pas senger would prefer that the pilot should be overcautious rather than too liberal.—H. E. Partridge, Pomo na, Tenn. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. INTERNATIONAL LESSON COM MENTS FOII FEBRUARY 2. Subject: Jesus the Saviour of the World, John 3:1-21—Golden Text, John 3:lo—Commit Verses 14-10—Commentary. TIME. —A. D. 27. PLACE.—Jeru gaje jjj EXPOSITION.—I. Look and Live. 14, 15. Nicodemus was the teacher of Israel (v. 10, R. V.) and yet he did not know the fundamental truth taught in the Old Testament as well as the New, namely, the doctrine of the new birth. But do all the teach ers in the church know it even now? There was no speculation or guess work about Jesus’ own teaching. Ho could say, “We speak that we do know and bear witness of what we have seen” (v. 12, R. V.). Nicodemus had asked Jesus, “How can these things be?” (v. 9). In the 14th and 15th verses Jesus answers Nicodemus’ Question how. He pointed him to how Mose 3 lifted up the brazen ser pent, made in the likeness of the fiery serpent that had bitten the people, on the pole (Num. 21:6-9). Just so, God has lifted Jesus, made sin far us, on the cross (Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13; John 12:31, 32). All the Israelite bitten by the fiery serpent had to do to find life was simply to believe in the power of the serpent on the pole to heal and to show his faith by just looking. So all we have to do is simply to believe in the power of Jesus, made in the likeness of sin ful flesh and lifted on the cross, to heal, and to show our faith by just looking. As soon as the Israelite looked he had life in his veins instead of death. So we have death in us until we look, but the moment we really look to Jesus, believe on Him, then we have life coursing in our veins; life—spiritual life— takes the place of death, we are “born again.” Cf. John 1:12, 13. The whole secret of the new birth lies in these three words, “Look and live.” The moment we look, we are in Christ Jesus, “Old things are passed away. Behold all things are become new” (2 Cor.. 5:17). There are two alternatives open to every man: Believe and have eternal life; doubt and perish. Any one who believes will obtain eternal life. Any one who doubts will perish (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:36). If. Why Jesus came, 16-21. Verso 16 has probably been used to the sal vation of more persons than any other verse in the Bible. It contains the Gospel in a nutshell. (1) The need of salvation —“shall not perish.” (2) The origin of salvation—God’s love. (3) The ground of salvation —the death of Christ (God gave His only begotten Son). (4) The condi tion of salvation—“believeth on Him.” (5) The recipients of salva tion —“Whosoever believeth.” (6) The results of salvation, (a) Shall not perish, (b) Shall have eternal life. The verse also contains a mar velous revelation of God’s love. (1) The objects of God’s love—“the world.” (2) The character of God’s love: (a) Great—holding nothing back. (b) Self-sacrificing—giving His very best, (c) Holy—not for giving sin without an adequate ex pression of His hatred of it. (3) The manifestation of God’s love, in the gift of His only begotten Son. (4) The purpose of God’s love—to save. (5) The result of God’s love —whosoever believes gets everlasting life. Verses 14 and 15 were spoken by Jesus Himself. He sneaks of Himself, as He usually did, as the “Son of Man,” Verse 16 is spoken by John, ancf he speaks of Jesus as the “only begotten Son.” It is com mon teaching nowadays that Jesus was the Son of God only in the sense that all men are sons of God, but the Bible clearly teaches that He was the Son of God in a sense that no other is the son of God. Jesus claims this for Himself (Mark 12:6, R. V.; John 5:22, 23; 14:9). God senL His Son into the world to save it—not to con demn it (v. 17), but wnoever will not receive Jesus is condemned, and con demned already. If we fall in with God’s purposes, then we are saved. If we reject God’s purposes of love, then He who came to save but brings the greater condemnation (cf. Heb. 10:28, 29). The one who rejects Jesus is condemned ALREADY. It. is not so much that the wrath of God is coming upon those who reject Jesus Christ at some future time, the wrath of God, the intense displeasure of God, already hangs over every one who rejects Jesus. If we continue to reject, the wrath of God will abide on us (v. 36). The moment we ac cept Jesus, we step out from under neath the dark thunder cloud of God’s wrath into the bright sunlight of God’s favor. God aimed to save the world. He made provision for the salvation of the world, but only those that accept the salvation are actually saved. Jesus is in a sense the Saviour of all men (1 Tim. 4:10). By His death He made propitiation for the whole world (1 John 2:2, R. V.). He provided the ground upon which God could deal in mercy and does deal in mercy with every mem ber of the human race, but He is es pecially the Saviour of those who be lieve. They alone appropriate to themselves and therefore enjoy in full the salvation which Jesus pur chased by His blood (Rom. 3:25, 26). The condemnation that comes on the one who does not believe is just and inevitable. He has chosen darkness rather than light. The only begotten Son came, the incarnation of all the perfect attributes of God, and he would not have Him. What a man does with Jesus shows what the man is at heart. What a man chooses al ways shows what a man is. If we choose truth, then we are true. If we choose falsehood, then we are false.