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What follows? Suicide and death, not among
the fanners lmt almost entirely among the wage
earners and frenzied financiers. Pay day never tails
to come to those who work for the wages of sin.
If you would be happy, if you would he indepen
dent and manly, if you would have your children so.
you who have no competanee in the city must return
to the farm.
The cry <>f hard times on tin* farm is heard less
than anywhere else, and usually responsibility tor
it rest s alone with tin* parties who complain.
The following letter from one <> 1 tin* most successful
farmers of the State is a frank expression of the
situation. It points every young man bound up
by poverty and the conditions of the cities to the
country, where alone may be found that manliness
of character and purity of heart that makes life
worth the living:
“The cry of hard times is so prevalent and so
many are disposed to charge to others tin 1 respon
sibility for their own unfortunate condition that 1
am prompted to mention some things which I have
learned by experience and observation concerning
hard times, and 1 shall deal in a good many personal
reflections because I take myself to be about an
average man of the many who had to grow up in
Georgia years ago with scarcely no education.
What education I have 1 got by reading after my
day's work was done.
“I am G 8 years of age and have consequently
seen several panics. During every one of these
panics I have noticed that in my community there
were some men who were not touched by the in
fluence of the hard times. They knew nothing of it
except as they heard of it. They had money to buy
what they needed and usually some to loan to those
who had not. These were men who worked and
who saved- in season and out of season—who al
ways made more than they spent. I have also ob
served that those who were loudest in their cry of
hard times during periods of depression were most
silent in their cry for work during periods of pros
perity, were slowest with the plow, the hoe and the
scythe, and the most lavish in the expenditure of
their earnings.
“These observations lead me to declare that
‘hard times’ is naturally the cry of the indolent and
the wasteful; that real panics (the present one is
imaginary) are the results of indolence and extrava
gance. I write from the farmer's standpoint, first
because 1 am a farmer and second because I believe
that here we have a basis sufficiently broad to cover
the whole situation, especially in the South.
“They tell me there are ‘hard times’ and that
the Government is to blame. There may be hard
times. I do not know. I have a good house. I have
plenty to live on. I have money to pay for what I
want, and money loaned out. I mention these things,
not boastfully, but to prove my point—that for the
industrious saving farmer there is no such thing as
‘hard times’ now. That thing is forever past. Let
me give a hit of personal history, to explain how
il is that 1 have these things.
“1 moved to Haralson county shortly after the
war, a poor young man. newly married. I bought
a place in the ‘piney woods' for S6OO and had not
a dollar to pay down. 1 gave as the first payment
a nice young mare and my notes for the balance of
pa vment.
THE REASON
“This left me only a yoke of oxen with which
to work. This place was a plot of land consisting
of 126 acres, part of it not suited for cultivation.
I am a farmer, not a planter. I have never in any
one year cultivated more than 50 acres.
•‘Here in the woods at a distance of eight miles
from Tallapoosa and forty miles from Lome, the
nearest market, my wife and I began to build a home.
Three children were born to us. two boys and a
daughter. Loth boys were taken away before they
had ever lived to help me in the struggle for a liveli
hood. We began to work. We could not make cot
ton. The market was too distant. I ploughed my
steers and made what we had to eat and we had an
abundance of everything necessary to sustain life.
I raised corn, wheat, oats, sorghum, millet, potatoes,
vegetables and all kinds of live stock, after getting
startl'd. I split over two miles of rail fence and
kept this fence up for years. Aly wife worked, and
worked hard, making all our clothing, there was
nowhere to buy it.
“I was 28 years of age at that time. When I
was 56 years old 1 moved to’Tallapoosa. In the
twenty-eight years intervening I bad acquired suffi
cient property to have enabled me to live without
work for the remainder of my life, had 1 so chosen,
but I am still at work. I sold the old place, bought
nine acres of land within the city limits upon which
I make as great a yearly income as I formerly made
on my larger place.
“I have laid aside the ‘home-spun' clothes for
‘store-bought. ’ and am not denying myself comforts.
It is not necessary for a Georgia farmer to do so.
“1 have told this to show that what I have, I
have earned in the sweat of my brow, have made
with my own hands and not as profit on the labor
of other people. Moreover, this little story, with
very few alterations, will truthfully represent the
achievements of many other prosperous Georgians.
I wish also to add that I have oppressed no one. I
have dealt exact justice to all, and mercy to whom
mercy seemed to be due. Hard times and corn a
dollar a bushel ! I am selling it at that price—so
are others—and I made it at the age of 67 with my
own hands on three acres of bottom land. I have
sold many bushels and have more to sell. The Gov
ernment to blame! Surely not, unless it is its duty
to send Georgia farmers to the field, scourged to
their tasks, as Pharaoh did the Israelites. These
farmers who cry ‘hard times’ ought to have cribs
full of dollar corn, and have nobody but themselves
to blame that they have not. The Government has
nothing to do with it.
“1 submit it as a fact proved by history and ex
perience that he who works steadily, industriously
and wisely, who lives honestly, who saves what he
can. will never know the sting of hard times. ‘Hard
times’ are born of indolence and wastefulness. He
who labors little in youth and middle age must eat
little in old age or eat the fruit of another’s labors.
“Finally, I will say for the benefit of those who
will say that this does not touch the man who works
at factories, and that he is dependent on their run
ning for a livelihood, that no man is bound to take
chances on his living by staying at factories; at any
rate., not yet. in Georgia. Let those who do not like
their conditions at the factories test the surety of a
living by the farmer’s life. There is sufficient arable
land in Georgia for every male inhabitant at present
! in the State to make his living farming. No, this