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HOW TO INTEREST MEMBERS.
President E. A. Calvin of the Texas
State Union has issued a suggestive
program for the locals in his state, the
object of which is to make the local
meetings interesting alike to both old
and young, as well as instructive.
Such parts as apply to conditions gen
erally we produce as follows:
1. Call to order by the president.
2. Opening in ritualistic form.
3. Music, either vocal or instrument
al.
4. Opening address.
5. Suitable songs.
6. Recitations.
7. Song or music.
8. Debate on some live question.
9. Song or music.
10. A few three-minute talks.
11. Business.
12. Good of the order.
13. Closing song.
14. Ritualistic work.
In this connection he has suggested
some live questions for debates.
The warehouse system and its bene
fits.
Is production greater than consump
tion?
Should farmers keep complete rec
ords of all their transactions, and
how?
Should agriculture, stock raising and
horticulture be taught in the country
schools?
Should we have free text-books fur
nished by the state?
Does gambling in futures affect the
price of farm products or interfere
with the law of supply and demand?
Is it fair to the farmer for the gov
ernment to furnish to the world an
estimate of crop production without al
so giving to the world an estimate of
consumption?
If the middle men are eliminated,
how will farmers finance the move
ment of their crops?
What are the advantages of owning
elevators and warehouses by the farm
ers?
Should farmers have a governing
price and control markets for the dis
tribution of their crops?
Will cheap labor have a tendency
to lessen the demand for and cheapen
farm products?
Can farmers own market houses and
distribute to consumers the products
of the farm and conduct the shipment
to central markets?
Can trade arrangements be made be
tween labor unions in the cities and
farmers whereby the profits going to
unfair middle men will inure to the
benefit of both the producer and the
consumer?
Can Peter Tumble Down, who leaves
his stock and tools to the ravages of
the weather, compete with Paul Up
To Date, who feeds and shelters his
stock, paints his buildings and keeps
his farming tools in the dry?
OUR COTTON MONOPOLY SAFE.
(The Charlotte Observer.)
We are hardly disposed to credit
the report from Berlin that the Ger
man government has offered to appro
priate $12,500,000 to encourage cotton
growing in Germany’s colonies, pro
vided the German manufacturers shall
raise a sum at least as large. All
English, German and French efforts
to break our cotton monopoly have
hitherto met with so little success that
further experiments, on such a scale as
the Berlin report indicates, seem very
unlikely at this time. Though these
projects have ranged over the entire
period since the civil war and no
promising part of Asia, Africa, or trop
ical America has been left untried,
Texas today produces about as much
as all non-American countries com-
! SAMSON AND HIS SLAIN !
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Sy SAM W. SMALL »
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i(! Behold a capitol bulk splendidly jj
(!• On yonder hill! The morning sun’s rich flame W
S; Swathes the fine figure we for Justice name, 4
While underneath statecraft grinds drowsily!
But all around “the fierce democracie,”
The people, rich or poor, or swift or lame, p
ij! Fight madly for the stakes of Freedom’s game— j)!
The gains of Greed against God’s equity ! "t!
if
ft My Spirit’s vision comes! I seem to see ft
ij! A new-found Samson stand within the door ft
$ And rend the lion that usurped the State; j!
!; He calls his brethren to new liberty, $
And richly feeds the spoliated poor !j
ft With food that erst the slaughter’d lion ate ! ft
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bined. The southern states produce
over three-fourths of the world’s crop.
It is true that some of these experi
ments have apparently demonstrated
the possibility of success in case such
hindrances as the unattractiveness of
the regions in question for white col
onists, lack of transportation facilities,
and difficulty in securing suitable labor,
are removed, but in the meantime lit
tle can be done. At best, the work of
clearing the way for really impor
tant competition with the American
grower must be tedious and expensive,
and the utmost possibilities of any of
these regions are no more than a
fraction of the south's. It is no cause
for wonder that English spinners are
coming around to the view that, after
all, the required increase in the
world’s supply must be sought almost
entirely in the southern states for a
long time to come. The proposal to
buy cotton lands and cultivate them
will probably come to naught, as it
should, but this is beside the question.
If the foreign spinner will only help
southern growers to secure the labor
they need, his problem will have been
solved for an indefinite period. The
unquestioned ability of southern soil
to yield crops several times as large as
the largest yet yielded is an assur
ance that the tropics need not be re
quisitioned to keep the spindles of
.the world from going hungry.
Not only can the south, granted suf
ficient labor, supply the increasing de
mand for «®tton, but the foreigner
will have no difficulty in getting his
share. The constitution of the United
States forbids export duties, and so
long as business is business whoever
comes down with the price will get
the goods without the least regard to
nationality or whether he is Teuton,
Colt, Dago, Slav or Mongol. Inas
much as the American spinner must
bld against the foreigner, talk about
"surplus available for export”—a
phrase properly applicable almost
solely to tariff-protected products—has
a rather empty sound in this connec
tion. King Cotton’s subjects abound
throughout the earth, but his throne
is immovably fixed in the southern
states of the American Union.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
FARMERS’ PREP SCHOOLS.
There is no question about the cor
rectness of the view of President Bar
rett, of the Farmers’ Union, that the
"district institutions” recently estab
lished are intended by those at the
head of educational affairs in this
state, not as the generous gifts to
the farmers that they purported to be,
but simply as feeders to the omniver
ous state university. This was from
the first the idea held of this scheme
by the News and Sun and many others,
but was stoutly denied by those back
of the plan. Now that the schools
have been bid in by different commu
nities at a high price, denial is no
longer considered so necessary, as a
recent frank acknowledgement of one
of the strongest advocates of the uni
versity shows.
The Darien Gazette says:
“Some people object to calling those
agricultural schools colleges. We don’t
think the name amounts to anything.
If these schools turn out good farmers
why it matters not what you call
them.”
Whereupon the Savannah Press, ed
ited by Hon. Pleasant A. Stovall, an
ex-trustee of the university and ac
quainted with all its workings, re
plies:
"These district institutions are really
schools. In their nature they are pre
paratory. They cannot confer diplomas
and they are designed merely to open
the way for farmer boys to begin the
study of agriculture and kindred
branches. If they do their work well,
it doesn’t make any difference what
you call them, and the point made by
the Darien Gazette is a good one.”
There you have it. Schools or col-,
leges, or simply “institutions,” they
are not intended to turn out farmers,
but “merely to open the way for farm
er boys to begin the study of agri
cultural and kindred branches.” Af
ter they have thus consumed four
years in "beginning.” they can go to
the big college at Athens and take a
fresh start.
. That isn’t the way they talked to
the Griffin people when they were
down here trying to get us to make
a big bld for one of those nondescript
institutions; but that’s the way they
talk now that the whole matter has
been fixed. —Griffin News.
THE BUCKET SHOPS.
(The Hondo Herald.)
It is claimed by the defenders of
the dealing in futures that the future
dealers and bucket shop manipulators
help the farmers by stepping in and
maintaining prices when the cotton
spinners have supplied their demands,
thus avoiding the slump in prices which
would inevitably follow the satisfying
of the demands for raw cotton were
the price governed alone by the natur
al law of supply and demand. They
claim that for this reason the ex
changes should have the support of
the farmers, and at first blush it does
look reasonable. But let us examine
into this claim a little. If the exchange
can maintain a fictitious value for a
surplusage of cotton can they not
just as easily depress the price of it
while the bulk of it is in the hands of
the farmers and thus compel the pro
ducers to sell for less than its true
value? The deduction that they can
and do is but a natural one. Now,
manifestly, it is dangerous to leave in
the hands of any set of men the power
to depress the price of cotton below
the cost of production while the same
is still in the producer’s hands
and advance it above its natur
al and normal value after it
has left the producer’s hands and be
fore it. gets to the spinner. And yet
this is virtually the power the advo
cates of these gambling speculators
claim they possess. The exchanges
should be as summarily destroyed as
were the lotteries and other gam
bling devices.
WHAT BAD ROADS COST.
(Birmingham Age-Herald.)
From 1894 correspondents the de
partment of agriculture has ascer
tained a number of facts of interest to
southern farmers. For example, it
has ascertained that in 47 counties in
Alabama the average weight of cotton
on a farmer’s wagon going to market
is 1,443 pounds, or three bales; that
the actual cost of carrying that load
to market is $2.77, or nineteen cents a
hundred pounds, or nearly a dollar a
bale.
Statistics showing the expense of
hauling cotton were gathered from 555
counties, out of 800 in the cotton belt.
The average cost of hauling was as
certained to be $2.76 a load, or six
teen cents a hundred pounds.
The cost of hauling cotton from the
farms to shipping points could be re
duced one-half by improving the
roads. Better roads would enable the
farmer to carry six bales to market,
whereas he now carries but three, and
this would reduce the average cost of
hauling to eight cents a hundred
pounds, or forty cents a bale. This
alone would be a saving in the cotton
belt of $4,000,000. Tennessee has the
best roads in the south, and the roads
in the Carolinas are pretty good, but
not much praise can justly be award
ed to the roads of this state or those
in Mississippi or Arkansas.
INTERESTING ITEMS.
The average daily wage of Norwe
gian printers is 93 cents.
Aunt Salome Sellers of Deer Isle,
106 years of age, is now the oldest
woman in the state of Maine.
The silk industry of the United
States now employs 79,600 operatives
and is using $109,556,621 capital. A
few years ago the United States did
not have any "silk industry.”
Chinese cities object so strongly to
additional openings being made in
their walls that the new railways are
compelled to build their stations just
outside. Neither railways nor trains
can enter the cities.
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