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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 ! • $ • - ' i - ■ a Sy SAM W. SMALL » '■ ii | ‘ I 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 ft 'I 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. 7