FARM LIFE
For many years the farmer has been the laughing stock of the country. The conduct of his farm and his business methods have brought him more gibes and thrusts than are brought to any other professional class. The late Booker T. Washington described the characteristics of his class many years ago. The poor old mule or horse and often the ox, hitched to a single plow, scratching the earth with as much effectiveness as an old Plymouth Rock rooster would scratch for newly planted oats. The farmer follows behind this slow plodding plow in tatters and rags, illy fed, too often diseased with hook worm or some other infectious malady.
His road sides and ditch banks for ten or twenty feet back are filled with weeds and shrubby growth to sap the vitality from the growing crops in their proximity. He has stagnant pools all over his patch in wet weather to further deplete the growth of his crops that may be left from the weeds by the roadside and ditch banks.
His home, the home of the old farmer, is the last thing to which any attention need be given. He has followed his methods for “Fifty years or more.” He has cotton right up to the door, potatoes, peanuts or corn filling the yard. No place is left for flowers or ornamentation of any sort. The old log house, just a place in which to sleep and in which to hide when it storms outside. It has only two rooms for a large family. The old man is in tatters, the wife is in tatters and the children are in tatters, I have seen many, the least of the little ones, as naked as they came into the world.
The implements of such a farmer never saw shelter or protection from the weather from the time they were bought from the store until they had been disintegrated by rust and rot and had gone back into the original mother earth to rest forevermore.
The farmer himself had a personality that was uninviting and dirty. He thought the good Lord had created him for just the sort of life he was eking out, and he eschewed all progress. Good roads and decent schools were things he never needed and he would not consent for such improvements if they cost him anything. The old mongrel hen was good enough because she could roost in the trees and lay at the same time. The pinewood rooters were all right because they could make their living by eating pine roots and other people’s crops. A half dozen dogs were useful to feed. The old cow was still kept in the family because of the ancestral history and not because of her utility.
Slipshod methods in business have been the handicap of more farmers than all the evils attending them. We very often receive congratulatory letters from business men on our farmers’ programme and at the same time these business men lament the fact that our farmers’ business methods are so poorly managed.
Not long ago we received notice that two of the wealthiest farmers, Negro farmers, in Georgia had died. They were reputed to be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash besides the great land holdings and other property they owned. Later when their estates were settled up their business was in such a tangled condition, all interwoven with that of their neighbors’, that there was nothing left for the wife and children. I hope that we do not have in North Carolina such tangles as the above. Whatever else the farmer does he ought to keep his business straight. We have found out through our Federal Farm Loan Organization that many farmers have bought and paid for farms and have paid taxes on these farms for twenty years, but it would take a “Philadelphia Lawyer” to find out whether the legal owner was the farmer, the banker, or the land company, or the merchant. That is bad business. Any man who mortgages his farm after he has paid for it seriously jeopardizes his future as far as his farm is concerned. If you have debts that must be met you had better sell a portion of your farm outright and keep the other clean and clear. The mortgage business is a bad business for the average farmer to take into his partnership. The merchants, the business men, the state government and national government, are all emphasizing every movement tending to the exit of this mortgage system. The farmer, first of all, should give it a hard kick.
It is a matter of education first. These farmers’ meetings give us an opportunity to inform ourselves. Our schools and our colleges are helping us to get informed. The local conferences have no other purpose than to help you to be informed on farm and business matters relative to your farm. Bulletins sent out by the State and National governments are among the greatest educational agencies. They are all practically free. The farmer who does not and will not take advantage of such agencies of information is certainly destined to be at the foot of the ladder; and there is where he belongs. The farmer who is given all the agencies and says he will not pull himself up ought to go down. The sooner he goes with that spirit the better, so that some other man can take his place and make good. I still see some of these old timers carrying water across the field a half mile away, still taking care of the family wash down by the river side, still holding on to the old ash pile. These relics have been heirlooms in the family and we are reluctant to let them go. It takes some spirit, some purpose and a great will to tear away from these old traditions. It must be done if we are going to advance. We must learn the lessons of experience. They have been sad lessons to many farmers. These farmers’ conferences are bringing to you lessons of scientific farming. Let the traditions go to the wind and take hold of the new problems in your farming and farming business that will bring success, happiness and a life.
Today as never before the farmer is coming into his own. Watch the agricultural papers and magazines. Visit our county and state fairs. See the interest and note the comparisons in our community fairs. Progress is in the air. If there are those who do not believe it, they will believe it, and feel the impress of the upward move, or they must get out of the business. Any farmer, white or colored, who does not line up with the best farming methods of the community is bound to lose out on his farm. The lessons may be hard, but as a class of farmers you must get these lessons.
The first lesson that must come to every farmer is that he must line up or unite with other farmers in the prosecution of his work. Every industry is organized except that of farming. The farmer produces his crops, and, unorganized, sells them to any bidder who comes along and takes his price or nothing. Organization will help the farmer to get the best price for his products. No man works very long by himself at anything. You cannot make it alone. Coöperation is the word. You get coöperation by organization. Every industry that is worth the name is organized.
Organization helps you to buy as well as it helps you to sell. It will get you the lowest prices for what you have to buy, and the highest prices for what you have to sell. Single handed you pay what is charged and sell it for what you can get, much or little. The government is fostering the Federal Farm Loan Organization in order to put the farmer on his feet. Are you using that organization? The state is encouraging farm unions. They can be formed in every community where you can find ten men, ten real men. Are you using this organization? Some communities are using them very effectively. Our own Federal Farm Loan Organization, the Tri-County Federal Farm Loan Organization, of Bricks, N. C., has put into Negro farms and farm improvements about seventy-five thousand dollars and has applications for nearly as much more. Do we have your application?
Let us illustrate what we want to impress relative to coöperation and organization. A few years ago two renters came to the Brick School farm. Each had one horse. The wives had a lot of small children and could not be expected to do very much on the farm. One day I saw a team of two horses plowing. The two men had united their horses and were plowing their ground with a double team. One was plowing and the other man was clearing up the ditch banks. They worked tandem all summer and seemed to get fine results. They were happy in their work and each was company for the other.
A few years ago we needed here on the Brick School farm a peanut thresher. No one could get the thresher alone, so an organization was perfected and a peanut thresher was bought for two hundred dollars. This thresher did fine work for many years, and brought the stockholders a nice little revenue as long as it was in service. I cannot see why a few men in every community cannot unite their efforts and get everything they need on their farms.
Every time I go to Rocky Mount I see scores and scores of wagons on the road hauling tobacco to market. These wagons go in groups for company and mutual help. I have counted as many as twenty in one group, and I am sure the different groups represent a certain community. These communities of small farmers ought to unite and buy jointly a truck. Some of these grouped teams travel, to my personal knowledge, thirty miles with their tobacco. This trip takes two days and one night to land the sale. The teams and the men alike are unfit for work for several days thereafter. Count the cost of man, wagon and animals. The automobile will do the same work in a few hours and be ready instantly for other work. If the farmer drives his wagon half of his time on the road is lost driving this way and that getting out of the road for trucks and automobiles. If you cannot put your products on the market as fast as your neighbor you cannot compete with him. That is all. If you cannot do it single handed unite your forces. That is the commonest of common sense.
Farmers cannot hire ditching done any more. Ditching with pick and shovel is a past art. You cannot pay the price, and you cannot find the ditcher. Ditching is now a profession. The last time we had our work done by hand the gentleman came in a large Buick, worked a few hours for a few days and the job was done. The element of drudgery is too great. We are living in an age of steam and gas and power. Why strain the muscles when you can turn the throttle with the weight of one finger and the work is done? You can buy a machine ditcher, drawn by horse power, for as little as forty dollars. If done with hired help it does not take but a few yards to cost forty dollars. Two mules and a machine ditcher will make more ditches in a day than ten men can make in a week. Here the drudgery is eliminated. Any boy can drive the team. Why not join your forces and buy a ditcher or buy it by yourself? A dozen peanut growers will pay more to thresh their peanuts in one year than a whole peanut outfit will cost. At the same time it is yours and you can thresh your peanuts when you please to do it. You will have the outfit for many years, depending upon the care you give it. We are paying now around ten dollars a cord for cutting wood. The best woodcutters cannot cut more than two cords of wood in the woods a day. Do you know that you can buy a wood saw that will fell the tree and cut up the wood, and that one man can cut as much as fifteen cords in one day? Muscular strength and drudgery are again eliminated. Why not a few of you unite your forces and buy a machine, and in a few days lay in all the wood you need for the winter and summer use? Do you like to trudge along the old way because it is traditional? I do not know of anything more annoying than to have to run to the woods or wood pile morning, noon and night, to cut wood for the preparation of the meal. To me it would be enough to spoil the temper of a saint.
Here is a fine proposition suggested to me by a former Brickite. I am not sure that it is original with him, but it is a fine proposition and I am passing it along:
The average farmer who is working on his own farm or farming on his own account must grow not less than four or five hundred bushels of peanuts yearly or more. Some, to my knowledge, grow eight hundred and a thousand bushels. It usually costs twenty-five cents a sack to thresh this amount. One sack holds about four bushels. It will cost twenty-five dollars to thresh one hundred sacks or four hundred bushels. Form a company of sufficient numbers and let them pay for their stock exactly what they would pay to an outsider for threshing their peanuts. If properly handled it would pay for itself in one year and after that it ought to clear a dividend.
There is one outstanding difficulty in this as in nearly everything in which we engage in coöperative manner. That one man who will take the leadership. Where is he? He must be unselfish, honest and level-headed.
I am speaking especially with reference to farmers who have limited means and not much help. Coöperation and organization ought to mean more than a little partnership. To organize and coöperate for community uplift and progress takes a lot of intelligence and honesty. I would not impugn your citizenship and standing in the community to say that you lacked either as farmers. It is a fact that most of us as farmers are hard to understand some of the simplest business relations. When the business demands that we shall pay our bills by a bank check and require a receipt, and that all these operations should be booked, and when an auditor is called in to balance our accounts and check up our mistakes we are too quick to think that our honesty is questioned. There is no other way to do business when others are involved in that business. The honest man wants to be checked up. It gives him a standing that nothing else will. Treasurers and secretaries of any organization, whether churches, Sunday Schools, secret orders, debating societies, or what not, have no business keeping other people’s money in their personal possession. The banks are the national depositories for all such organizations and other people’s money ought to be kept there.
It should not only be put in the bank, but it ought to be put there to the credit of the institution to which it belongs. This may not be good farming, but it is good business. I know of at least one man who went to the penitentiary for using other people’s money for only a few days and could not replace it. Organizations and companies should demand cancelled checks and receipts for all expenses every so often in a joint meeting. If officers count this an infringement upon their personal integrity dismiss them and get officers who do not so regard it. It is the only way to do business.
We do not organize more and do not succeed better because we lack faith in each other. This is perfectly natural. The Negroes have been schooled in credulousness for a great many years. The encumbrance of so long an inheritance cannot be so easily thrown off. Expect the best that is in your neighbor and your neighbor will prove up to your highest expectation. You not only make your neighbor better by your good thoughts of him, but you add to your own spiritual and mental growth incalculably. You grow yourself.
Farmers must buy modern machinery for their farm. It is the best investment you can make. Corn planters, cotton planters, gang plows, and machinery of every sort that will save you worry and steps should be bought. You cannot afford to farm without these implements. If you do you must be left behind in the occupation of farming. You can not make it. I think a farmer who can buy an automobile ought to be able to buy a tractor engine. With a tractor engine you can plow, harrow, and plant your ground while your neighbor is breaking his ground, and you have beaten him a hundred miles in the manner in which you have prepared the soil. At the close of the day you are not too tired to go with your family to the moving picture show or to some community entertainment where you may get an inspirational uplift for the next day’s work. Look at your neighbors. That is what they do and keep ahead of you.
I think the farmer who is making good ought to buy a Ford car. I saw a big farmer the other day who lived out about eight miles from Rocky Mount. He was driving a horse and buggy. I asked him how much money he had cleared the year before on his farm and he said that he had cleared over and above all expenses about three thousand dollars. It took him a good half day to drive to Rocky Mount for his plow point. He might have saved the trip or run over there in twenty minutes and made his purchase and had the rest of the day for work on his farm if he had owned a Ford car. I am not arguing that one should purchase modern machinery with which to facilitate his work in order to give him more time to be idle. It will give him more time to do the things that machinery cannot do. The good farmer never has idle time. Time spent at a farmers’ conference is not idle time. The matter of getting the latest and best information on farming methods is the most important thing that a farmer can do. One cannot put into practice on his farm or anywhere else what he does not know.
Improved machinery means more intelligence on the farm. Farming is the most complicated and diversified occupation there is in the world. It takes a horticulturist to grow apples to perfection. It takes a dairyman of the best type to put milk and butter on the market to meet state and county inspection and public approval. It takes a mechanic of the highest quality to keep up repair on the farm of fences, houses and machinery. It takes a bookkeeper to keep farm accounts and records. He must be something of a Wall Street broker to keep up with market prices so that he will know how and when to sell his farm products. He must be an electrician and an engineer as well if he is going to compete with his neighbor who lights his house with a Delco light and runs all of his machinery with power.
When you come to live stock you have a world without end of necessary information for your success. Cattle, cows, sheep, hogs, horses, poultry, bees, and scores of special strains of each, every one of them requiring special treatment and expert knowledge. If the farmer has the inclination and the will he can become specialist in any one of these lines. There are men who do nothing but breed the special brands of high bred stock. There are those who breed bees and who supply the world’s demands of purebred queen bees. The higher you go in this specialization the more you become the world’s greatest benefactor.
I have been studying about the value of limes upon the soils. To be a first-class farmer you must be a chemist of the first magnitude. You as farmers, have no idea of the part that chemicals must play in the production of your crops. The fertilizer that will bring to perfection one crop will kill another. You must know the fertilizer and know the nature of the soil on which this fertilizer is to be used and you must know how well a certain grade of fertilizer is adapted to the seed you want to produce. Every first-class farm is a chemical laboratory and the farmer is a chemist. Every first-class farmer must be something of a physicist as well. Every first-class farmer must be something of a doctor as well for all animals are subject to bodily disorders that must be corrected by medical advice. He must also be a weather prophet. You cut your hay and let the storm come on it and see where your profits go. You must be able to read the signs in the heavens and the published directions. Your job is a big one requiring as you go up the most complicated knowledge about every thing under the sun. I have said nothing about plant diseases and insect life affecting the success of the farmer nor that world or destruction hid in the unseen bacteria. As farmers you may be sluggards moving along on the lowest possible level of life or you may be a prince living in a palace. There are a lot of us on the lower levels who ought to move up to the higher gradations. You can get more out of your farm life but you must know how.
If you expect to work simply as a hireling you will not need this information to any great extent. You only have to do as you are told to do as a hireling. You may never as a hireling be asked to use even your own initiative in an emergency. If you expect to manage a farm you must have initiative and some executive ability. Twenty acres or more constitute a farm. If you have that much land you are a farmer and you must move on your own initiative.
The days of ignorant farming are passing. The government cannot and does not encourage ignorant farming. The times are demanding better schools and better roads. These two improvements are here and the farmers must pay the bills. Your farm must make you a living and enough more to meet these public expenses. If your intelligence will not make the ends meet, then before a great while the taxes will eat you up and your land will go into the ownership of men who have the intelligence to make the land meet the bills for public improvements. As farmers you must subscribe to every public improvement that comes into your community. You must buy stocks, bonds and meet public taxes. These improvements all increase the value of your farm. Selfishness and personal ends must not hold back community progress in any line. You are a part of the community and when you hold back its progress you defeat yourself. Not to know is no longer an excuse. You must know. You cannot stay at home and pride yourself that you never go to a farmers’ meeting and expect to know. Wherever people are gathered together to discuss public problems there you may go to learn. There is where you get in the spirit of things. There is where you get knowledge. There is where you get the inspiration. The spirit of rivalry and competition will go a long way to help us in our farm operations. There is a farmer in Nash County who thinks he can beat every one else in the county growing watermelons. There is a score of farmers in his community quietly trying to beat him. The result is that there are better watermelons grown in that community than in any other community in the county.