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TILE OMAHA SttNDAY BEE: MAY 28, 1011.
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King Corn Breaking Into South to Dethrone King Cotton
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OBAMTIGW COE1T OF HLEV2C27
SOVTHEKJT STATES SEC. YrtLSQIT JUVZ
OFFICERS or IR2TmXE2r02rSTSATI0Iir
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hla mall la loaded with similar letters each day. He
1b teaching the south how to raise cotton and corn
and Is creating a revolution which has already added
hundreds of millions to our national wealth. He has
now something like 90,000 men and almost an equal
number of. boys who are raising corn under govern
ment direction, and the result is the creation of a
new Industrial empire.
Until within the last decade cotton was the money
king of the south. It was the cash crop and it paid
all the bills. The farmers Imported the feed for their
stock, and the corn lands of tho north furnished the
hog and the hominy. Then the boll weevil came in
and with Its snoutlike nose began to eat into King
Cotton, even as the worms ate Into King Herod the
Great, and King Cotton seemed like to give up the
ghost. Uncle Sam, patriarch, saw the wrinkles of ruin
springing up on the faces of his multitudinous chil
dren throughout the south, and he sent his legions of
angels in the form of agricultural scientists to fight
down the weevil, and planned the raising of crops
which should add to or take the placo of the cotton.
."Copyright. 1911, by Frank O. Carpenter.)
KSHINOTON. (Special Correspondence of
ine liee.) 'Three years ago 1 was a
bankrupt. I had borrowed all the money
I could on my farm and my credit was so
bad at the stores that they would not
trust me for a plug of tobacco. I could
not pay my interest, and I had decided
give up the farm for the debt and go back to rent
ing. Then one of Uncle Sam's demonstrators got me
to plant corn and cotton, and to work It after the plans
of the Agricultural department. I thought him a fool,
but I was desperate and I followed his rules. The re
sult has been that the merchants are now chasing me
for my custom. I have paid off my mortgages and I
have money In the hank."
The man who spoke thus lives in Alabama.
A Voice from Georgia.
"I had always laughed at book farmers," It Is a
Georgia man who is speaking. "I was bred and bawn
like Brer Rabbit, In a brier patch. I was brought up
in the cotton fields and corn fields, and I thought I
knew all about my land and what It would raise. I
didn't. want no white-shirted man from Washington
coming round to tell me how to manage toy farm. I
was raising from 100 to 200 pounds of cotton to the
acre, and when my crop of corn was over fifteen
bushels I thought I did well. Then one of these
demonstrators of the Agricultural department came
along, and asked me to set out an acre and cultivate
It his way. He told me I could double my crop, and
that I might raise forty, fifty, sixty and even eighty
bushels of corn on the same ground where I had'been
raising twelve or fifteen. I laughed at him and told
him he did not know what he was talking about. 'This
land,' said I, ls JuBt naturally poor, and It won't raise
corn anyhow. I ain't going to waste my time for
nothing.' '
"Well, at that, Mary came out. Mary's my wife,
and a mighty good wife she is, too. She leaned beside
me over the fence and we talked to the agricultural
maa who was out in the road. Mary begged me to try
in"! . g!d" r! P0werful ,1,ce manf The chief crop was corn, and as a result the people of
and so to oblige the two I said I would do it .. . . .,....
"I put out that corn. He made me take my old
mule team and the heaviest plow and throw up the
ground to a depth of ten inches. Then he made me
harrow it. I never heard of harrowing for corn. We
did this in the fall, and the next spring we plowed
deep and harrowed and harrowed again. I got the
best seed I could find and cultivated the corn as he
saidi
"At the same time I concluded there might be
something in it, and that if one acre was good, forty
acres waa better. So I took a field of forty acres away
off behind some woods on another part of my farm,
and cultivated it Just the same way. My acre near the
road, which the man watched and told me Just how to
handle., grew so that everybody stopped to look at It,
and' to make a long Btory short, we husked sixty
bushels of shelled corn from that acre. When the
corn was ripe the agricultural agent asked me whether
I thought he had made good. I replied that he had,
but that I had other corn on the place that was worth
looking at I then took him through the woods to
my other forty acres, which was Just as fine as that
on the road. TouM ought to seen hfm look. Well, I
ot 2,0 00 bushels off of that forty acres, and I now
do all my farming that way."
What a Colored Man Did.
My next humaa document comes from a colored
man. . He writes from Mississippi to the head of the
farmers' co-operative demonstration work In the south.
After years of poverty and despair, he has started
raising cotton under government supervision. The
spelling of the letter is as it is written. The penmaa
shlp I cannot reproduce:: "A. D. 7, 16, '10.
"Sir: I rits you a few lines in the gards of farm
ing agricultur. I do sey that your advice has Ben
Folard, and your dlreckslon have Ben o Bald, an I find
that I am successful in Life. Sey, Mr. Knapp, I do
know that there is gooder men as you an as fair as
you. But o that keen eye ot yourse that watches ever
crook In farming, that can tell ever man whichever
way to Gro to be successful in Life. On last yer I
folerd your advice, an allso on yer Befor last On
1908 1 made 14 Balls of cotton, and in 1909 17 Balls.
I started with one mule and now I own 8 head ot the
great worthies. Thanks to you for your advice a Long
that Line, an Great success in your occapation to you.
"Sey, Mr. Knapp, I am a culered man. Live near
Grayaport. Mississippi. Corn a plenty, allso make a
plenty Sweet Potatoes. But I read your advice aBout
them. Will close. Yourse.
(Signed.) "WM. WASHINGTON."
King Cotton Dethroned.
The above bits of evidence are mere straws to
show how the wind blows. Uncle Sam has a mighty
Uck of them in his Department of Agriculture and
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SFRiN.iaESxm- or BoY3.caiafrezus;&BSceo.yE2Hr
the south have sprung from being the poorest to
potentially the richeBt of Uncle Sam's children. The
growth has been almost all accomplished In the space
of four or five years and it means hundreds of mil
lions of dollars.
Five Hundred Million Dollar Crop.
The corn crop ot the south during 1910 was one
third of that of the whole country. It was nearly
T7000 millions of bushels, and at the low price of 50
cents a bushel it was worth 1500,000,000. It ex
ceeded by many millions the output of the gold mines
of all the world for that year, and not counting the
value of the fodder was more than half the value of
the cotton, Including both lint and seed. The increase
of the corn crop of nine southern states over that of
1909 was more than 158,000,000 bushels, or a value
of nearly $80, 000,000, and this Increase Is 45 per
cent of the total increase in corn of the whole United
States during that year. These states were Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. The total
crop, as I have said, was almost 1,000,000,000 bushels.
One billion bushels! As a whole the figures stag
ger the mind, but load the corn upon two-horse
wagons at a ton to the load and let each team take a
space of forty feet on the roadway and the train of
teams would reach almost eight times around the
globe at the equator, the' first wagon being nearly
200,000 miles distant by the time the last wagon was
loaded.
Two Hundred Thousand Fanners at Sk-hool.
But the work is Just at its beginning. It was
originated and organized by the late Dr. Knapp only
about five years ago. But there are already 200,000
farms scattered over the southern states on which
experiments are being made by boys and men as to
the new ways of corn cultivation, and each of these is
a school for the community where it lies. The gov
ernment has 550 traveling agents, who supervise the
work, and each of these has a large number of demon
strators or teachers who visit the farmers every week
or so and instruct them Just how to go about raising
the crop. Where possible they have these experimental
plantations set out close to the roads so that the peo
ple can see the results as they go by on the way to or
from town. They have organlred farm clubs in sev
eral thousand communities and have caused the insti
tution of hundreds of county fairs In the interest of
Improved agriculture.
Not only the government, but the states, counties
and towns, are interested in this movement and are
giving to it large sums of money. The appropriation
of congress last year was $250,000, but to this $113,
000 was added from the Rockefeller fund, and many
thousands were given by the business organizations
and the bankers, merchants and wealthy men of the
various communities. In addition to the large number
of farms or experimental patches on farms under the
direct charge of the government agents and their
demonstrators, there are more than 70,000 farmers
who are receiving instruction from the Agricultural
department by letter and are reporting the results.
This makes a mighty correspondence school which is
Increasing each week. The work is not confined to
corn alone, but to the proper cultivation of cotton,
oats, cow peas and hay.
liij; Money in Southern Lands.
I wish I could give you some idea of the results
that have already been accomplished. I have spent
the week at the Agricultural department talking with
the agents of the farmers' co-operative demonstration
work who have Just come in from the fields and who
are handling this enormous mass of correspondence.
I have also talked with Mr. Knapp, who, with his
father, the late Dr. S. A. Knapp, has special charge of
this work.
They tell stories of hundreds of farmers who
within the last three or four years, through proper
farming, have climbed over the hill of difficulty into
easy street, and of a large number who are making
big sums of money. One man, for Instance, a Mr.
T. O. Sandy, bought a tract of land about three years
ago south of Richmond in Nottoway county, Virginia.
He paid $4 an acre for it and began to raise hay after
the rules laid down by the department. At the end
of two years he was getting five tons of hay per acr
from that $4 land and was selling the hay at $25 a
ton. In other words, his gross income from land that
cost him $4 per acre was $125 per acre. That man
Is still farming.
One of Uncle Sam's clerks has bought 1,200 acres
within twenty-five miles of the national capital, and
he is putting it out in corn after government methods.
The land coat him $10 per acre, and it is close to the
railroad, within easy access of Waghington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia and New York. The scientists of the
department tell me that the land needs only cultiva
tion and the right crops to make it produce as much
corn as the best soil of Illinois, Kansas or Iowa.1 It Is
within a half hour's ride by rail of Washington city
and it was bought at a much lower price than that of
the second-class lands of Texas or other states beyond
the Mississippi. v
Another farmer was induced to cultivate five
eighths of an acre of cotton after government methods.
His plantation was then producing something like 200
pounds of lint to the acre. He began his experiment
in 1908, at which time he could not afford to send his
children to school. He succeeded so well that in 1909
he planted his whole plantation that way and raised
1,200 pounds of seed cotton per acre. He also tried
corn, raising as much as 150 bushels on a single acre
of ground. It Is now two years and that man has
paid all his debts and has money in the bank. His
boys are in the high school and his daughter has gone
to college.
Eighty Thousand Boy Corn-Raisers.
One of the most important features of this revolu
tion is the work being done by the boys. At the pres
ent wrlting'the government has on its rolls 80,000
southern boys, each of whom is now cultivating one
acre of corn under government directions. These boys
are in 700 or 800 counties, covering all the states of
the south.
They belong to corn clubs which have been or
ganized in various localities and are working for prizes
offered by the bankers, merchants, boards of trade,
county clubs and public-spirited individuals of their
neighborhoods. They are also working for the prize
given to the best boy corn-raiser of their respective
states, consisting of a diploma from the Department
of Agriculture and a free trip to Washington, where
they may spend a week, and see the president and
congress and the interesting features of our national
capital. The prlies given to such boys by the iocaU-
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ties last year amounted to $40,000 and more. They
will probably be twice that this year. They consist
of cash, farm implements, ponies, pigs, bicycles,
watches, guns, books and everything which will tend
to gladden a boy's heart and make him work.
The number of southern boys competing in 1910
was, according to the government rolls, 4 6,225. Each
of these planted an acre of corn and worked it under
government directions, producing crops which stag
gered their respective communities. In Mississippi,
where the average corn crop last year was lees than
twenty bushels per acre, forty-eight of these boys
raised on the average ninety-two bushels per acre. In
one county of South Carolina, which state has an av
erage per acre of less than nineteen bushels, twenty
boys produced 1,700 bushels of corn on twenty acres
and 140 boys averaged sixty-two bushels. The gov
ernors of tho different southern states are now giving
diplomas of honor to all boy corn-raisers who can
show a crop of seventy-five bushels per acre, and at
the national corn show at Columbus last fall an auto
mobile was presented to the boy who had raised the
most and best corn on one acre at the lowest cost
How a Boy Won an Automobile.
The automobile was awarded to Stephen G. Henry,
who produced 139.8 bushels of corn on one acre at a
cost of 13.6 cents per bushel. Stephen comes from
Melrose, la. He is the youngest of five boys of a
family, and he has been raising corn for three years
by the government directions. He has won a number
of premiums, and last year he received a gold watch
from the governor and also a pig, two sheep, $25 in
gold and a diploma. The tlub to which he belongs
contains 200 members, and Stephen's brother is also
a prize winner.
I give you in brief the way Stephen raised his last
crop of corn. He broke the ground in the fall, plow
ing It eight Inches deep. He turned the soil again in
March and went over it with plow and harrow until
it was thoroughly fine. He put on two tons of stable
manure at that tlnio and then planted the corn. This
was on March 17. The seed sprouted all right, but a
part of the crop froze, and he had to replant May 20.
After that the corn was cultivated again and again
with a hoe and cultivator, all the suckers being pulled
from the hills. When he laid the corn by, he planted
cow peas between the rows to increase the fertility of
the land for the next year. The corn was harvested,
shelled and weighed, and at fifty-six pounds to the
bushel it measured 138.8 bushels.
The Question of Cost
But this yield would not have given Stephen the
prise. Thers were many boys who raised more. There
133 ?3U22WLSZIimi&Cj52; .
were 100 who belonged to the corn clubs of the south
who made an average of 133.7 bushels per acre in
1910. There were five who grew more than 200
bushels and quite a number who grew 160.
No, Stephen got the prize because he raised the
most corn at the lowest coC-. Jerry Moore's 228
bushels cost him 43 cents, and Morris Olgers of Vir
ginia raised 168 bushels at 40 cents. Of the national
prize winners who came to Washington, Ira Smith of
Arkansas raised 119 bushels at a cost of 8 cents per
bushel, while Floyd Gayer of Oklahoma produced
ninety-five bushels on an aero at the same cost
Stephen, like every other boy of these whole 80,000
who are now working, had to keep account of every
cent spent on his acre. He had to charge himself $5
for the rent of the land, and put down 10 cents per
hour for every hour he or any other boy worked upon
it. He charged himself 5 cents per hour for the time
of each horse and $2 for each two-horse load of stable
manure, as well as the market prices for any com
mercial fertilizers used. By adding up his accounts
and dividing by the number of bushels of shelled cor
in the crop, he got the exact cost per bushel to raise It
The Boys' Corn Clubs.
The boys' corn clubs of the south have almost
doubled this year, and they will probably double again
the year following. The boys belonging to them are
from 10 to 18 years old, and some of the big prize
winners are only 12. That is the age of Joe Stone of
Georgia, who was so small that his father came with
him during his free trip to Washington. Nevertheless,
he produced more than 102 bushels of corn on an
acre.
The rules of this work provide that each boy must
plant his own crop and do his own work. He must
present the results to the county superintendent ol
education. He must gather the corn and weigh It,
and the land and corn must be carefully measured in
the presence of at least two disinterested witnesses,
who have to sign a certificate.
The boys must study the instruetions given them
and follow directions. Each has to write the history
of his crop and how he made It. and the prizes are
awarded not only on the number of bushelB produced,
but on the profit and the character of the corn. In
making the choice the yield per acre counts 30 per
cent, the best history of the crop 20 per cent and
the highest profit 30 per cent. When it is remembered
that all these things are tested by the beads of the
schools and a committee of farm experts, some Idea
may be had of the educational and agricultural value
of this mighty work of Uncle 8am. patriarch.
FRANK O. CARPENTBII.
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