tific farming; and this is but one example of the revolution that is going on. The people have decided that all wisdom didn't die with their fathers and that success in farming depends upon other things than planting at the right time of the moon.

So while Mr. James J. Hill, in his now famous St. Paul address, declared that the average crop yield per acre in the United States could be doubled without extra cost, there are thousands of farmers in the Carolinas who have determined that their yield shall be not merely doubled, but quadrupled; and thousands of them are succeeding. Down in some sections of Moore County where it was once thought that the land would hardly be worth taxes after the pines were cleared off, Mr. W. J. Brooks harvested 91 bushels of corn per acre last fall. And there is an enthusiasm about the people that is almost religious in its intensity. “I feel as if I had just learned how to farm," said one the other day who began to read and catch the spirit of new agriculture a year ago. "Why, I have learned more about farming in these past twelve months than in all my life before. The very earth seems new to me since I found out how science and skill can revolutionize my work." Said a Yadkin farmer last winter: "I have been trying to farm for thirty years, but it looks now as if I have not done a thing fit to look at-not a single thoroughbred thing on the place except two old roosters. I am going to begin right now to aim at 40 bushels of corn to the acre instead of ten, and to get some Berkshire hogs instead of the scrubs I have always raised." And it was Rev. C. L. Miller who told me last spring: "As a boy I helped to wear out a Carolina farm. Now I have bought a rundown place and am going to try my hand at land-building to atone for the sins I blindly committed against the soil in my youth."

Such is the agricultural spirit of today, and if Dean Swift was right in saying two centuries ago that the man who makes two blades of grass or two ears of corn grow where only one grew before "does more good service to mankind than the whole race of politicians put together," what then of the man who makes from two to three good ears hang proudly on the stalk where only a scrawny nubbin once hung in shame? In South Carolina the average corn yield per acre in 1900 was lower even than in North Carolina; although the highest yield ever made in

America was made in that State, and one of my own acquaintances there-Mr. W. R. Walker of Union County-made 100 bushels per acre last year without an ounce of commercial fertilizer. The secret here is that he has cattle and thus keeps up the fertility of the land, besides using a strain of improved seed that he has carefully

bred up year after year from his most prolific stalks. Of course,

too, he prepares his land well and doesn't cut the corn roots at laying-by time. Small wonder that results like these have inspired such enthusiasm that South Carolina now holds county "Corn Conventions"-largely attended conventions too, rivaling political conventions in interest-to discuss plans for increasing the yield of this cereal. Bankers, newspapers, business men of all classes catching the contagion, subscribe liberally to the cash prizes that are offered for banner yields in certain counties, while the prizes for the largest acre-yield in the entire State aggregate $750. The State's indefatigable Commissioner of Agriculture, Mr. E. J. Watson, says that in five years the average yield per acre for the State has been increased from 8 to 15 bushels and the value of the crop has increased by $6,000,000. In North Carolina Director Williams has inaugurated a successful innovation in the "Corn Train" which the Norfolk and Southern Railway ran over its lines last spring, and which promises a large increase in corn yields in Eastern North Carolina.

It is men who are bringing out such results as this, whether prominent or not, who are leaders in "the uplift of an agricultural State," and we should all of us take off our hats to them. It is time to have done with the old worn-out military and political ideas of distinction and see what service is worth most to the public in our own time. There are few congressmen who so much deserve popular applause as the farmer who teaches his neighbors how to double their corn yields. The scientist who makes some notable chemical discovery is not more worthy of honor than the man who breeds an improved type of cotton or corn or tobacco. The man who gets good highways in a community where bad roads once hampered progress should have a statue in the market place as high as that of the old time general. And the man who founds a good school and develops the minds of boys and girls who would have otherwise walked in darkness

should have the praise of men no less than if he had given us some masterpiece of art or literature.

Take, for example, Elder W. A. Simpkins, a Primitive Baptist minister of Wake County, who has labored untiringly for ten years breeding an improved variety of cotton, an earlier and more prolific type, a kind especially useful in sections infested with the boll weevil because it matures too early to give that industrious pest an opportunity to do it much damage. "Money-Maker," "Mortgage-Lifter," "New Bank Account," are names of cotton varieties which other plant breeders have developed and which indicate the new appreciation of what improved seed-breeding signifies. Heretofore, in cotton farming and planting, seed have been more wretchedly selected than in any other crop that men grow-a fearful mixture, shoveled out indiscriminately from the general run of seed at the nearest gin, seed from dwarfed, diseased and degenerate stalks mixed with whatever good seed chanced to get with them. The average yield of seed cotton in the South is only about 570 pounds per acre. In the variety tests, conducted by the State Department of Agriculture, of sections of North Carolina, well bred, carefully selected varieties of cotton have made (with exactly the same fertilization, cultivation, and general expense) 900 pounds more seed cotton per acre than a scrub or mongrel variety, such as farmers generally planted in other days. Think of how many thousands of lives have been wasted because of scrub cotton seed, this one handicap meaning the difference between poverty and independence for the farmer! Suppose we increase the yield not by 900 pounds of seed cotton to the acre, but by just 100 pounds, as we should be able to do with well-bred varieties even on average land with average treatment: this would mean an increase of $3,333,000 a year clear profit to the farmers of North Carolina. And this is what is coming about. One breeder of improved seed started last season with 6,000 bushels for sale, and the farmers bought all but 50 bushels for planting purposes.

Our farmers are learning, too, that money can be made growing other crops than cotton or tobacco. A clear profit of $2,500 a year on the farm in the South is as good as a $6,000 salary in New York City, and far more easily made. Not only has the South a monopoly of cotton and of many types of tobacco, but

the farmer here can get so much higher prices for all kinds of live stock and dairy products, hay and corn that a Buckeye farmer who recently visited North Carolina (and will probably move here later) spoke of the matter to me with some amazement. The average size of the farms in this State is more than 100 acres, but a Catawba County farmer cultivating only fifty acres made $2,400 clear profit last year raising hogs. He had three enclosures of five acres each for soiling crops-one in cow peas, another in corn, and another in wheat and clover; on thirty-five acres more he grew mature corn for feeding in the ear. The hogs are marketed as soon as they weigh 180 pounds, and, of course, only improved, quick-fattening breeds are used. The difference here is illustrated by this experience of Mr. E. G. Palmer's last fall: he put scrub hogs and improved breeds in the same pasture and fed them at the same trough. "The blooded hogs fattened and were sold weeks ago," Mr. Palmer said in January, "but the scrub hogs are not fat yet, and are about the same size as when I bought them."

Especially in dairying are there splendid opportunities in the South for the man that knows the business and isn't afraid of work. Mr. John Michels, of West Raleigh, showed me the other day the results of the previous month's record with 41 dairy cows-a net profit of $263.78 or at the rate of $3,165.36 a year.*

Another man who has made money dairying is Mr. R. L Shuford, of Newton. He started fourteen years ago with four cows. Now he has forty and, in addition to this 1,000 per cent. increase in his capital stock, he has doubled the value of his land. His secret? Simply intelligence in the management of his cows. The Babcock test is his watch-dog, and if a cow in a year fails to make as much as 300 pounds of butter she is promptly sold for beef or to some less progressive dairyman or farmer. "Last year,

*Milk was sold at an average of 25 cents per gallon, cream testing 20 per cent. fat at $1 per gallon, and butter at 35 cents per pound. The bulk of the product was sold in the form of milk and cream.

The following are the receipts and expenditures in condensed form: Receipts for milk, cream and butter, $553.20; expenditures for feed, labor, ice, etc., $371.42. Net Frofit, $181.78.

To this must be added at the rate of $2.00 per cow as the value of manure. The total value of manure therefore is $82, which, added to the $181.78 above' makes a total net profit for the month of $263.78.

says Mr. Shuford, "the record of my best cow was 563 pounds; the sorriest (with perhaps an expense of only $10 less) made only 212 pounds. Weeding out such animals steadily, I have brought up my herd now until half make over 400 pounds of butter apiece.

A man who used to be associated with me in newspaper work is now making money raising honey for local markets. Mr. H. B. Howard, of Sampson County, has cleared $50 an acre on upland rice. The growing of that delicious Southern product, the sweet potato, has become quite an industry in some sections, and affords handsome profits. Mr. Daniel Lane, of Craven County, who has kept an itemized account of expenses for several years, finds that he can raise potatoes for 10 cents a bushel; and they sold in Raleigh last spring for 35 cents a peck! Of course, there is loss in carrying them through the winter, but with a yield of from 100 to 400 bushels per acre, it is easy to see that the net profits are still considerable. I should like also to tell how even a one-horse farmer, Dr. Ramseur, of South Carolina, makes $1,500 clear profit a year growing clover, oats, corn and cowpeas, while at the same time increasing his land value each year by 50 per cent. of the purchase price. But you can read this story in Farmer's Bulletin No. 312, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture. Dr. Ramseur's land was worth only about $15 an acre eight years ago. It now yields $50 a year and has a market value of $100.

The conservatism of the Southern farmer, who is taught to swear superstitious allegiance to cotton and tobacco, probably keeps him from realizing in other lines of agriculture. Both the poultry and stock departments of my paper are conducted by men who came here from the West. Once the immigrant gets over his homesickness, he surpasses the native in enthusiasm. One of our most prominent State-builders is Mr. A. L. French, who several years ago moved from Ohio, bought a 240 acre farm in Rockingham County for $2,800 and began general grain and stock farming. The result is that he has not only made about $3,000 a year for himself, but all the wide-awake farmers for miles around have introduced profit-making blooded stock into their herds, and a revolution is on in the entire live stock industry of the section. Incidentally Mr. French has taken