IX Education and the Demonstration Farm
Enormous undeveloped or half-developed fertility is the impression one receives on every hand in the South; but the lack of development belongs to a state of things soon to pass away. There can be little doubt that the South stands on the threshold of an agricultural Golden Age.24 It is being brought about mainly by three agencies: (1) The United States Department of Agriculture; (2) The General Education Board of New York; (3) the boll-weevil, which, entering Texas from Mexico in 1899, has extended its ravages over the States of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and part of Mississippi, and at one time threatened the ruin of the whole cotton industry. It may seem odd that this unwelcome invader should be reckoned among the factors that are promoting agricultural development; but, in a very real sense, he has served as a pioneer to the movement.
Dr. Wallace Buttrick, of the General Education Board, was so kind as to give me an outline of the course of events.
Rockefeller to the Rescue.
“Our Board,” he said, “was established and endowed, and has been at various intervals re-endowed, by Mr. Rockefeller.”
“To promote education in the South?”
“Not in the South alone, nor even primarily; but we had, of course, to study the special conditions prevailing in the South. We soon convinced ourselves that the deficiencies of Southern education—and they were enormous—were due to the sheer poverty of the country.25 In the Southern towns there are good schools, and the accommodation is fairly adequate. But only 15 per cent. of the population of the South is a city population. The remaining 85 per cent. is rural and agricultural—not even, for the most part, gathered in villages of any size—so that the problem of bringing education to the doors of the people is an immensely difficult one.”
“I suppose compulsory education is not to be thought of?”
“It is thought of; it is mooted; it is coming; but not yet awhile. That is just what, as I say, we realized—that the South is too poor to pay for an adequate system of education, and that the problem is too huge a one for even the most lavish outside philanthropy to tackle. What was to be done, then? Manifestly to enrich the Southern agriculturalist, so as to enable him to pay for the schooling of his children. As it is, his average income is something like a third of the average income of a man of his class in (say) the State of Iowa, where the public-school system is adequate and satisfactory. Multiply his income by three, or even by two, and he also will be able to afford an adequate public-school system.”
“So your problem was nothing less than to double or treble the wealth of the fifteen or sixteen Southern States?”
The Boll-Weevil.
“Something like that; and it was right here that the boll-weevil came in. With ruin staring them in the face, the farmers of the affected districts took up eagerly the system of what are called Demonstration Farms, organized by Dr. S. A. Knapp, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That department, at its experimental stations and with the aid of its entomologists, had devised a method of combating the pest. Roughly speaking, it consisted of getting in ahead of the weevil—carefully preparing the ground and selecting the right varieties of seed, so that the main part of the crop could be harvested before the insect was ready to attack it. But it is one thing to devise a scientific method and another thing to persuade and teach farmers to carry it out. This difficulty Dr. Knapp got over by the following means: he organized a body of skilled agents, who went to the leading citizens—merchants, bankers, or what not—of a given district, and said, ‘Introduce us to the most intelligent and progressive farmer of your neighbourhood.’ Then to this farmer the agent would say, ‘If you will set apart a certain amount of land to be treated, under my supervision, exactly as I shall prescribe, I (that is to say, the Government) will provide you with the right seed for the purpose, and you will see what the result will be.’ Then meetings would be called of the neighbouring farmers, principles explained, and their attention directed to the experiment. Their life-and-death interest in the matter would make them watch the result closely; and as, in each case, the result would be a far larger crop per acre than they had been used to before the appearance of the weevil, you may imagine whether the methods of culture were eagerly adopted and the right sorts of seed eagerly applied for.
An Educational Campaign.
“Well, we of the General Education Board saw in the method of Dr. Knapp’s campaign against the boll-weevil the very thing we were wanting. The Government was operating only in the boll-weevil districts—there were constitutional objections to its extending its activity to regions unaffected by the pest. There we stepped in, and offered to finance the extension of the Demonstration Farms to other districts, in accordance with their needs and capabilities. So long as only a nominal money appropriation was required of it, the Government had no objection to our acting under its authority, our agents thus having the prestige of Government emissaries. For the current year, we have appropriated £15,000 to the work, while Congress has voted a somewhat larger sum for work in the boll-weevil States. Altogether, about 12,000 Demonstration Farms have already been established, and about 20,000 farmers have agreed to ’co-operate’—that is, to work the whole or part of their land according to our instructions. The system is quite new. It has nowhere been at work more than two years, and there are many regions which are not yet even touched by it; but already the results are surprising.”
“It does not, I presume, apply solely to cotton-growing?”
“Certainly not; on the contrary, one of our great objects is to break down the exclusive reliance on cotton so common in many districts, and to show how the exhaustion of land may be avoided by the judicious rotation of crops. In short, we aim at providing object-lessons in scientific agriculture all over the Southern States, and of course always with strict reference to the particular advantages and disadvantages of a district. I assure you the South is at the opening of a new agricultural era; and it will not be many years before our work will produce a marked effect on education. Come back ten years hence, and you will no longer find it true that the Southern school is open, on an average, only about three months in the year; that the Southerner gets, on an average, something less than three years’ schooling in his whole life; and that about 10 per cent. of the native-born white population of the Southern States is wholly illiterate, and about 40 per cent. of the negro population. We are going to change all that.”
The Way to Wealth.
Shortly afterwards I met, not Dr. Knapp himself, but his son, Mr. Arthur Knapp, who gave me some further information as to the new era in Southern agriculture.
“Not only,” he said, “is much Southern land unimproved, but much of it is exhausted by careless and ignorant cultivation. It has been the method of many Southern farmers to work their land until it would no longer raise a paying crop of cotton; then to sell their farms for what they could get and move on to fresher soil. The system of Demonstration Farms will put an end to this, along with many other abuses and stupidities. It is the only sound method of educating the farmer. You may deluge him with Government bulletins of printed advice without producing the slightest effect. Even if he reads and understands the advice, he can’t or won’t apply it in practice. You must show him the process and show him the results. Much more is done by talking than by reading in the South; things circulate from mouth to mouth much more effectually than even through the newspapers. Each of the 12,000 Demonstration Farms is visited by from thirty to one hundred neighbouring farmers. That means that the object-lessons reach something like 400,000 every year. And then the spirit of emulation is awakened. Intelligent and energetic men are fired with the idea that they will beat the Government; and they go off and have a very good try.”
“I think I roughly understand the method of fighting the boll-weevil; but can you tell me something of what is being done for the benefit of other products than cotton?”
“Well, we insist on the necessity of better drainage, of deeper and more thorough ploughing, of carefully selecting and storing the best varieties of seed. We demonstrate the judicious rotation of crops, and show the advantages of devoting portions of the farm to legumes, which have a high food value for stock, and at the same time enrich the soil. Above all, perhaps, we insist on the necessity of economizing labour by the use of more horse-power and better implements, and urge the increasing of stock to such an extent that all the waste products and idle lands of the farm may be utilized.”
“But most, if not all, of these prescriptions surely demand fresh capital. Where is that to come from?”
“Why, no one pretends that the average farmer can introduce all these improvements at once. The fundamental ones do not require more capital, but only more thought and labour; and, these once applied, the more expensive improvements will gradually become possible. The more intelligent preparation of the soil and selection of the seed produce wonderful results at once in the case of corn—what you call maize—no less than in the case of cotton. If a farmer, under our guidance, plants half his land with corn and cowpeas, and only the other half with cotton, he gets as much cotton as he used to before, and has his corn and cowpeas in addition, while the land will be gradually restored to its original fertility. It is one of our great objects to teach farmers, while keeping cotton their ‘cash crop,’ as they call it, to divert from cotton as much land as is necessary to raise their own essential food-stuffs and the fodder for their stock—things which, under the present wasteful system, they mostly buy from outside.”
“Then the result of all this will not be an immense and immediate increase in the whole output of cotton?”
“Not immediate, no; but who can tell what the ultimate result may be? It is quite possible, for instance, that a cheaper and more effective method of combating the boll-weevil may one day be discovered. As it is, with all our care in breaking up the hibernating places of the pest, and planting so that the greater part of the crop can be secured before he is ready to attack it, we merely keep him effectively in check, we do not exterminate him. He still puts us to much additional labour and expense, and he still gets the end of the crop.”
“He seems to have been a valuable stimulus to effort, however; you ought not to speak ungratefully of him.”
“His work in that respect is done—we have no further use for him. By-the-by, have you seen his portrait?”
And I left Mr. Knapp with my note-book enriched with a counterfeit presentment, many times enlarged, of the insect which has co-operated with Mr. John D. Rockefeller in the agricultural regeneration of the South.
Notes
24. “Mr. Richard H. Edmonds, in an illuminating article in the Review of Reviews for February, 1906, has declared that no country ever dominated, as does the South, an industry of such value and importance as the cotton crop.... Three-fourths of this great crop, which must be relied on to clothe civilization, and in the exploitation of which two billions of capital are used, is raised in the South. It is a stupendous God-made monopoly. To-day, the South has invested, in 777 mills, with their 9,200,000 spindles, $225,000,000, as against $21,000,000 twenty-five years ago. The fields of the South furnish the raw material for three-fourths of the mills of all the world with their 110,000,000 spindles. The South now consumes 2,300,000 bales, which is about the amount consumed by the rest of the country, and is a fourfold increase over its consumption in 1890.”—Dr. E. A. Alderman: “The Growing South,” p. 18. A threefold increase in the cotton-crops seems easily possible; but whether prices could be kept up under such conditions is another question. Be this as it may, an immense agricultural development seems practically certain.
25. “The figures of our national census show that from 1860 to 1870 there was a fall of $2,100,000,000 in the assessed value of Southern property, and that the period of Reconstruction added, in the years from 1870 to 1880, another $67,000,000 to the loss.”—E. G. Murphy, “The Present South,” p. 40. “No other region, except Poland, ever knew such losses; and Poland ceased to exist. The year 1900 had come and gone before the whole South had regained its per capita wealth of 1860.”—E. A. Alderman: “The Growing South,” p. 7.