PROGRAM OF EXERCISES
FOR
NORTH CAROLINA DAY
RURAL LIFE AND KNAPP MEMORIAL DAY
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1913
ARRANGED BY
N. C. NEWBOLD,
Associate Supervisor of Rural Schools.
l We are now prepared for the accomplishment of what we have so earnestly
sought, the placing of rural life upon a plane of profit,
of honor, and power."
—
Knapp.
issued from the office of the
State Superintendent of Public Instruction,
raleigh, n. c.
DEEP.
Plow deep!
Sow not thy precious seeds
Among the scarce uprooted weeds,
Or thou shalt weep
To find thy crops all choked and dead,
And naught but thorns and tares instead.
Then plow down deep,
The promise ringing in thy ears,
That those who sow their seeds in tears
In joy shall reap. —Selected.
GREEN THINGS GROWING.
Oh, the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of the green things growing!
Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!
How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;
In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight
Or the dim dreary dawn when the cocks are crowing.
I love, I love them so—the green things growing!
And I think that they love me, without false showing;
For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much,
With the soft, mute comfort of the green things growing. —Dinah Mulock Craik.
AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR THE CELEBRATION OF NORTH CAROLINA
DAY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Chapter 164 of the Public Laws of 1901.
The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:
Section 1. That the 12th day of October in each and every year, to be
called "North Carolina Day," may be devoted, by appropriate exercises in the
public schools of the State, to the consideration of some topic or topics of our
State history, to be selected by the Superintendent of Public Instruction:
Provided, that if the said day shall fall on Saturday or Sunday, then the cele-bration
shall occur on the Monday following: Provided, further, that if
the said day shall fall at a time when any such schools may not be in ses-sion,
the celebration may be held within one month from the beignning of
the term, unless the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall designate
some other time.
Sec 2. This act shall be in force from and after its ratification.
In the General Assembly read three times and ratified this the 9th day of
February, A. D. 1901.
Extract from an Address Delivered by State Superintendent
J. Y. Joyner, before Northampton County Teachers' Asso-ciation.
(Reported in Roanoke-Chowan Times, November 15, 1913.)
"In the United States 90 per cent of the people lead an industrial life and
less than 10 per cent follow the professions, while in North Carolina 82 per
cent follow agricultural pursuits. The rural schools must deal more than
ever with the things of rural life. There should be a Farm Life school in
every county, well equipped, whose influence would radiate to every school
and every farmer in that county. Education must touch the fundamental
needs of life, health, food, shelter, and raiment. Domestic Science must
be taught. "Man can not live by bread alone," neither can he live without
bread. The soil, plant and animal life must be studied. Thus will life
be made richer, more beautiful, and sweeter for country children. We
teachers must put something into our preparation for education so that we
can reveal to the pupils the glories of the life about them in the trees, birds,
plants, and flowers, in forest, stream and sky. How many rural children
having eyes see not, and having ears hear not! It is the rural tecaher's
duty to help open their eyes to the glorious sights and their ears to the
heavenly harmonies about them. In the country is a museum filled with
living specimens of all sorts of life, whose walls are the boundless horizon,
whose roof is the arched sky. Then our young people would not be so
anxious for the artificialities of the city, its moving picture shows and other
things. Train them to see and understand God's great moving picture
show, which begins with the rising of the sun and ends with the setting
thereof, and in which the scenes are shifted every hour by the hand of God
Himself, for the delectation of His people. With Shakespeare, then, they
would find 'Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything.' "
INTRODUCTION
The South is an agricultural section. In agricultural development its peo-ple
have scarcely touched the margin of its wonderful possibilities. Perhaps
no Southern State is richer or more varied in agricultural resources, has
greater need for agricultural development, or more to gain therefrom, than
North Carolina. No other man has, perhaps, done so much for the improve-ment
of agriculture and the uplift of rural life in the South and in North
Carolina as did Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, the founder of the Demonstration
Work and the Boys' and Girls' Clubs, the great apostle and teacher of more
profitable farming and more comfortable living on the farm.
I have deemed it proper and profitable to turn aside this year from the
usual historical program for North Carolina Day, dealing with the past, and
celebrate the day as a Rural Life and Knapp Memorial Day, dealing with the
living present.
This day will prove a "North Carolina Day" of the most valuable sort, if
teachers will use the excellent material and suggestions contained in this
bulletin and in the Peabody College Bulletin, "Knapp Agricultural Day,"
copies of which have been sent by the college to all county superintendents for
distribution to teachers, for stimulating interest in country life and country
things, and a love for these, for opening the eyes of country boys and girls to
the beauty and the wonderful possibilities thereof, and for checking the
exodus from the country to the town.
On account of the illness of Mr. R. D. W. Connor, Secretary of the State
Historical Commission, who has heretofore kindly and ably edited and super-vised
the preparation of the bulletin for North Carolina Day, the State De-partment
of Education had to take charge of the preparation and editing of
it on short notice this year. As will be seen from an examination of the
contents of this bulletin, I was most fortunate in securing quick responses to
my hurried call for aid and valuable contributions from many of our best
known, most efficient and most consecrated workers for the agricultural, in-tellectual,
social, and moral development of our State. In the name of the
children, especially the country children, and of all our people, I desire to
thank all these" contributors for their prompt and valuable assistance. I
desire especially to thank Mr. Clarence Poe for his invaluable suggestions and
aid in the preparation of the program and in the collection of material and
selections for it, and also to express my appreciation of the extra services so
cheerfully and so satisfactorily rendered by Mr. N. C. Newbold, of my Depart-ment,
in arranging the material and reading the proof.
J. Y. Joyner,
Superintendent Public Instruction.
SUGGESTIONS.
In addition to the practical helpful suggestions for the use of this bulletin
made by Mr. Newbold, I desire to add the following:
1. Read carefully the articles of Mr. Hutt and Mr. Collett, and prepare, with
the aid of the children and their parents, an exhibit of the agricultural
products, fruits, and vegetables, of the community. This exhibit is one of the
most important and valuable parts of the program.
2. Send, through the children, special invitations to all the parents and
6
other people of the community to attend and take part in the celebration of
North Carolina Day. Extend this invitation through your county or com-munity
paper. If necessary, let your older pupils assist the teacher in writing
brief, neat invitations to be sent to all the families of the neighborhood.
3. Enlist in your Agricultural Exhibit and in the celebration of the day the
local Farmers' Union, if there be one in the community, and all other farm-ers.
Invite some intelligent farmer to make a brief talk on some subject
ject pertaining to farming or some phase of rural life.
4. Invite the country preachers and doctors. If possible, get some country
preacher to open the exercises of the day with appropriate Scripture reading
and prayer, and get some country doctor to make a brief health talk for
country folks.
5. Knapp Memorial Exercises -and collection.
Every school is urged to have as a part of the exercises of the day brief
Knapp Memorial Exercises and to take up a collection from children and
visitors for the "Knapp Farm and School of Country Life," to be established
in connection with Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville, Tennessee, as a
"working, living memorial of Dr. Knapp," to perpetuate the great work begun
by him, to serve the entire South by disseminating the great principles pro-mulgated
by him and by training agricultural leaders and. demonstrators.
The other Southern States celebrated Knapp Memorial Day and took up gener-ous
collections for this school last year and are planning to repeat the same
this year. No Southern State has profited more by Dr. Knapp's work and
teachings than North Carolina, and, as it was impossible to 30m our sister
States in this celebration and collection last year, I feel sure that all our
people, through the public schools, will be glad to avail themselves of the
opportunity on North Carolina Day this year to do their part in honoring
this great hero and prophet of agriculture and in making a generous contri-bution
for the establishment of this great school for the perpetuation and
advancement throughout the South of the great work to which he devoted
the best years of his life.
If you have not already received it, write at once to your county superin-tendent
or to Chas. E. Little, Knapp Day Secretary, Nashville, Tennessee, for
a copy of "Knapp Agricultural Day Program," containing all the information
and help needed for this part of your program.
NOTE OF EXPLANATION
As will be readily seen by an examination of the contents of this bulletin,
it is quite different from any North Carolina Day Program we have ever had.
I can not claim the credit for the idea nor for the collection of the material.
My task in connection with the bulletin has been comparatively light—only
that of organizing and arranging the material, and possibly, inserting here
and there what seems to me an appropriate quotation, poem, or other selection.
This work which has been done so well in former years by Mr. R. D. W.
Connor would have been in his hands again this year, but illness prevented
him from giving it his time. Because the work is not mine, I feel free to
make the following statement and suggestions:
The material of this bulletin represents a wide field of thought, and is the
product of some of the State's most progressive public spirited men and
women. For the information and the inspiration the bulletin contains, I
think it well worth a permanent place in all our school rooms and school
libraries. No copy ought to be destroyed. It is well worthy to be read and
studied from cover to cover.
Suggestions.
Any experienced teacher will know that it will not be possible nor desirable
to use all the material in this bulletin for a single program. Because of this,
the following suggestions are made:
First: In primary grades, first to third inclusive, the teacher may use it
as a basis for a number of talks to the children about the different phases of
country life presented. She may also use it as a basis for conversation lan-guage
lessons. This would develop interesting discussions of local conditions
because the children would be delighted to tell about their own experiences
and what they know about affairs in the community.
Second: In grammar grades, fourth to seventh inclusive, if a sufficient
number of the bulletins can be secured, distribute the bulletins to each pupil,
or one to two pupils, read and study articles together, using, say on Monday,
the History period (for all classes in rural schools), on Tuesday the Geog-raphy
period for all classes, on Wednesday the Language period, and so on
through the week. By taking the period of a different study each day for a
week or ten days for interested study and discussion of the bulletin, much
valuable information would be gathered by the children, and only a very
little time would be lost from the regular recitations. If it is impossible to
secure a sufficient number of bulletins to work on this plan, then use what can
be secured according to this plan as much as possible by exchanging, by the
teacher reading aloud, etc.
Third: In all high school grades much the same plan as that suggested
for grammar grades can be employed. If there are several teachers in the
high school, the work will be easier; the history teacher taking certain
articles through all her history classes, the science teacher taking others, the
English teacher certain others, etc., until the whole bulletin is covered.
Fourth: If this plan or some one similar to it is adopted and the study of
the bulletin is begun about ten days before North Carolina Day, December
19th, the work can be done without haste or worry and the pupils will have
gained much useful information about rural life, and about Dr. Seaman A.
Xnapp.
8
Fifth: While the plan of study outlined is proceeding and coincident with
it, a definite plan for the celebration of North Carolina Day can he worked
out to suit the teacher and local conditions. Two or three boys and giris
might be assigned selections for declamation, others might be prepared to
read some short selections, others might write brief reproductions of some of
the longer articles for readings, still others might prepare character sketches
of Dr. Knapp, or incidents in his life and work.
'
Sixth: Learn the patriotic songs, and add other appropriate music, if
possible.
Seventh: In city schools very much the same plan may be followed. I am
sure the matter in this volume, while based upon rural life, will be refreshing
and helpful to teachers and children in our city schools.
N. C. Newbold.
CONTENTS
Subject: Rural Life and Knapp Memorial Day.
1. The Old North State 10
2. Be a Creator of Wealth: Suggestions About Choosing a Life Work. ... 10
3. Back to Eden: A Letter to North Carolina Boys 11
4. Letters from Farm Boys and Girls (from Progressive Farmer)—
a. Have a Club Like This in Your Neighborhood 13
b. How Two Girls Made $100 Apiece on Tomatoes 14
c. The Old Schoolhouse and the New 15
d. How a School Library Was Started 15
e. Take Care of the Birds 15
f. How I Made 235 Bushels of Corn on an Acre 16
g. How I Made My Prize Corn Crop 17
5. The Boys' Corn Club Work in North Carolina -. 18
6. The Future of North Carolina Agriculture 19
7. Ho! For Carolina! 21
8. Four Suggestions for Farm Boys and Girls 21
9. One Literary Society's Good Work 23
10. Organize a Debating Society 24
11. Selections
—
a. The Nation's Hope in Poor Boys 25
b. For the Boy or Girl Who Can't Go to College 25
c. How the Kewpies Reared the Prize Baby 26
d. Theodore Roosevelt to the Boys of America. 27
e. What Tobacco Does to the Boy 27
f
.
An Appeal to the Boys 27
g. Twenty Books Our Young Folks Ought to Read 28
h. The Country the Best Place for Boys 28
i. The Boy with the Hoe 29
12. A Message to the North Carolina Farm Girl 29
13. Good Health on the Farm 33
14. Love Your Farm 36
15. Farm Opportunities 37
16. The Traveling Library 38
17. A Letter to North Carolina Boys and Girls About Books 39
18. How to Get a Rural Library for Your School 44
19. Protect the Birds , 45
20. The History of Corn 47
21. History of the Development of Agricultural Machinery 50
22. Directions to Boys for Making a Fruit and Vegetable Exhibit on North
Carolina Day 54
23. Selecting and Preparing Farm Crops for Exhibit 55
24. America 56
Note.—It is expected that each school will have in connection with the
North Carolina Day exercises a fruit, vegetable and agricultural exhibit
—
suggestions for arranging which are made in the papers of Mr. Hutt (p. 54)
and Mr. Collett (p. 55). Suggestions are also included in the Introduction
by Superintendent Joyner.
THE OLD NORTH STATE.
BY WILLIAM GASTON.
Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her!
While we live we will cherish, protect and defend her;
Though the scorner may sneer at and witlings defame her,
Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her.
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State!
Though she envies not others their merited glory,
Say, whose name stands the foremost in Liberty's story?
Though too true to herself e'er to crouch to oppression,
Who can yield to just rule more loyal submission?
Hurrah, etc.
Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster
At the knock of a stranger, or the tale of disaster?
How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains,
With rich ore in their bosoms and life in their fountains.
Hurrah, etc.
And her daughters, the Queen of the Forest resembling
—
So graceful, so constant, yet to gentlest breath trembling;
And true lightwood at heart, let the match be applied them,
How they kindle and flame! O! none know but who've tried them.
Hurrah, etc.
Then let all who love us, love the land that we live in
(As happy a region as on this side of Heaven),
Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us,
Raise aloud, raise together the heart-thrilling chorus!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State!
BE A CREATOR OF WEALTH: SUGGESTIONS ABOUT CHOOSING
A LIFE WORK.
BY CLAEENCE POE.
To every North Carolina boy who has no compelling special talent taking
him into some one line of work I would say, you should by all means fit
yourself for some productive occupation, some occupation in which you can
actually create wealth instead of merely taking toll from the wealth that
others create. We need lawyers, bankers, and merchants of course—their
work is useful and honorable—but the trouble is that here in the South
we have just twice as many men in these nonproductive lines of industry
11
as are needed, while our young men of extraordinary ability and training
are neglecting our great creative businesses, such as agriculture and manu-facturing
and all the others.
Go into the North and West and you will find a much larger proportion
of the leading men and the educated young men making the community
richer by running dairy farms, stock farms, fruit farms, grain farms, or
running factories or brick-kilns or machine shops, or building houses or
making roads or draining land—creating more wealth in States already
wealthy—and a very much smaller proportion putting up little banks, little
stores, little lawyer's offices in towns already overcrowded with such insti-tutions.
Instead of selling western meat and western flour and northern fruit and
northern butter, and sending profits away to the loss of the State, half our
merchants ought to be running farms, producing North Carolina meat and
North Carolina flour and fruit and butter, and keeping profits here for the
upbuilding of the State. And a thousand merchants who are spending
their lives selling northern-made cloth and northern-made furniture and
northern-made tools and machinery should be conducting North Carolina
factories and furnishing us with North Carolina-made cloth and furniture,
and tools and machinery.
Don't forget, of course, that more important than making a living is
making a life. Don't forget that you are an eternal being, and that life is
more than meat or money. And if you have a great message as a poet or
minister or orator or statesman, you will contribute values of the highest
order to your State and your people. But my point is, that unless you have
some supreme talent in some other direction, you should turn from the
overcrowded professions and join the great army of workers in farming
or manufacturing or in some other constructive North Carolina industry.
BACK TO EDEff.
A Letter to North Carolina Boys.
Dear Boys: We have a job for you. It is not a small or useless task. It
is a big thing and is one of the most important things that you can engage
in, whether you consider it solely for yourself or for the good of the State.
The matter is this: We want you to stop the shipping of corn into North
Carolina. What we mean is that you shall be growing enough corn in a
few years to supply all that is needed in the State. This will take ten years,
or probably longer, but it can be done; it must be done; and you can do it.
For forty years past, until Demonstration Work started, the average yield
of corn in the State was a little less than fifteen bushels per acre. All this
time farmers have been buying corn, paying about a dollar per bushel for
it, when they could have grown it at about twenty-five cents per bushel.
Every year thousands of dollars have gone out of our State this way. If
this money had been kept at home we would now have a rich State. We
need it to build and paint better houses, to build schoolhouses, and to pay
better teachers; we need it to buy farms and to pay off mortgages on farms;
we need it to build good roads; we need it to purchase more live-stock and
machinery; in fact, we need it to build a greater civilization with and to
12
procure the things which a higher civilization demands. Dr. Knapp made
a wise observation when he said that the civilization of no country could
rise higher than the earning capacity of the masses of its people. In our
State, the masses of the people are farmers of one kind or another. If we
ever have the great State we should have, then, boys, you must learn how
to grow larger crops at less cost per acre than have been grown in the past.
Corn growing is not very difficult to the boy who knows how. It may be
summed up about this way: Successful corn growing requires a deeply
broken soil filled with humus, improved seed and proper cultivation. If
you will join the Boys' Corn Club you will soon know these things. Or you
may learn them at home by getting help from your father (if he knows
how to grow corn) and by reading our Progressive Farmer and such agri-cultural
bulletins as deal with the subject. There is plenty of information
to be had.
To stop the shipping of corn into the State will probably require that we
shall grow thirty bushels of corn per acre instead of fifteen. At the same
time the cost of growing corn should be reduced one-half. Here is the
slogan: "Double the yield and halve the cost." Then, the growing of an
average of thirty bushels of corn per acre means bigger and cheaper crops
of other kinds. Land that will grow thirty bushels of corn per acre will
produce a bale of cotton per acre and other crops in proportion. But when
you have reached this goal, doubled crops and halved costs, you will not
stop there, you will be all the more eager to make further progress. Then
you will begin to get all the things you want. Your homes will be those
of pleasure, contentment and happiness; your gardens will be filled with
vegetables, both winter and summer; your orchards will abound with de-licious
fruits; the hills and valleys will then be covered with grasses, grains
and other crops that will maintain more fine horses, cattle, sheep and hogs.
"When the boys of today become such farmers as they should be then North
Carolina will be a veritable "Garden of Eden"—such a garden as that in
which Adam was placed and told to "dress and keep it," but to let alone
that which was not intended for him.
But probably some of the boys who read this will not stay on the farm.
That is all right. Go where you are most needed, provided you can do the
work well. But let me beg you to consider well the advantages of staying
on the farm. The best place ever yet found for a boy is a good home in the
country. Stay there at least until you become a fully grown man before
you consider engaging in things with which you are not familiar and for
which you may have no adaptability.
In order to help you be a good farmer, a wise man and true friend, Dr.
Seaman A. Knapp has written the Ten Commandments of Agriculture. If
you will practice what he teaches tnere is no reason why you should not
become a happy, successful farmer. We want every boy who will commit
these ten commandments to memory to write me a letter as soon as he has
done so and tell me about it. Now please do this so that I will know that
you saw my letter, that you are interested in stopping the shipping of corn
into North Carolina and in becoming the best farmer in your community.
I am appending the commandments and Dr. Knapp's explanation concern-ing
them, which I hope you will study.
Sincerely your friend, C. R. Hudson,
In Charge Farm Demonstration Work in North Carolina.
13
Dr. Knapp's Ten Commandments of Agriculture.
At an early period it was found necessary to evolve from the mass of
ethical teaching a few general rules for living, called the "Ten Command-ments,"
by which a man could be moral without going through a course in
theology. Just so, in order to instruct the average farmer how to success-fully
conduct his farm operations so as to secure a greater net gain from
the farm, it is necessary to first deduce from the mass of agricultural teach-ings
a few general rules of procedure. They are called "The Ten Command-ments
of Agriculture," by the practice of which a man may be a good farmer
in any State without being a graduate from a college of agriculture. It is
not the object of the application of these principles to produce an abnormal
yield of any crop on a single acre at great expense and possible detriment
to the land, but to produce a bountiful crop at a minimum cost and at the
same time maintain and increase the fertility of the soil.
1. Prepare a deep and thoroughly pulverized seed-bed, well drained; break
in the fall to the depth of eight or ten inches, according to the soil, with
implements that will not bring the subsoil to the surface. (When the break-ing
is done in the spring the foregoing depths should be reached gradually.)
2. Use seed of the best variety, intelligently selected and carefully stored.
3. In cultivated crops, give the rows and the plant in the rows a space
suited to the plant, the soil and the climate.
4. Use intensive tillage during the growing period of the crops.
5. Secure a high content of humus in the soil by the use of legumes, barn-yard
manure, farm refuse and commercial fertilizers.
6. Carry out a systematic rotation of crops with a winter cover crop on
Southern farms.
7. Accomplish more work in a day by using more horsepower and better
implements. »
8. Increase the farm stock to the extent of utilizing all the waste products
and idle lands on the farm.
9. Produce all the food required for the men and animals on the farm.
10. Keep an account of each farm product in order to know from which
the gain or loss arises.
LETTERS FROM FARM BOYS AND GIRLS.
(Prom the Progressive Farmer.)
HAVE A CLUB LIKE THIS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
I would like to tell you something about an organization we have at our
school. The name given the society is "The Red Oak Improvement Associa-tion."
It was organized to try to get people interested in the school; to get
young people to read the books and papers in the library; to take up and
carry forward anything that would be for the welfare of the community.
Our idea is to make the school a social center for the entire community and
the school building a common meeting place.
The organization has met with some success. Weekly meetings have been
held. A set program was given at each meeting. We have had at these
meetings, recitations, songs, instrumental music, readings, papers on such
subjects as "The Panama Canal," "Airships," "Domestic Science in Schools,"
14
"The Mosquito," "The Housefly," current events, etc. We have a Poultry
Club, a Girls' Tomato Club, and a baseball team. Prizes are offered in the
Poultry Club and Tomato Club.
The association is young yet and no great things have been done. How-ever,
I think the idea is good and every rural school should have some or-ganization
of this kind. Paul H. Nance.
Rocky Mount, N. C.
HOW TWO GIRLS MADE $100 APIECE ON TOMATOES.
My sister and I joined the Tomato Club last year and we just had a late
tomato patch. We cleared about $35 but didn't get a prize, and we wanted
to work again this year, so father gave us our one-tenth acre apiece. Father
made our seed-bed the 15th of February and sowed our tomato seed; they
were Spark's Earliana. They were sowed in a hotbed of course, and after
the seed began to come up well they had to be uncovered when it got warm
in the day and watered and covered back up at night.
When our plants were large enough to set out we had them to set out after
we came home from school. It just took us two evenings to set them out.
It was dry and we had to water our plants when we set them out. Our
tomatoes grew fast after they were set out in the rows in our plat. They
were hoed three times, cultivated once, and were plowed once and that is
all the work they got, for the vines were so large we couldn't get in them.
We set them out April 16 and 17 and started to selling June 21, and sold
till July 19.
We sold to the stores. When they got cheap we stopped selling. We had
sold $183.29 worth fresh. We started to canning as we have a Hickory Home
canner of our own; we canned 306 cans for ourselves, 63 cans for our kins-people
and neighbors. We will get for our tomatoes that are canned 10
cents a can, that being $30.60, and we have canned 40 quarts of pickles and
ketchup at 50 cents a quart, being $20. Our expenses were $28.74, and for
home use we used $8.11 worth.
Fresh tomatoes sold $183.29
Canned tomatoes sold 30.60
Canned pickles and ketchup 20.00
Home use 8.11
Total $242.00
Expense, total 28.74
Total after expense paid $213.26
What we each received 106.63
after our expenses had been paid.
Margaret Bkown.
Charlotte, N. C. May Belle B'rown.
THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE NEW.
Five years ago we went to school in a little poorly furnished one-room
schoolhouse with rude, home-made benches. Of course we could not put up
with this for long.
15
The first improvement attempted was to collect money to buy patent desks.
This attempt, however, failed, and we bought no desks that year.
Next year the teacher appointed a committee to collect money for a library.
We were more successful in this and bought a good $30 library.
Our next teacher was one of the ablest and best rural school teachers in
the country- She at once saw the need of a better school building, and we
went to work for it. We organized a Woman's Betterment Association; had
several entertainments, such as ice cream suppers, oyster suppers, box parties,
etc., and raised a good sum of money, and with what the county and State
gave, and with the work the men in the district did, we soon had a school-house
as good as any rural district in the county. It has a cloakroom at the
entrance and plenty of large windows.
The building is painted white and green, and is furnished with an organ,
stove, patent desks, several large maps, good blackboards, an emblem bearing
the school motto, "Excelsior," water cooler and individual drinking cups and
several nice pictures, three which we won as prizes for doing the most better-ment
work.
We have also bought four new lamps and a large clock since last school.
In the belfry hangs a large bell and just beneath it is the name of the school
in large black letters. Ollie Shields.
Carthage, N. C.
HOW A SCHOOL LIBRARY WAS STARTED.
I am going to tell below how a crowd of boys and girls raised money to get
a school library.
We gave a "Halloween party" in the grove by the school building. We had
for sale cakes, pies, candies, sandwiches and coffee. Also fortunes in walnut
shells. We had a fortune teller and a mystery hall, both in nicely decorated
booths, for which a small admission fee was charged. We asked different
families to give cakes, pies, coffee, and sugar.
We had several booths decorated with autumn leaves and ferns, where we
sold the different things.
Invitations were sent far and near and a large crowd attended. Every one
present seemed to thoroughly enjoy the "Halloween party."
We made $10 clear of all expenses. The State then gave $10 and the county
gave $10 also.
For the $30 we bought 86 nice books. Then there were 50 books presented
to the library, so we now have 136 books.
Mt. Airy, N. C. Annie Z. Allred.
TAKE CARE OF THE BIRDS.
Around our home birds are never frightened, and therefore a number build
in the trees near the house each year.
A catbird has a nest of little birds in a tree near our front porch. The
other day one of the little birds tried to fly but his little wings were too weak.
He managed to get up in a rose bush that grows on the porch, his mother
carried food to him there until he was strong enough to fly away.
Brother and I found a bluebird's nest up in a stump, but we do not go near
it for fear the birds will desert the nest and not hatch the eggs.
16
If boys and men could only realize the benefit that birds are to agriculture
I think fewer nests would be robbed, and a larger percentage of those raised
be allowed to live.
A pair of mocking-birds have built their nest this season in one of our
grapevines, and often at night I hear their thrilling notes. Those who have
never had mocking-bird neighbors have missed a great deal.
I often see strange birds whose names I do not know. I have read a book
on bird life by John Burroughs. It is helpful to any one interested in the
study of birds. The cold weather in June killed all of the martins that had
built on our place. We took the houses down and buried the dead birds. I
was very sorry for I enjoy seeing martins building nests and feeding their
young birds. Ralph D. Tunstall.
Edward, N. C.
HOW I MADE 235 BUSHELS OF CORN ON ONE ACRE.
BY CHARLES W. PARKER, JR., WOODLAND, N. C.
In December, 1910, I selected an acre of land upon which my brother had
gathered 126.5 bushels of corn, and which I had used in the 1909 corn contest.
I hauled out ten wagon loads of stable manure and spread it broadcast
over the land. I bedded it some 12 to 14 inches deep, and then between each
row ran two deep subsoil furrows.
About February the 1st, 1911, I reversed the beds, plowing the same depth,
and ran deep furrows between the beds as before. March 21st, I listed the
land with two-horse plow, two furrows to the row, 12 to 14 inches deep, and
leveled it with a disc harrow as deep as I could.
I then broke the land about 12 inches deep with a two-horse plow, followed
behind in same furrow with subsoil plow 6 to 8 inches, making total depth of
breaking about 18 inches.
I ran off my rows with a cotton plow 3 feet 10 inches apart, and on the
first day of May I planted Biggs's Seven-eared Corn, 6 inches apart in the
drill, three to five grains in each hill, with a corn planter. I used $9.15 worth
of fertilizer, including 200 pounds of nitrate of soda. I put all fertilizer in
drill under corn when planted except the nitrate of soda. One hundred
pounds of this was sown broadcast about the first of June and harrowed in
with an iron-tooth harrow.
Up until this time there had been only one good rain since the corn was
planted. The weather was so dry for the next four weeks my corn began to
parch, and about the 15th of July my neighbors said I would not make as
much as I planted. About the 20th of July we had a fine rain and cloudy,
damp weather for several days. Then I scattered 100 pounds more of nitrate
of soda between the rows as a top dressing. The corn at this time had blown
down so badly I could not cultivate it any more, and it was really difficult
to walk through it.
After the corn was planted I didn't use any implement in the cultivation
except the harrow and light cultivator, running very shallow.
I am happy to say that the result was the largest yield ever known to this
section, 235.5 bushels, field measurement, making 195.9 bushels of dry-shelled
corn. I am satisfied that it is possible to grow 250 bushels of corn on one
acre of land, and I propose to work toward this end in 1912.
My corn only cost me 24 cents per bushel, which shows the yield was the
result of good methods and not the extravagant use of commercial fertilizer.
17
HOW I MADE MY PRIZE ACRE OF CORN.
BY BENNIE A. BEESON, MONTICELLO, MISS.
It is more than a pleasure to me to tell how I made my 227 1-16 bushels of
corn on one acre. In 1909 I joined the Boys' Corn Club of Lincoln County,
Miss., and won the first prize in 1910—a gold watch, given by the Commercial
Bank of Brookhaven, Lincoln County, Miss.
In 1911 I led in my county, in the State, and in the Nation. In the national
contest every paper came out in large headlines, "Bennie A. Beeson, of Mis-sissippi,
Leads the Prize Winners in the Contest." I've won both years in
my county, this year in the State and in the Nation.
My land is uplands, with black topsoil and red-clay subsoil, and has been
in cultivation for eight years, being alternated with cotton and corn. For
the past three years this land has received special "treatment, breaking a
little deeper every year. This year I expect to break 18 inches. It was
broken in December, 1910, 10 inches with a steel-beam, two-horse plow. In
March I broadcasted 11 loads of barnyard manure, and cross-broke it with
the same plow, following immediately with a subsoiler. This breaking was
15 inches deep. 1 then harrowed it and laid off my rows three feet apart with
an eight-inch middle lister. Then my fertilizer distributor was run in the
same furrow, putting 200 pounds of Meridian home mixture fertilizer. I
then threw two furrows back with a small one-horse plow. (The harrowing,
laying off the rows, and running the fertilizer distributor was just before
planting.)
The corn was planted April 15, on a level, with a Lulu planter. My planter
puts the corn about 12 inches apart. I left generally two stalks in a hill.
Did not check rows.
At first working, 200 pounds of same fertilizer, and when in full silk
200 pounds of nitrate of soda was harrowed in middle. I worked my corn
regularly once a week with an ordinary cultivator, running very shallow. I
think so much corn is ruined by deep plowing. I used cultivator altogether
and ran it very shallow.
I have planted New Era corn both years and it has given satisfaction in
every way. New Era corn has led in every contest, so far as I know, for the
past three years in this State. It gives on an average of about three ears
to the stalk—depends on how thick it is left in the drill. It is a prolific corn.
My land and corn were measured by Prof. Martin Hemphill and H. T.
Hemphill under rules of Boys' Corn Contest.
Number of bushels made, 227 1-16; cost of labor, etc, $22.35, including
fertilizer; cost of manure, $11.
No Government man visited my crop. It was worked under the instructions
of my father. He began demonstration work under the instructions of the
Government's plans three years ago. My success, to a great extent, can be
attributed to the Progressive Farmer. In the year 1910 there were 100 boys
who made over 100 bushels to the acre, and 33 of them were from Mississippi.
In the year 1911, in the National contest, there were three boys from Mis-sissippi
that made over 200 bushels of corn to the acre.
18
THE BOYS' CORN CLUB WOKK IN NORTH CAROLINA.
BY T. E. BROWNE. STATE AGENT IN BOYS CORN CLUB WORK.
The Corn Club Work in North Carolina is now being conducted jointly by
the National Department of Agriculture, the State Department of Agriculture,
and the A. & M. College, under the general supervision of C. R. Hudson, of
Raleigh, State Agent in the F. C. D. Work, and under the special direction of
T. E. Browne, of West Raleigh, in charge of the Corn Club Work, with A. K.
Robertson as his assistant. Under this arrangement the Corn Club Work is
under the direct supervision of both the County Superintendent and the
County Demonstration Agent in the various counties.
During 1912 about twenty-five hundred boys enrolled. The average yield
of those reporting in 1912 was 62.8 bushels, at a cost of forty-three cents per
bushel. About the same number have been enrolled for 1913. The reports
for this year are not all in. Several yields of over one hundred and fifty
bushels have been received.
The State Department of Agriculture gives five hundred dollars to be
awarded in prizes. There are three State prizes to be contested for by all
club members in the State:
First Prize: A free trip to Washington, D. C, by the State Department
of Agriculture.
Second Prize: Fifty dollars, given by the Hastings Seed Company, of
Atlanta, Ga.
One boar pig (large Yorkshire breed), offered by Geo. C. Leach, of
Aberdeen, N. C.
Third Prize: Twenty dollars, offered by Hastings Seed Company.
The State is divided into ten districts of about ten counties each, and the
State Department of Agriculture offers five cash prizes, ranging from fifteen
dollars down to two dollars and fifty cents, in each of these districts. Prac-tically
the same prizes as for 1913 will hold good for 1914, with some addi-tional
items of interest. A number of local prizes are usually secured for the
boys of the various counties.
Conditions of Entrance.
The contestants for these prizes must be between the ages of ten and eighteen
years on the first day of January of the year they grow the corn; must keep
an accurate account of all time and fertilizers; must not use more than ten
dollars worth of commercial fertiliers, and make their reports to the agent in
charge, showing they have followed instructions.
Some Results.
In 1912 two boys made more than one hundred and seventy-five bushels of
corn on their acres. Five boys made above one hundred and fifty bushels;
twenty above one hundred and twenty-five, and seventy-five above one hundred
(bushels. The largest yield was made by Richard Brock, of Wayne County,
"out his cost of production was so great that the State Championship went to
•George West, Jr., of Kinston, with a yield of 184.7 bushels at a cost of 19.2
cents per bushel. Herbert Allen, of Pungo, N. C, Beaufort County, made 83
19
bushels at a cost of 14.2 cents per bushel. Robert Savage, of Speed, made 152.5
bushels at a cost of 18 cents per bushel. Fred Bryson, Beta, Jackson County,
made 173.3 bushels; cost 29.5 cents per bushel.
As a result of the public spirit and interest of the Southern Fertilizer Asso-ciation,
of Atlanta, the Greater Western North Carolina Association and the
Boards of County Commissioners of a number of our most progressive coun-ties,
fifty-three of our Corn Club boys attended the National Corn Exposition,
which convened in Columbia, S. C, January 27-February 1, 1913. These boys
were under the direction and care of Mr. A. K. Robertson, of West Raleigh.
Assistant in Corn Club Work, while enroute and while in Columbia. Not one
of the boys was sick or hurt during the entire trip, and all came home happy
in the fact that they were afforded an opportunity to attend this great edu-cational
exposition.
Past experience has taught us that far better results are obtained in those
counties where there is some one directly interested in and who gives per-sonal
supervision to the boys' work. We appeal to the County Superintend-ents,
public school teachers, and the parents of the State to aid us in the
work, which means so much for the future of North Carolina, and help us
make 1914 a banner year in the Corn Club Work.
THE FUTURE OF NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURE.
BY A. L. FRENCH, ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, N. C
The rise and fall of nations has followed very closely the condition ot their
agriculture. When a nation has forgotten that all life is based upon the soil
her deathknell has been sounded.
Those nations that have fostered agriculture and have given place and
position to real agricultural leadership have prospered and grown great; for
it is a fact that not only is all life based upon the soil but just as easily a
proved fact that much of the brain that directs the movements of other lines
of business has been trained out in the open country close to Nature's heart.
North Carolina has given from her farms many of her great leaders, and
the future of our agriculture, in my judgment, will depend very largely upon
the number of trained minds and hands that are developed in the farm homes
that dot the landscape throughout the length and breadth of her millions of
acres of mountains, hills, valleys and plains. Education means the training
of minds and hands. So education is the bedrock upon which North Caro-lina's
future in agriculture will depend.
Pioneer agriculture in our State—as well as in practically every other
timbered State—carried with it hardship and much grinding toil; men's
energies and thoughts were given over very largely to the conquest of the
forests; and it is little wonder that scientific agriculture—which means simply
maintaining and increasing soil fertility while increasing production and
lowering its cost—was left for coming generations to battle with. Now scien-tific
agriculture, while a simple thing to define, is not so simple a thing to
work out on farms where it has been practically neglected for seventy-five
years.
The new agriculture requires not only an abundance of hard work, but
a vast amount of "know how," and the hard work without the knowledge
of how to do and how not to do, how to plow and how not to plow, how'to
20
cultivate and how not to cultivate, how to fertilize and how not to fertilize,
what crops to grow and what not to grow, how to market and how not to
market, how to spend the money received and how not to spend it, will lead
many times to poverty of soil and flattening of pocketbook. And just as
surely will hard, consistent work, coupled with knowledge of how to do,
bring wealth of soil, that always, in agriculture, travels hand in hand with
increase of dollars, if business judgment be made use of.
It is folly, in my judgment, to make education a means for getting away
from hard work, but rather should mind training be directed toward making
hard work the most effective; for with the depleted soils of our State much
hard work will be a necessary factor in their reclamation. And my hope for
the future of our agriculture is not that we have a few trained minds to
direct many untrained hands, but many thousands of trained minds directing
as many trained hands.
For the training of these thousands of minds in the rural districts for their
position as rebuilders of our agriculture, we must look to the common schools;
for it is not from the homes of the wealthy alone that these builders must
come, but every barefooted farm boy and girl carrying a dinner bucket each
morning to the little schoolhouse in the grove must be looked upon as a
potential agricultural builder.
So how necessary it becomes that each year as it passes register progress
in the rural schools along the line of agricultural education and business
training.
Our millions of acres produced a gross revenue of $187,000,000 last year.
When they are all at work manned by a crew of trained farmers; when every
gullied hill is wearing a crown of grass; when the bushy hollows are drained
and producing magnificent crops; when the fields that are now in crops are
producing three to four times their present output; when the farming men
and women of tomorrow are going to their tasks each morning with a love
for the soil in their hearts and the knowledge that upon them depends not
only the future of our agriculture but the future of our State and Nation,
then will our present output look like a fine point to start from on the path
to a billion-dollar annual output.
NATURE'S SONG.
There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no meter that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—Madison Caivein.
21
HO! FOR CAROLINA!
BY WILLIAM B. HARRELL.
Let no heart in sorrow weep for other days;
Let no idle dreamer tell in melting lays
Of the merry meetings in the rosy bowers;
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
CHORUS.
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free;
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh! it is a land of love and sweet liberty!
Down in Carolina grows the lofty pine,
And her groves and forests bear the scented vine;
Here are peaceful homes, too, nestling 'mid the flowers.
Oh! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Come to Carolina in the summer time,
When the luscious fruits are hanging in their prime,
And the maidens singing in the leafy bowers;
Oh! there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
Ho! for Carolina! etc.
Then, for Carolina, brave, and free, and strong,
Sound the meed of praises "in story and in song,"
From her fertile vales and lofty granite towers,
For there is no land on earth like this fair land of ours!
CHORUS.
Ho! for Carolina! that's the land for me;
In her happy borders roam the brave and free;
And her bright-eyed daughters none can fairer be;
Oh! it is a land of love and sweet liberty!
FOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR FARM BOYS AND GIRLS.
BY CLARENCE POE, EDITOR THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
It hasn't been long since I was a North Carolina farm boy myself, going,
to a Chatham County school, so I am glad to accept Dr. Joyner's invitation.
to make some suggestions to other farm boys such as I was, and to their
sisters suggestions based on my own experience. And while I am going to«
point out some things for you to do, I believe most of you are wide-awake; ,
enterprising youngsters and are ready to do anything that is really wortb
while.
22
I
—
Make Good Use of Youe School Advantages.
The very first and best thing you can do right now then, let me say, is to
equip yourselves for lives of the greatest possible usefulness. You should
seize every opportunity to train and enrich your minds. You should see to it
that nothing except a really serious matter keeps you from school any day,
and that when at school every minute is used to good advantage.
You ought to remember that thousands and thousands of grown-up North
Carolina men and women had no such school advantages as you have today
—
even when I was growing up fifteen or twenty years ago we had only about
a three-months term in the "Rocky Branch" district I was in—and you should
appreciate your own superior blessings. Remember, too, that all through life
you are going to have to compete with boys and girls in other States who
have had eight or ten months schooling a year. With our shorter term in
North Carolina there is all the more reason for making good use of it. I
heard the other day of a little negro boy who was going to school and a white
man who got permission to look into his dinner bucket found that he had
nothing to eat but hickory nuts, persimmons, and a sweet potato. I want to
see our white boys and girls just as anxious to get an education!
II
—
Study the Health Book and the Book on Agriculture.
Then you should not only go to school every day and study after you get
there, but you should study the things that will be of most use to you in the
future.
Every farm boy ought to study the text-book on agriculture, and every boy
who can do so should enroll in the Corn Club work, and every girl in the
Canning Club work. Study the book on agriculture and talk over with your
parents the ideas you get. Ask your local demonstration agent or the State
Department of Agriculture, Raleigh, or your farm paper, for information and
bulletins about any special subject that interests you.
Every boy and girl should also study the health book—the book on sanita-tion
and hygiene and physiology. Scientists tell us that every third death
among us is the result of an unnecessary disease, and that every third case
of sickness might have been prevented by knowing and practicing the simple
rules of good health. Few farm boys and girls need to be told to take plenty
of exercise, but millions sleep with closed windows and so breathe poisonous
second-hand air at night; others are careless as to what they eat and how
they eat it; and others ruin their health by using tobacco, snuff, and whiskey.
I believe it was studying the health book in a country school when I was
growing up, and so learning the damage whiskey does, that has always kept
me from drinking. And I believe the same instruction with regard to tobacco
has kept me from smoking or chewing.
Ill
—
Learn to Read Books and Papers.
I hope, too, you are not only learning how to read but that you are learning
to enjoy reading. If you haven't a school library, you ought to have one, and
I would advise you to keep pestering your teacher and all the school com-mitteemen
until you do get one. When I was a farm boy I borrowed books
from the neighbors for miles around, and I would have worked a month for
the privilege of using a school library. If you haven't a library, get one;
and if you have one, ask your teacher to pick out the books she thinks will
interest you most. Read the lives of great men; read good books of poetry,
23
history, and science. Read a good story now and then—some book by Dickens
or Scott or Mark Twain, or some other great writer. A good plan is to get a
good book and read it aloud in the family circle at night.
Read the papers, too; but be careful to get papers worth reading. Sensa-tional
papers, filled with stories of murders and divorces, and suicides and
court trials, and railroad wrecks, will only fill your minds with rubbish. Read
papers that give news that is really worth while. Read your county paper
to find out what is going on in the county. Read the Children's Page in the*
church papers, magazines, and other papers that come to your home. Read
the farm paper and see if you do not find a lot of interesting things you
hadn't thought about before. Read the Youth's Companion if you ca.n get it,
and the Sunday School papers.
I think, too, a very good idea would be for you to bring some papers to
school every Friday, the papers you take in your home and have already read,
and swap them for papers from other children's homes. Then you and your
parents can read the papers that will be new to you, and some other family
will get the benefit of those you have finished with. Why not speak to your
teacher about this plan and try it?
IV
—
Learn All You Can About Nature.
I wish, too, that you would make it a point to learn all you can about the
beautiful and interesting in this great world our Heavenly Father has put
us in. Do you know anything of the names and life of the trees, the wild
flowers, the birds, and the insects? Can you tell the notes of all the birds
in your neighborhood? When you go out at night can you call the names
of any of the stars you see or tell from them in what direction you are going?
If not, you can not call yourself educated, no matter how much Latin and
geometry you know. Every school library ought to have in it some books
with descriptions and colored pictures to enable you to learn the name and
habits of any bird or insect or wild flower; and a little museum of natural
objects would also be a useful feature of any country school.
ONE LITERARY SOCIETY'S GOOD WORK.
BY MRS. W. T. RAWLS, CURRY, N. C
Several years ago I taught a public school at Ryland, N. C, a small village
and station situated midway between Suffolk, Va., and Edenton, N. C. I
have taught a good many schools since, but I believe I can say that my
winter's work there was the best and most pleasant of any.
The neighborhood was a very progressive one. Soon after school opened
we organized a literary society, which we called Ryland Literary Society.
One of the young men was elected President, and I was elected Secretary.
Any one that wanted to could join. All my school children joined, and most
all the people of the neighborhood—old, young men and women. Some from
adjoining schools joined, and several of the high school boys from Belvidere.
The Belvidere boys' society met on Thursday nights, and on Friday nights
they were with us.
We had regular rules and regulations. Our society fee for grown people
was 25 cents, and for children 10 cents.
24
We opened our meetings with a song, then read a few well-selected verses
from the Bible, and some of the young men led in prayer.
We had a program committee, and an interesting program was made out
during the week by them and read at the following meetings.
We always had a debate. Girls, married women, and old men debated as
well as the young men. The program committee arranged so as not to have
the same debates two meetings in succession.
We had solos, quartettes, recitations, readings, and some member that
was gifted with her pen, wrote and read the "Times." In it all current
events were read and discussed; also we had from it the local news. The
reading of the Times was always looked forward to eagerly.
The school had a library, but we decided to get a supplement to it. To
improve the members of our society, and for the entertainment of others, we
decided on a literary entertainment. Most every member took part in it.
It was amusing to see the parents acting in pieces, but it did them good in
reviving their youthful spirits.
We charged ten cents for admission to all outside the society. While this
was not much, still we raised $5, which was enough for the supplement to the
library.
This society did a great deal of good to the neighborhood and adjoining
neighborhoods. It brought us all together once a week. It caused us to read
and study more, it kept the young men from lounging around the stores and
station. It helped prepare the young boys and girls in society work for high
school, of which several entered the next term of school, and it helped all of
us to think more, to speak, act and talk better in public.
Those were golden days at old Ryland. I like yet to live in memory those
dear days over again, and I like to write about them, too.
ORGANIZE A DEBATING SOCIETY.
BY CLARENCE POE, EDITOR THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
You ought to have a debating society in your school. Why not organize
one? The man who can not say what he wants to say in a public meeting
is at a great disadvantage. That is a chief reason why lawyers and city
men have more influence in politics than farmers have. The farmers have
not been trained to talk in public.
If you could have a debate every other Friday night it would be a fine
feature. Or you might simply organize a literary society—or two literary
societies taking opposite sides in debate but working together on all other
things—and vary your programs. At one meeting you could have a debate;
at the next meeting a musical program; then a program of recitations and
dialogues; and then a speech by some leader in health work or educational
work or farm work, or by some man of prominence in a near-by city or an
adjoining county.
Anyhow, I wish all our farm boys and girls would interest themselves in
having some such meetings every other Friday night, or 6*nce a month at
least.
25
SELECTIONS.
THE NATION'S HOPE, IN POOR BOYS.
I remember speaking at a school not long ago where I understood that
almost all the young men were the sons of very rich people, and I told them
I looked upon them with a great deal of pity, because I said: "Most of you
fellows are doomed to obscurity. You will not do anything. You will never
try to do anything, and with all the great tasks of the country waiting to be
done, probably you are the very men who will decline to do them. Some man
who has been 'up against it,' some man who has come out of the crowd, some-body
who has had the whip of necessity laid on his back, will emerge out
of the crowd, will show that he understands the interests of the nation,
united and not separated, and will stand up and lead us."
—
From "The New
Freedom,'" by Woodrow Wilson.
FOR THE BOY OR GIRL WHO CAN'T GO TO COLLEGE.
"The True University of These Days is a Collection of Books."
To look at teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, respectable
product of the modern age. Their existence too is modified, to the very basis
of it, by the existence of books. Universities arose while there were yet no
books procurable; while a man, for a single book, had to give an estate of
land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to
communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners around him, face to
face, was a necessity for him. * * * It is clear, however, that with this
single circumstance, facility of getting books, the whole conditions of the
business from top to bottom were changed. Once invent printing, you meta-morphosed
all universities, or superseded them! The teacher need not now
to gather men personally around him, that he might speak to them what he
knew; print it in a book, and all learners, far and wide, for a trifle, had it
each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it! Doubtless there
must ever remain while a man has a tongue a distinct province for speech,
as well as for writing and printing. But if we think of it, all that a uni-versity
or a final highest school can do for us, is still but what the first
school began doing—teach us to read. We learn to read in various lan-guages,
in various sciences; we learn the alphabet of letters of all manners
of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowl-edge,
is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner
of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days
is a collection of books.
—
From Thomas Carlyle.
26
HOW THE KEWPIES REARED THE PRIZE BABY.
f The " Kewpies " are some imaginary fairy-beings whose delightful exploits are set forth monthly
in the Woman's Home Companion. In the October issue the story of how they reared the prize
baby is full of good advice to mothers, as follows :]
His bathing, feeding, exercise, we see
Performed 'neath Kewpies' careful eyes, we see.
His muscles trained by art judicious too,
His diet freed of things pernicious too,
Of grown-up victuals indigestible,
To infant tummies quite detestable.
No sausages nor sugar sops for him,
No pickles, pills nor sleeping drops for him,
No fish-bones to get sadly stuck on there,
No bacon rinds for him to suck on there,
No candy, chicken bones or beer, indeed,
Some fruits were also barred, I hear, indeed;
For under no conditions can a
Babe digest a raw banana.
Poor babes with unhygienic fillers
Curl up with pain like caterpillars.
His milk the Kewpies all made sure, too,
Was always absolutely pure, too;
And when they washed it (germs to throttle)
They all put borax in his bottle.
They would not let him drink too fast, you see
For fifteen minutes it must last, you see,
And when he gobbled milk they handed him,
The Kewps politely reprimanded him.
They kept no tight bands round his tummy,
These make a babe grow up a dummy.
They never gave him "pacifiers,"
Which are so bad for little criers.
They fed him prunes, but never prisms
Which might impair his mechanisms.
They fed him rice, oatmeal or barley,
And trained him perpendicularly.
They trained him up to be pacific,
To give up yells and howls terrific,
To nightly habits soporific:
They trained with methods scientific
—
Result: a baby beatific!—
The Better Babe, brought up by hand,
The perfect baby, nobly planned,
Pride of our broad and noble land.
—
****** *
Well, dears, that baby took the prize!
His head was just the proper size;
The Kewpies weighed him with surprise!
They filled the air with joyful cries.
27
THEODORE ROOSEVELT TO THE BOYS OP AMERICA.
Of course what we have a right to expect from every American boy is that
he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now, the chances are strong
that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must
not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk or a prig. He must work
hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to
hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. It is only on
these conditions that he will grow into the kind of a man of whom America
can really be proud. In life as in a football game the principle to follow is:
Hit the line hard: don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard.
WHAT TOBACCO DOES TO THE BOY.
It is generally admitted that in the immature the moderate use of tobacco
stunts the normal growth of the body and mind, and causes various nervous
disturbances, especially of the heart—disturbances which it causes in later
life only when smoking has become excessive. That is to say, though a boy's
stomach grows tolerant of nicotine to the extent of taking it without pro-test,
the rest of the body keeps on protesting.
Furthermore, all business men will tell you that tobacco damages a boy's
usefulness in his work. For this reason, the boy who smokes excessively not
only is unable to work vigorously but he does not wish to work at all. This
result, apparent during growth, is only less apparent after growth, when other
causes may step in to neutralize it.
Tobacco, in the bringing about a depreciation of the nerve cells, brings,
together with physical results like insomnia, lowered vitality and restless-ness,
their moral counterparts, like irritability, lack of concentration, desire
to avoid responsibility and to travel the road of least resistance.
If there were some instrument to determine it, in my opinion there would
be seen a difference of 15 per cent in the general efficiency of smokers and
nonsmokers. The time is already at hand when smokers will be barred out
of positions which demand quick thought and action.
—
Charles B. Town in
Century Magazine.
AN APPEAL TO BOYS.
Your first duty in life is toward your afterself. So live that your after
self—that man you ought to be—may in his time be possible and actual.
Far away in the years he is waiting his turn. His body, his brain, his sou?
are in your boyish hands. He can not help himself.
What will you leave for him?
Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to thinfe
and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about
you? Will you, Boy, let him come as a man among men in his time? Or
will you throw away his inheritance before he has had the chance to touch
it? Will you turn over to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased? A will
untrained to action? A spinal cord grown through with the devil grass of
that vile harvest we call wild oats?
Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining through your experi
ences, hallowed through your joys; building on them his own?
28
Or will you fling his hope away, decreeing, wanton-like, that the man you
might have been shall never be?
This is your problem in life, the problem of more importance to you than
any or all others. How will you meet it, as a man or a fool?
When you answer this, we shall know what use the world can make of
you.
—
David Starr Jordan.
TWENTY BOOKS OUR YOUNG FOLKS OUGHT TO READ.
1. Robinson Crusoe, Defoe.
2. Sketch Book, Irving.
3. Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan.
4. The Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith.
5. The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper.
6. Ivanhoe, Scott.
7. Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens.
8. David Copperfield, Dickens.
9. Longfellow's Poems.
10. Silas Marner, Eliot.
11. Kidnapped, Stevenson.
12. Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Poe.
13. Tales of Shakespeare, Lamb.
14. Tom Brown's School Days, Hughes.
15. John Halifax, Gentleman, Mulock.
16. Lorna Doone, Blackmore.
17. Gulliver's Travels, Swift.
18. Household Tales, the Grimm Brothers.
19. Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales, Hawthorne.
20. Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights. —Selected by Texas School Journal.
THE COUNTRY THE BEST PLACE FOR BOYS.
"People flock to the cities for the advantages there offered, and find disad-vantages.
Parents sell their wholesome country homes because of their chil-dren,
and go where there are grand churches, superior schools, and attractive
libraries, to find themselves in close proximity to drinking saloons, dance
halls, gambling dens, and indescribable allurements to vice. Is that better
for their boys and girls, or is the new atmosphere heavy with influences
that are a peril? There are fifty churches in a city and a thousand saloons
The churches are open one day and two or three evenings in each week.
The saloons are open every weekday all day long and far into the night."
—
Dr. G. S. Dickerman.
29
THE BOY WITH THE HOE.
Say, how do you hoe your row, young chap!
Say, how do you hoe your row?
Do you hoe it fair,
Do you hoe it square,
Do you hoe it the best you know?
Do you cut the weeds as you ought to do,
And leave what's worth while there?
The harvest you garner depends on you;
Are you working it on the square?
Are you killing the noxious weeds, young chap?
Are you making it straight and clean?
Are you going straight,
At a hustling gait?
Are you scattering all that's mean?
Do you laugh and sing and whistle shrill
And dance a step or two,
As the row you hoe leads up the hill?
The harvest is up to you. —Selected.
A MESSAGE TO THE NORTH CAROLINA FARM GIRL.
BY JANE S. M'KIMMON, IN CHAEGE GIRLS' DEMONSTRATION WORK.
To the North Carolina girl living in the country who feels that many of the
advantages and good things of this life are passing her by because the family
purse can not be stretched to furnish the means for making these her own, I
am bringing a message of opportunity waiting at your door if you are strong
enough of purpose and so gallant a fighter that you will allow no thought of
failure to enter your mind.
Have you heard of the four hundred little business women right here in
your own State who are growing tomatoes on a tenth of an acre and either
selling them fresh at some near-by town, or canning them in tin for the mar-ket?
Each of these girls has set out with the purpose of earning something
which shall be her very own, and when I received the report that 70,000 quart
cans of tomatoes were ready for the purchaser, and that they were heavy
weight, properly sterilized, and full of ripe fruit, I realized that these girls
had done what they set out to do, and that they were going to find a good
market and satisfied customers for their produce.
Last summer in Wake County one young girl canned 800 quarts of tomatoes
and has already sold her whole output. Two little Mecklenburg girls have
done even better. Sowing Earlianna tomato seed in February, they cultivated
them in sunny window boxes and after all danger of frost was over they set
out the plants in their tenth-acre garden plot. These grew to such purpose
that they were able to produce fine ripe tomatoes for the Charlotte market by
the 21st day of June. This is quite early for home-grown fruit, and conse-quently
they commanded top-notch prices, the largest bringing 55 cents per
30
dozen, the next 35 cents, and so on. The tomatoes were graded and packed
in boxes with the stem end down, presenting to the grocer so attractive an ap-pearance
that he bought all that were brought in. When prices fell below 10
cents per dozen, these little business women thought it more profitable to can,
so they put up in tin 300 quarts, for which they received 10 cents per can. The
last of the crop was made into catsup and carried to the same friendly grocer,
who paid 50 cents per quart for the fifty quarts delivered to him. These girls
made in gross receipts, $122.00 each on her tenth-acre. The expense of each
being $11.37, there was left in clear profit $110.63.
A prize of a trip to Washington, D. C, was offered by the State Department
of Agriculture to the girl who made the best yield with the least expense on
her tenth-acre, and the two little Mecklenburg girls tied for that honor. I
feel very proud that from their profits they are supplementing what is given
by the Department, and are both going to have the coveted trip.
It is not all easy sailing for the "Tomato Club" girl. She has to work in
the hot sun, and has to contend against drought, insects, and plant diseases.
Then, too, many of them are so burdened with household cares that it is hard
for them to find time to get out into their gardens. A dear little girl of ten,
who had planted her tenth-acre in the spring, wrote me this: "I haven't got
but three hundred cans of tomatoes and I thought I wasn't going to have any.
In June God sent me a little baby brother and he was mighty sweet, but, oh!
he was so much work, and after I had done all the things around the house, I
could not find much time to work my patch. Mamma patted me on the back
and told me to do just a little bit every day, and I did, and I made 300 cans."
Another little girl in Tennessee, who had a particularly hard and rocky
piece of ground for her garden, nothing daunted, bought a dollar's worth of
dynamite, cut it in pieces and placed the pieces about her patch. Her father
lighted the fuses and after the explosion it was easy enough to have it plowed
and to start to work on her crop. She tells with great pride that the Dupont
Powder people made her a present of $5.00 worth of dynamite because they
had never before heard of a little girl doing such scientific farming.
We believe the very fact that a girl is able to earn for herself money to
spend as she pleases is going far towards keeping that girl satisfied in her
farm home. A year ago we had a club member who cleared $45.00 on her
summer's canning. Her sister had gone into the town to work in a tobacco
factory and when she began to reason that $45.00 was more than she had been
able to clear after paying board and her other expenses in the town, she
decided to give up the factory and go back to the farm to earn her spending
money in the Canning Club.
These Club girls keep account of every expenditure and of every sale made,
and you would be surprised to see how businesslike are their account books.
They also write histories of all the ups and downs of the undertaking and
tell of their purposes and of what the work has done for them.
One little girl, who had had very few opportunities and who had never in
her life had a dollar to call her own, made a sale of 500 cans which she had
produced, and my heart and eyes were both full as I read, "I made 500 cans.
I got my $50.00 and it is all my own to spend for what I want, and I says,
God bless that tomato club."
Many girls are actually sending themselves to school by their profits, or
are assisting their parents to do so. Some of the boarding schools are taking
their canned fruit in part payment. ,
31
In the year 1912, when we produced our first big crop and were a new busi-ness
enterprise with no reputation established, I was quite appalled at the
thought of the thousands of cans waiting to be sold, and appealed to the
Women's Clubs of the North to help us to find a market. We had hearty re-sponses
and were put in touch with the Housewives Leagues, those women
who are banded together to get pure, clean food for their tables. A small ad-vertisement
and a write-up of the work in their magazine brought us many
orders, and this season I am having no difficulty in selling to those who tried
our products last year.
The President and founder of the Housewives Leagues came down to North
Carolina last summer and watched our Alamance County team of girls do the
canning, and she was so much pleased at the cleanly methods and the quality
of the fruit that she went back enthused, saying she could recommend with-out
reservation any products the girls might put upon the market. To show
her approval she has asked that North Carolina make an exhibit of her girls'
products at a big exposition of foods approved by the Housewives Leagues of
America which is to be held in New York next February.
We sent several cases of tomatoes to the Home Economics Department of
Cornell University, and Miss Martha Van Rensselaer, head of the Department
and who I consider to be one of the foremost women of America in that
line, writes me, "I find that your canned products cost us a little more than
the ordinary commercial goods owing to the high cost of freight, but I be-lieve
the extra weight and the good quality justifies us in placing an order
with you for our winter's supply." The girls must have worked hard and
conscientiously to have secured such commendation as that.
We much prefer a girl to market her produce in her own county, and last
year Alamance sold all of her 10,000 cans right at home except such as I sent
out for sample cases, thus saving to the county $1,000 that had formerly gone
out to Maryland or some other canning State.
Some of the girls who have seemed timid and afraid even to do their own
buying are now learning to take their products to a merchant or housewife,
make their own bargains and come out with satisfaction and a feeling of
independence.
A girl's name on each of her can labels means a great deal for the work.
She is not willing to let that name ornament a poor class of canned goods
and we find that she gets the benefit of any good reputation her fine work
makes for her. Customers are repeatedly asking that they be given the
products of the same girl who furnished them last year. Stamping the
weight on the label is another popular feature.
The exhibit which these girls made at the State Fair was very creditable in-deed
and we have received many requests from girls all over the State to be
taught to do such canning. I wish it were possible to organize every one of
the one hundred counties in the State, and we hope eventually to bring into
the work the greater part of them, but we have of course only a limited ap-propriation
and a limited working force and it will take time to do all that
we desire.
There is quite a friendly rivalry amongst the girls as to which shall make
the greatest profit on her tenth-acre. One little enterprizing Miss of Georgia
had sold fresh fruit and then canned, pickled and preserved the rest, and not
satisfied with her thrift, she added to her profits by picking the tomato
worms and selling to a fisherman who came along looking for bait.
32
We have many who planted their patches in winter lettuce after the tomato
crop was housed and they are expecting to add considerably to their income
in this way.
There are so many opportunties opening up to the country girl of North
Carolina that, as I said in the beginning, any one who is willing to work, and
who has enough pluck to carry her over the times of discouragement, need
never despair of finding the way if she keeps her eyes open.
Suppose your county is not yet organized for the canning club work, why
not do some such thing as the girl in Connecticut did whose heart was set on
going to college and who was hopeless of ever getting the money for the
tuition? She knew there was no one to help her mother if she left the farm
and no money to pay a girl to take her place, and things did look dark, but
one day an automobile piled with a merry party broke down just at the farm
gate. The ladies came up to sit in the shade while things were being rem-edied
and the girl hopitably served to them cool, freshly churned buttermilk
and hot ginger bread. Now if you girls knew how impossible it is for the
city person to get any of your delicious buttermilk you might imagine what
it was to these women and how sincere they were when they begged the
girl to let them came often and bring their friends to enjoy such a treat.
The outcome was a little sign on the gate post which read "Fresh Buttermilk
and Hot Ginger Bread Served here from 4 to 6 o'clock every afternoon." Do
you wonder that even at one dime per capita that girl had made enough by
the end of the summer to insure her entrance to college?
Then, there's the hamper basket. You might send in to your nearest town,
or put the advertisement on your gate post that you have chickens, eggs,
potatoes or what not for sale that day if you are on a road where automobiles
pass. You could never imagine how many of these people are looking for
such things.
Oh girls! your opportunity is really looking for you. Are you going to stay
so long in the dark places that it will pass you by? Any object undertaken
in the right way is really like one of our roller-coasters or old switch-backs
that we used to see at our county fairs. We start off briskly, finding we are
sliding rapidly down an incline of difficulties, but are gathering a fine momen-tum
of courage, firmness of purpose and ability to overcome which takes us
swiftly through the low places and lands us on the top of the next height.
We may rest for an instant but are plunged down and up again until the
same fine momentum lands us safely on the heights of our accomplished end.
And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil
To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.
-Alfred Tennyson.
33
GOOD HEALTH ON THE FARM.
BY WARREN H. BOOKER, CHIEF OF BUREAU OF ENGINEERING AND EDUCATION,
STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.
Did you ever have a headache, or a toothache, or have to go to bed be-cause
you were sick? Being sick from any cause is very unpleasant, to say
the least. When we are sick we have to miss a lot of nice things. We can't
play with the other boys and girls, we can't go to school, to church or Sunday
School, to town, or to see our friends. If we are very sick we have to stay
in the house or perhaps in bed until we get well enough to go out again.
Now, just as boys and girls dislike being sick, so men and women dislike
to be sick. However, in the case of men and women, instead of simply miss-ing
a good time, they have to stop work, which in some cases stops the family
income. In many cases, when our parents and others get sick there is no
one else left to do the farming or to do the housework, and furthermore some
one else who could help do such work may have to nurse those that are sick.
People who have studied these matters tell us that on an average every
person in North Carolina is sick and unable to play or work for twelve days
every year. Of course some people are sick more than others. Some are
sick all the time. A few are rarely ever sick a day, but they are the excep-tion.
Twelve days sickness a year is the average for every person in the
State.
Now it has also been estimated that the total money loss for the entire
State on account of all this sickness and on account of all the doctors' bills,
medicine and nursing is about $25,000,000 annually.
This is a great loss to our State every year, but the worst of all is that at
least half this loss should not have occurred. With reasonable care and
obedience to the laws of hygiene and sanitation half our sickness, which
represents at least twelve and one-half millions of dollars, could have been
prevented.
Nor is this all the loss. Not everybody that gets sick gets well again.
About 40,000 North Carolinians die every year. Of this 40,000 about 16,000
die from causes of death that might easily have been prevented. Nearly
every death from typhoid fever or tuberculosis (consumption) or diphtheria
or scarlet fever or whooping cough or measles is preventable. Every case
ol typhoid fever occurs because in some manner a tiny amount of filth or
excreta from some other typhoid fever patient has gotten into the food or
drink, and thus the disease continues. This filth usually gets into our food
by means of flies, which carry it from outhouses on their feet and legs and
leave it on our food. Sometimes this filth soaks through the ground and
gets into near-by wells, or during heavy rains it washes into our wells, and
thus we drink the very filth which gives us typhoid fever.
Likewise, in the case of tuberculosis, very case of this disease comes from
some other case of tuberculosis. Some one else who had the disease coughed
or spit, and we breathed the tiny droplets he coughed up or the dust from
his dried spit. If our bodies are not in fit condition to fight off the disease
we soon get tuberculosis too.
It was just stated that 16,000 North Carolinians died needless deaths every
year. By that we mean that by spending a small amount of money and by
34
obedience to the laws of hygiene and sanitation these deaths would not hav&
occurred. It seems cruel to say that a human life is worth so many dollars,
but experts have carefully counted the value of the average person to his.
family and friends, and the best estimates place his value at about $1,700.
We can not take time here to tell how this estimate was made, but when
we remember that slaves sold for from half to two-thirds that much years
ago it seems to be a fair estimate.
Then, if we say that the 16,000 North Carolinians who die needless deaths
every year are worth $1,700 apiece, we have a total loss of $27,200,000 every
year from preventable deaths. In other words, because of preventable sick-ness
and deaths we lose every year $12,500,000 plus $27,200,000, or about
$39,700,000. This is such an enormous sum of money that we can not
imagine what it means. Just to give a little idea of how much it is, it may
be stated that with this amount of money a new automobile could be furnished
every family in North Carolina every four years.
Now the question that comes up is this: How can this great loss be
stopped? It can not all be stopped at once. Some preventable diseases, such
as cholera or yellow fever, can be stamped out easily and quickly. Why?
Largely because we are afraid of them, and when they come we go to work
in earnest to stop them. As a result there has not been a case of either-disease
in North Carolina for many years.
Nearly two years ago the steamship Titanic sunk in midocean with about
1,500 people on board. All our newspapers had big accounts of it. Everybody
talked about it. Still right here in North Carolina over 6,000 people die-every
year from tuberculosis, and we scarcely ever hear a word about that.
Why? Because we have become used to it. Some people take it as a matter
of course, others do not appear to be much afraid of it, and thus matters
drift along from year to year.
It would take too long to tell all about how to stamp out such diseases as.
tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, hookworm, etc., but we can discuss just briefly
some of the ways a few of these preventable diseases may be kept down on>.
the farm.
First of all, we need to have more general education in regard to these
diseases. Every man and woman, every boy and girl in the State should
know how and why such diseases spread and what we can do to keep them,
from spreading. When everybody knows more about these diseases nearly
every one will be more careful about how he lives, and we will take reason-able
steps to keep from getting such diseases ourselves and also to keep them
from spreading to other people. One of the best ways we can learn about
such things is to study about them in school. A great deal can be learned
from our Ritchie's Primer of Hygiene and Ritchie's Primer of Sanitation.
Another excellent way of learning about health matters is by having a.
county health officer who gives his entire time to health work. Among other
things, it is his duty to lecture on health to the various schools in the county,
and to examine free of charge any one who wants to know if he has tubercu-losis,
hookworm disease or any other disease that can be spread from one^
person to another. Such an officer will help the teacher and pupils by teach-ing
them how to know cases of measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, diph-theria,
etc., so that when such a case comes to school they may be found out,
sent home and properly quarantined, instead of spreading the disease through-out
the school. Such an officer will also help the teacher and pupils by
35
examining the children and finding that, in a great many cases, the reason
some children remain in the second or third or fourth grades, instead of
passing on to the fifth, sixth or seventh grades with other children of their
own age, is because of some little defect in their eyes, their ears or throat,
or something else that parents as well as the children themselves never
noticed and which can be easily remedied if taken in time. Twelve counties
in our State now have such officers, and it is hoped that within a few years
no county will be without a whole time health officer.
It has long been known that the country is a healthier place in which to
live than the city, yet, at the same time, statistics show that our country
people die off faster than city people. As a rule more country people die of
preventable diseases than city people. This should not be. It is due very
largely to the fact that city people study more and are just a little more
careful about matters of health and sanitation than country people.
There is just space enough left to tell how people on the farms could, if
they would, greatly reduce the number of deaths from at least one prevent-able
disease without much effort. Tuberculosis kills more people than any
other disease. It is a disease we get by breathing in the germs of tubercu-losis,
as already explained. There are probably from 12,000 to 15,000 con-sumptives
in North Carolina today—so many that we are nearly always
more or less exposed to the disease. In fact doctors tell us that in the lungs
of practically every one can be found tiny scars where the germs of tubercu-losis
have lodged at some time but have not been able to develop. The very
fact that our bodies are healthy is the best defense we have against tubercu-losis.
Tuberculosis gets a firm hold only on people who are overworked, who
are intemperate, or those who are in ill health. Living in closed rooms, par-ticularly
closed bedrooms, greatly reduces our vitality and our chances
against tuberculosis. No one should ever sleep in a bedroom with all the
windows closed, not even in winter. At least one window should be open
several inches even in the coldest weather in order to let in fresh air. If
the weather is cold more warm bedclothes should be used, or better still, a
warm night dress should be worn. Be sure to keep warm while you sleep.
Live and sleep in the fresh air, the more the better. If you do this your
chances against tuberculosis are excellent, and at the same time you greatly
improve your chances against a lot of other diseases, such as pneumonia
and all the contagious diseases. Schools that are well ventilated do not have
nearly so many cases of colds, grippe, scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles
or diphtheria as schools where the windows are not kept open.
If you care to know more about how to keep from getting tuberculosis,
typhoid, malaria or hookworm disease, write to the State Board of Health
at Raleigh and ask for free health literature on those subjects. Every boy
and girl on the farm should know about such things.
36
LOVE YOUR FARM.
CLARENCE POE IN THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
(For Declamation.)
Love your farm. Every farmer should not only love his work as the artist
loves his work, but in this spirit, too, every farmer should love his farm
itself as he would love a favorite horse or dog. He should know every rod
of the ground, should know just what each acre is best adapted to, should
feel a joy and pride in having every hill and valley look its best, and he
should be as much ashamed to have a field scarred with gullies as he would
be to have a beautiful colt marked with lashes; as much ashamed to have a
piece of ground worn out from ill treatment as to have a horse gaunt and
bony from neglect; as much hurt at seeing his acres sick from wretched
management as he would be at seeing his cows half-starving from the same
cause.
Love your ground—that piece of God's creation which you hold in fee
simple. Fatten its poorer parts as carefully as you would nurture an ailing
collie. Heal the washed, torn places in the hillside as you would the barb-scars
on your pony. Feed with legumes and soiling crops and fertilizers the
galled and barren patch that needs special attention; nurse it back to life
and beauty and fruitfulness. Make a meadow of the bottom that is inclined
to wash; watch it and care for it until the kindly root-masses heal every
gaping wound, and in one unbroken surface the "tides of grass break into
foam of flowers" upon the outer edges. Don't forget even the forest lands.
See that every acre of woodland has trees enough on it to make it profitable:
"a good stand" of the timber crop as well as of every other crop. Have an
eye to the beautiful in laying off the cleared fields—a tree here and there, but
no wretched beggar's coat mixture of little patches and little rents; rather
broad fields fully tended and of as nearly uniform fertility as possible,
making of your growing crops, as it were, each a beautiful garment, whole
and unbroken, to clothe the fruitful acres which God has given you to keep
and tend even as He gave the First Garden into the keeping of our first
parents.
And so again we say, love your farm. Make it a place of beauty, a place
of joyous fruitfulness, an example for your neighbors, a heritage for your
children. Make improvements on it that will last beyond your day. Make
an ample yard about it with all the old-fashioned flowers that your grand-mother
knew; set a great orchard near it, bearing many manner of fruits;
lay off walks and roads leading to it and keep them up; plant hedges along
the approaches, and flowering bulbs and shrubs—crape myrtle and spirea
and privet and roses—so that your grandchildren will some day speak of
their grandsire, who cared enough for the beautiful and loved the farm well
enough to leave for them this abiding glory of tree and shrub and flower.
Name the farm too; treasure up its history; preserve the traditions of all
the romance and adventure and humor and pathos that are in any way con-nected
with it; and if some of the young folks must leave it, let them loo::
back to it with happy memories of beauty and of worthy ideals and of well-ordered
industry.
We have not developed in this country, as we should, the intense pride that
37
the Englishman feels in being a landowner. It gives a man distinction that
the homeless man has not. He is a better citizen, a freeholder, a guardian
holding in trust a. piece of creation direct from the hand of the Almighty.
And yet how many—alas! how many!—who have such talents in their keeping
are indeed unprofitable servants—not so much as keeping their treasure un-hurt
(as the one-talent man in the Bible did), but wearing out and destroying
in one brief lifetime the heritage that the Creator intended to remain fertile
and fruitful, to feed and nurture our human race, as long as the earth shall
last.
Love your farm. If you can not be proud of it now, begin today to make
it a thing you can be proud of. Much dignity has come to you in that you
are owner and carekeeper for a part of God's footstool; show yourself worthy
of that dignity. Watch earnestly over every acre. Let no day go by that
you do not add something of comeliness and potential fertility to its fields.
And finally, leave some spot beneath the shade of some giant tree where at
last, "like as a shock of corn cometh in his season," you can lay down your
weary body, leaving the world a little better for your having lived in it, and
earning the approval from the Great Father (who made the care of fields
and gardens the first task given man) : "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant: enter into the joy of thy Lord."
FARM OPPORTUNITIES.
BY D. H. HILL, PRESIDENT AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE.
A Greek statue representing Opportunity embodied in graphic form man's
relation to opportunities. Just above the forehead of the statue was a bushy,
bristling forelock; but the back of the head was entirely bald. The thought
of the artist was of course that opportunities have to be seized as they are
coming and can not be grasped as they are going.
For young people on North Carolina farms there are now almost unparal-leled
opportunities. Are our young people making ready to seize these by the
forelock?
First, a man's success in farming depends almost entirely on the intelli-gence
with which he manages his operations. There are now more opportuni-ties
to acquire this intelligence than at any previous period. The farm
schools, the rural high schools, the agricultural colleges and experiment sta-tions,
the demonstration work of the States and the Nation, the farm journals
of high order, the organized clubs—these are all offering freely abundant
opportunities to acquire both knowledge and skill.
Second, the increasing prices of farm products and better marketing facili-ties
are offering unusual opportunities for wealth-making from crops. It
seems that the wealth of the Nation is again going to shift to the country.
Third, recent inventions and the better application of old inventions are
making opportunity for most comfortable country homes. The gas engine is
especially a comfort-worker. Its cheapness, its simplicity, and its efficiency
combine to make it almost a wizard. More than any other instrument it is
lightening the drudgery of farm work. The machine driven pump, wood-cutter,
corn-sheller, food-cutter, churn, dish-washer, clothes-washer, sewing
38
machine, and other light machines, mean the retention on the land of thou-sands
who have fled from the manual toil now happily spared. The riding
plow, cultivator, harrow, and other labor saving tillage implements are
yearly adding to the number of young men who will stand by the farm. The
cheap acetylene lighting plants, the economical waterworks, the fireless cook-ers,
the rural telephones, the better roads, the quicker transportation are
mercifully lifting the load that has rested on the shoulders of the country
wife.
Thoughtful men and women are now thinking and striving to so organize
the country home and community that ideal conditions for comfort, for happi-ness,
for wealth may exist there; for people can not prosper beyond the pros-perity
of their largest division. All these things are possible if the boys and.
girls shall only make themselves ready for these golden opportunities.
THE TRAVELING LIBRARY.
BY MISS MINNIE W. LEATHERMAN, SECRETARY NORTH CAROLINA LIBRARY COM-MISSION.
To give the men and women, the boys and girls who live in the small towns.
and villages of North Carolina and in the open country an opportunity to read
good books, the Library Commission sends traveling libraries all over the
State. No village is too small and no community is too remote to obtain free
books.
A traveling library, as its name implies, is a collection of books which
travels from place to place. Sometimes a traveling library contains only
books on agriculture and country life; sometimes it consists entirely of books,
for a debate on a political or social question; sometimes it is a special collec-tion
for the use of study clubs; but the regular traveling library is nothing
more nor less than a miniature public library containing books on all sub-jects
for both adults and children. Such a library contains between forty and
fifty volumes, about twenty being novels, fifteen books for children, and ten
or twelve the best, most attractive and readable books of biography, travel,
science and general literature. The books are shipped in a strong case,
equipped with shelves, so that it can be used as a book-case.
These general traveling libraries are intended especially for villages and
country communities and are loaned without any charge whatever. The
rules governing their loan are few and simple. Borrowers agree to pay the
freight both from and to Raleigh, to return the library promptly, to take
good care of the books, and to lend them without charge to all responsible
people in the community.
Whenever possible the library is kept in some convenient public place,
such as the postofnce or general store, but in some cases it is necessary to-place
them in private homes. When this is done a house is selected on the
main road and one to which the people feel free to go.
A library may be kept three months and, if desired, renewed for one month
longer. It is then returned to the Commission office, and another, containing
a different collection of books, is sent to take its place. Thus the people-of
any community, however, remote, may always have a good library in the
neighborhood, and it may be exchanged every three months.
39
A traveling library may be obtained in several ways but the best method
is by the formation of a library association. This association must contain
at least ten members and elect a president and secretary-treasurer. All that
is necessary for an association to do to secure a library is to send in an
application signed by the officers.
If it is not possible or desirable to form a library association the applica-tion
may be signed by five taxpayers or by the officers of a Farmers' Union
local.
Debate Librakies.
The debate libraries are loaned to schools and to debating societies and
are sent out in small packages. There are libraries on Woman Suffrage, the
Initiative and Referendum, the Income Tax, Child Labor, Philippine Inde-pendence,
and many other subjects. Each library contains pamphlets, maga-zine
articles, and a few books dealing with both the affirmative and negative
sides of the question.
Debate or package libraries are loaned for two weeks without charge, but
borrowers pay the express or postage, as the case may be, both from and
to Raleigh.
In addition to the regular traveling libraries and the debate libraries, the
Library Commission is building up a good collection of books from which
individuals may borrow single volumes. There are also several collections
on special subjects, the most important one being Agriculture and Country
Life. Books from these collections are loaned to any one submitting an ap-plication
endorsed by a teacher, minister, postmaster, county or town official
or the officers of a society or organization.
The traveling library system is supported by the State because the reading
of worthy books makes better citizens; because it makes people wiser and
happier; and because it should be possible for everybody in North Carolina
to read good books. Books should be scattered over the whole State "as a
sower sows his wheat fields"—books of accurate information, books of whole-some
recreation and books that inspire high ideals and noble ambitions.
A LETTER TO NORTH CAROLINA BOYS AND GIRLS ABOUT BOOKS.
Wake Forest, N. C, November 14, 1913.
My Dear Boys and Girls:—Your good friend Dr. Joyner (may his tribe
increase!) has asked me to write you a few words on "What Country Boys
and Girls Should Read." Now, in the matter of reading, just as in every-thing
else, Country Boys and Girls should have, in my opinion, the very best,
and plenty of it. So come with me this lovely November morning and let's
walk out yonder to the pasture hillside where the sunlight looks so warm
and sweet on the south side of that big straw-stack, and let's talk this matter
of books and reading over together. No teaching, mind you; no preaching.
Well here we are at the straw-stack. Glorious! Look at the countless
grasshoppers and crickets we are rousing from their morning nap in the
sun. I wonder somebody does not write a really good book about grass-hoppers
and crickets. Down yonder in the hollow the cow-bells are clanking.
Who will write us a good book about cows?
Now for our talk about books. I wonder if you would think it egotistic
40
(stuck up!) if I were to tell you about what a certain Boy read long ago on
a lonely plantation among the mountains? No? Well, then, here goes!
This Boy read everything. He had hooks in plenty but there was no one
to teach him, thank heaven; he read just as the cattle down yonder browse
in summer—picking what they like best. Indeed, this Boy does not remem-ber
having learned to read. Perhaps he was born knowing how. At any
rate, his first recollections are of a gorgeously illustrated "Mother Goose"
with folk-tales over in the back, "Goody Two-Shoes," "The Babes in the
Woods," and so on. This book was read until it literally vanished—trans-lated,
I know, into the heaven of all good books. Next came "JEsop's
Fables," illustrated too, in the very first prize won at school. Christmas
brought him a copy of "Grimm's Tales"—not a poor thin little text-book of
selections, but a great fat book, the real Grimm, with Cruikshank's illustra-tions.
The "Arabian Nights" was forbidden fruit but the chunky, unexpur-gated,
blood-raw volume was found hidden away in the garret and was read
at a straw-stack like this. Oh, the joy of burrowing back out of sight under
the straw and letting servants call, bells ring, and the world wag on its way,
while that Boy wandered with Haroun al Raschid through the streets of
Bagdad!
Well this Boy next stumbled upon books of Myths and Legends—Bulfinch's
"Age of Fable" and Mallory's old "Morte D'Arthur"—surely the Fairy Prince
of bookland! It was a day never to be forgotten when a stranger tarried for
a night and went away, an angel unawares, leaving behind Hawthorne's
"Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." Never read the story of the Winged
Horse? Oh, my poor child, where have you been? Who have been your
teachers?
Books of adventure came next. Well does that Boy still remember the
day when he traded a brand new knife with a negro boy by the roadside
for a rusty old volume with title "The Young Marooners" barely decipherable
on the battered back. What was the negro doing with that book? The Boy
neither knew nor cared, but he does know that he lay "down under a friendly
pine and had opened to him then and there a new world—the world of "Robin-son
Crusoe," of "Swiss Family Robinson," and of "Treasure Island." Even
"Gulliver's Travels" and dear old "Pilgrim's Progress" were to the Boy
merely tales of adventure. He was a grown man when he learned that Swift
had meant to write a savage satire on mankind and Bunyan to write a
mournful allegory of the soul. Here ignorance was bliss. Fortunate, too,
was our Boy in not getting these books too soon. They had not been spoiled
for him by adapting or abridging. The man who puts forth a "one-syllable
Robinson Crusoe" or an "abridged Pilgrim's Progress" commits a double
crime—against humanity and against literature.
It was a short road from tales of adventure to the historical novel—
a
boundless realm, the gateway to which was found in "Ivanhoe," "Kenil-worth"
and the "Talisman." Even today that Boy dare not keep Scott near
his work table. If a volume is opened by chance, good-bye to the morning's
work!
But even Scott had to yield his sceptre, for a while, to burly old Cooper.
Well does that Boy recall today the walk of five miles (one way, too!) to
make a month's swap of Scott for "Deerslayer," "Pathfinder," "Last of the
Mohicans," "Prairie" (they should be read in this order), and the "Spy."
The writer wonders if boys and girls today still can thrill over these wonder-
41
ful romances. Taken together they make a rugged but no less glorious Ameri-can
Iliad.
Of nature books the Boy had none, nor did he need them. Why read about
animals, birds, and insects in books when he had always with him the real
things in life? The only book he ever revolted over was Goldsmith's' "Ani-mated
Nature." The romance of the animal world came to the Boy when a
man, first in the wonderful and still unequaled "Jungle Books" of Kipling.
Even "Uncle Remus" was discovered a bit too late, when the Boy was past
twenty. He had long since heard most of the tales at night around the great
fireplace of the old kitchen, but the wonderful charm of the stories as retold
by Harris was only realized when the Boy. came to read them to his own boy
and girls. Today he thinks them the most original creations of American
literature. You don't understand the negro dialect? My dear child, you have
lost the birthright of every Southern-born child!
In history and biography this Boy literally devoured everything he could
get his hands upon, books that would make you shudder merely to look at,
Robbins's enormous "Ancient History," Gibbon's "Decline and Pall of the
Roman Empire," Grote's "History of Greece," and so on. But of course he
began with Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," Hawthorne's "Grandfather's
Chair," Church's "Tales of the Old World," and Dickens's "Child's History
of England." Scott's novels now came to have a new meaning to him.
Along with Scott, this Boy was fortunate in possessing a complete set of
Bulwer's novels. It is fashionable to laugh at old Bulwer now; the more's
the pity, for there are few more entertaining and useful books than "The
Last Days of Pompeii," "The Last of the Barons," "Harold the Last of the
Saxon Kings," and "Rienzi the Last of the Tribunes." Dear old Henty, too,
is out of fashion now; but, my death children, do try his "With Lee in Vir-ginia,"
"With Wolfe in Canada," "True to the Old Flag," "The Young Cartha-ginian,"
and "The Dragon and the Raven."
Of books of travel, customs and manners the Boy had few, but these were
divinely entertaining: Irving's "Tour of the Prairies," Parkman's "Oregon
Trail," Kinglake's "Eothen," Irving's "Bracebridge Hall" and "Alhambra,"
Bulwer's "Pilgrims of the Rhine," Mungo Parks's "Travels in Africa," and
that prince of books, Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" in a big illus-trated
volume.
In the world of poetry that Boy's experience was truly laughable. What
would you think of having to parse all of Cowper's "Task," Young's "Night
Thoughts," and Thomson's "Seasons"? This was hard on the poets but for
the Boy it was the best training he ever had. Fortunately about this time
he was given a copy of Tennyson as a reward for daily helping, with an
army of little negroes and dogs, keep the unruly cattle, sheep, horses, and
mules in their proper pastures. I am afraid, however, the Boy did not live
up to his part of the contract and there must often have been a hue and cry:
"Little Boy Blue, come, blow your horn!
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn."
But oh, to rub it all out, to turn back old Time's wheel, and wander again,
for the first time, down to Camelot with Arthur and Lancelot; to weep over
the "May Queen" and "Enoch Arden," and to thrill with Saxon pride over
"The Revenge!" Next after Tennyson, the Boy best liked Longfellow; read,
like Tennyson, out on the pasture slopes. And strange to say, but true
nevertheless, the Boy has never outgrown a love for homely old Bryant.
42
Shakespeare was forbidden fruit and the Boy has never regretted that he
found the great poet, unslobbered over and unstated, when he entered college.
Science? Wisdom help the Boy! for he knows and loves only one science
—
astronomy; and he learned this not from books but from the heavens.
But time is up and Dr. Joyner is calling. So good-bye.
Your loving old friend, Benjamin Sledd.
P. S.—Here is a useful- beginner's collection of books, just a hundred of
them:
Fairy Tales and Folklore.
1. Mother Goose: Melodies and Folk-tales (Routledge's Ed.).
2. Grimm's Tales (Lippincott's illustrated Ed.).
3. Lang's Red Fairy Book (Burt's Library).
4. Lang's Blue Fairy Book (Burt's Library).
5. Lang's Green Fairy Book (Burt's Library).
6. Andersen's Fairy Tales (Everyman's Library).
7. Arabian Nights (Everyman's Library).
8. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass (1 vol., Every-man's
Library).
9. Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy (Burt's Library).
10. Souvestre's Legends of Brittany. (Ask a good bookseller to find you a
copy of this charming old book.)
11. Uncle Remus (Appleton's Ed.; illustrated by Frost).
12. Nights With Uncle Remus.
Myth and Legend.
13. Bulfinch's Age of Fable (illustrated).
14. Bulfinch's Age of Chivalry (illustrated).
15. Hawthorne's Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales (in 1 vol., illustrated).
16. Keary's Heroes of Asgard (Macmillan's Pocket Ed.).
17. Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece.
18. Malloy's Morte D'Arthur (2 vols.; Everyman's).
Nature Books.
19. Kingsley's Water Babies (Ginn's Ed.).
20. Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why.
21. Porter's The Stars in Song and Legend (Ginn).
22. Ball's Star Land (Ginn).
23. Buckley's Fairy Land of Science (Burt).
Biography and History.
24. Church's Stories of the Old World.
25. Plutarch's Lives (Everyman's).
26. Scott's Tales of a Grandfather.
27. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair.
28. Fiske's Abridgment of Irving's Washington.
29. Smith's Abridgment of Grote's Greece.
30. Smith's Abridgment of Gibbon's Rome.
31. Smith's History of Rome.
43
Books of Travel, Customs and Manners.
32. Irving's Bracebridge Hall.
33. Parkman's Oregon Trail.
34. Kinglake's Eothen.
35. Irving's Alhambra.
36. Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (illustrated).
37. Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (illustrated).
38. Bayard Taylor's Boys of Other Counties.
Poetry.
39-41. Shakespeare (twenty-three plays in Hudson's School Edition in 3
vols.; Ginn & Co.).
42. Scott: Marmion and Lady of the Lake.
43. Tennyson's Poems.
44. Page's Chief American Poets (best of Longfellow, Poe, Bryant, Emerson,
Lowell, Whittier and Lanier in 1 vol.).
45. The Iliad: Lord Derby's translation (Everyman's).
46. The Odyssey: Bryant's translation.
47. The JEneid: Connington's translation (Astor Library).
48. Manly's English Poetry (a very good collection of the best English,
poems in 1 vol.).
49. Palgrave's Children's Treasury.
50. Thacker's The Listening Child (an excellent collection).
51. Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse.
Fiction and General Literature.
52. The Pilgrim's Progress.
53. Gulliver's Travels.
54. Irving's Sketch Book.
55. Tom Brown's School Days.
56. Martineau's Feats on the Fiords.
57. The Vicar of Wakefield.
58. Dickens's David Copperfield.
59. Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.
60. Dickens's Christmas Stories.
61. Scott's Talisman.
62. Scott's Ivanhoe.
63. Scott's Kenilworth.
64. Scott's Quentin Durward.
65. Cooper's Deerslayer.
66. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans.
67. Cooper's Pathfinder.
68. Cooper's Prairie.
69. Cooper's The Spy.
70. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.
71. Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse.
72. Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho.
73. Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake.
74. Henry Kingsley's Geoffrey Hamlin.
75. Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.
76. Craik's John Halifax.
44
77. Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii.
78. Bulwer's Last of the Barons.
79. Henty's With Lee in Virginia.
80. Henty's With Wolfe in Canada.
81. Henty's True to the Old Flag.
82. Henty's The Carthaginian Boy.
83. Henty's By Pike and Dike.
84. Robinson Crusoe.
Stories for the Young.
85. Browne's The Wonderful Chair.
86. Ewing's Jackanapes.
87. Ewing's Story of a Short Life.
88. Muloch's Little Lame Prince.
89. Martineau's Crofton Boys.
90. Brown's Rob and His Friends.
91. Spyri's Heidi (Ginn).
92. Spyri's Moni the Goat Boy (Ginn).
93. Ouida's The Dog of Flanders and Other Tales (Ginn)
94. Molesworth's Carrots.
95. Page's Two Little Confederates.
96. Baylor's Juan and Juanita.
97. Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy.
98. Aldrich's A Bad Boy.
99. Golding's The Young Marooners.
100. Pinochio's Adventures of a Marionette.
HOW TO GET A RURAL LIBRARY FOR YOUR SCHOOL.*
(Public School Law, pages 80-81.)
Whenever the patrons and friends of any free public school in which a
library has not already been established by aid of the State shall raise by
private subscription and tender to the treasurer of the county school fund
for the establishment of a library to be connected with such school the sum
of ten dollars, the county board of education shall appropriate from the
general county school fund the sum of ten dollars for this purpose, and shall
appoint one intelligent person in the school district the manager of such
library. The county board shall also appoint one competent person, well
versed in books, to select books for such libraries as may be established
under these provisions from lists of books approved by the State Superin-tendent
of Public Instruction.
As soon as such board shall have made an appropriation for a library in
the manner prescribed, the county superintendent shall inform the secretary
of the State Board of Education of the fact, whereupon the State Board shall
remit to the treasurer of the county school fund the sum of ten dollars addi-tional
for the purchase of books.
Within thirty days after the payment of the money to the treasurer of the
*For suggestions see (a) Letter of Annie Z. Allred, page 16 ; (b) Letter of Mrs. W. T. Rawls, page
\ of this bulletin.
45
^county school fund, the person appointed to select the books shall submit
the list of books to be purchased, and prices of same, to such treasurer, who
shall order the books at once. The treasurer shall receive no compensation
-except his regular commission. The county beard shall furnish, at the ex-pense
of the general county school fund, a neat bookcase, with lock and key,
to each library, upon application of the county superintendent.
If you have a library in your school you can supplement it as follows:
Whenever the patrons and friends of any free public school in which a library
has been established under the provisions of this sub-chapter shall raise by
private subscription and tender to the treasurer of the county school fund
the sum of five dollars for the enlargement of the library, the county board
of education shall appropriate from the general school fund the sum of five
dollars, and the State Board of Education shall remit to the treasurer of the
county school fund the sum of five dollars. The money thus collected and
appropriated shall be used for the enlargement of libraries already estab-lished
under the same rules and restrictions as govern the establishment of
new libraries.
PROTECT THE BIRDS.
BY H. H. BRIMLEY, CURATOR STATE MUSEUM.
You all know the robin—our brown-coated, red-breasted little friend that
comes to see us in the winter to feed on the holly and cedar and blackgum
berries, according to the part of the State in which we live. But in the
spring—and in the summer, too, in the middle and western parts of the
State—he comes to give us a return for the protection we now give him at
all seasons, by destroying thousands and thousands of injurious worms and
insects.
The bullbat, or night-hawk, is another of our feathered friends that de-serves
the fullest protection. You have all watched his graceful, easy flight
through the air, darting hither and thither, apparently at random. But
this seemingly erratic flight is all with a purpose, that of chasing and eating
the small insects that come abroad as the sun swings low in the evening sky.
Only a few years ago we used to shoot these most useful birds, but we know
better now and allow it to live, and to help us live by destroying the pests
that would otherwise make life a burden to us.
The beautifully plumaged bluebird, too, is one of our helpful friends of
the air whose food consists mainly of insects that we are glad to see lessened
in number.
A shy and retiring bird of our summer woods and groves—one more often
heard than seen—is the so-called raincrow. This bird is not a crow at all,
his true name being the Yellow-billed Cuckoo. He is a bird of plain browns
and drabs, with no bright colors whatever, but he makes up in usefulness
what he lacks in beauty. Among the favorite foods of this most useful bird
are those hairy caterpillars that do such damage to our trees in the summer
time, and without the help of the "Raincrow" and other birds of similar
feeding habits, the trees around our homes would fare badly indeed.
The Pee-wees and flycatchers are another group of birds that do us much
good. The best known among them are the Great Crested Flycatcher, the
46
Phcebe (commonly called Winter Pee-wee), the Wood Pee-wee and the Bee-
Martin or King Bird. You all know the latter from his habit of running the
hawks away from the neighborhood of his nest, which is often built near the
home. I once saw one of these birds chase a Bald Eagle for a distance of a
quarter of a mile or more away from his nest, and the Eagle seemed fright-ened
nearly to death at the fierce attacks of the game little King Bird. This
was a case of the King Bird whipping the "King of Birds." The King Bird
feeds almost entirely on harmful insects, even if it does catch a few bees,
once in a while.
The Great Crested Flycatcher nests commonly in a hollow limb, often near
the house, and a peculiar feature of this bird's nest is that it usually con-tains
some pieces of snake skin—of the shed skin of a snake, I mean. Its
feeding habits are similar to those of the King Bird, and it is a good bird to-have
about the premises.
The Pee-wees and flycatchers are all insect feeders (we have six or seven
different kinds of them), and all of them are most useful in their destruc-tion
of untold numbers of harmful bugs.
Our old friend the Field Lark, or Meadow Lark, helps us in another way,
namely, by eating great quantities of weed seeds. He may eat a few spring
oats once in a while, but the damage he does is not a drop in the bucket
compared with the great good that comes from his destruction of so many
seeds of injurious plants. He is now protected at all times by act of Congress.,
I really can't say much good of the "Jay Bird," or Blue Jay. In spite of
his beautiful blue and gray and white plumage he is a robber and destroyer
of the first water. The eggs of other birds, as well as their downy young
in the nest, are delicacies the Blue Jay fancies, but he is so beautiful that,
one can overlook a great deal to keep him with us.
Whether good or bad qualities show up more strongly in the feeding habits,
of the Crow is difficult to determine. He certainly does destroy a great many
very harmful bugs and worms, the cut-worm being among them. But his
love for newly-planted corn and for the young and eggs of other birds leaves
us in doubt. I once found a colony of Little Blue Herons nesting, sixteen of
the nests containing from two to five eggs each. The next morning every
nest was empty, the crows having cleaned up every egg before the Herons
could return to protect them. And I have frequently caught them in the
very act of robbing the nests of other birds.
The Fish Crow—a slightly smaller bird, found only near the coast—seems.
to be less destructive to the farmer, as its food consists mainly of small fish,,
shell-fish and worms found along the water's edge.
The Raven—another bird of the crow family, but much larger and mucin
more powerful—is found only in the mountain region with us. One I kept
alive for more than a year ate nothing but flesh the whole time I had him.
He would not take any notice of corn or grain or vegetable food of any kind.
The Raven is credited with killing young and weakly lambs and pigs at
times but probably feeds mostly on animals found dead.
Only a very few of our feathered friends can be said to do more harm than
good. Two of our hawks—the two "Blue Darters"—are bird-eaters by pref-erence
and often carry off young chickens. The book name for the larger
of the two is the Cooper's Hawk, the smaller being known as the Sharp-shinned
Hawk. While a few of the other hawks will catch a chicken once in
a while, the chief food of most of them is such injurious forms of life as
47
insects and ground rats and mice. The Sparrow Hawk feeds chiefly on
grasshoppers.
Most of our owls are also useful, but we will have to make an exception
of the Great Horned Owl. This latter bird is the strongest and fiercest bird
of prey we have (excepting the eagles), and is sometimes very destructive
to poultry and pigeons. This owl has been known to kill even good sized
turkeys, though it is probable that rabbits and skunks form a large part
of its diet where those animals occur.
Altogether it is better to be on the safe side and refrain from killing any
bird (other than a game bird, or for food) until you actually catch it in an
act of destruction, as you may be destroying something of great value to the
farmer, and something that is a delight to the eye by reason of its beauty
^
or delightful to the ear by reason of its cheerful and lively song.
THE HISTORY OF CORN.
BY E. C. BROOKS, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, TRINITY COLLEGE.
The term "Corn" used by the English-speaking people before America was
settled was applied to the seed of the cereal plants. The word outside of
America is often understood locally to mean that kind of cereal which is the
leading crop of the locality, and it may be wheat, barley, oats, maize (Indian
corn), rye, millet, or even rice. It is written in Genesis, "And all countries
came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; because the famine was sore in the
land." The grain mentioned in this quotation was probably wheat. Again,
in Roman history we read of a great popular uprising because bread was
scarce and the leaders of the time favored better corn laws. The grain re-ferred
to was wheat. Ruth gleaned ears of corn in the barley fields of Boaz.
Rice is the corn of China and Japan, rye of Northern Europe, oats of Scot-land,
wheat of England and maize of America.
The fact that maize is the corn of America would lead us to the conclusion
that it was the leading grain of the Indians. Although some writers have
endeavored to prove that this grain was known in China, Arabia and even
in certain parts of Southern Europe before Columbus discovered America,
their efforts have not proven convincing and it is generally accepted today
that the original home of this grain is in America. It has been traced to
Mexico and the name "maize" is derived it is thought from the Matiz tribe of
Indians. "When Columbus discovered America it was the leading food of
the North American Indians, and their cornfields spread over an area that
ranged from a few acres to sometimes more than a hundred acres in extent.
Some tribes were more advanced than