Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1915 — Woman Farmer's Tenants. [ARTICLE]

Woman Farmer's Tenants.

That was an interesting story Mrs. G. H. Mathis, a woman farmer of Alabama, told the convention of Farm Mortgage Bankers' Association. she included in contracts with tenants provisions for a specific acreage of hay, corn, oats, potatoes, sweet corn, cabbages and other garden stuff. She required the planting of an early maturing crop. Each tenant was required to keep a brood sow, a cow and a brood mare, and to raise a mule colt. In other words, eat h tenant was forced to raise almost everything for the family table and for the care of his work animals instead of buying supplies oq credit at exorbitant prices. We are not surprised at the picture she drew of the betterment of conditions, material and social, and her statement that her share of the cotton crop exceeded that of the average landlord. Mrs. Mathis seemed to be dealing with tenants who preferred the old methods. But they must have been victims of habit. Most tenants com-' plain that landlords insist on every available acre being put in cotton. Cotton means cash to the landlords. The agricultural associations in the south have found this the chief obstacle to their work. It has been difficult to convince landlords that they would profit in the long run by permitting tenants to have land enough for pasture, forage and vegetables. The idea that “cotton, is cash" also obsesses farmers who till their own land. There has been the same feeling as to corn in sections of Kansas and Oklahoma. B’utler county was one of the poorest in Kansas twenty-one years ago. A young man sent out by an El Dorado bank to try to collect overdue paper, discovered that the debtors who planted their own corn could pav, while others could not. At his suggestions every chattel mortgage for the iiext year required thfe planting of a certain acreage Of kafir corn for each head of livestock covered by tli© mortgage. From this beginning of compulsory diversification of crops Butler county owes its prosperity. It is now one of the richest Kansas counties, for its size. The advantages of diversification of crops have been preached for years. But it may be necessary to take such drastic measures as Mrs. Mathis and the El Dorado banks used to get the theory carried into practice.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.