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Show LESSON FOR TEXAS FARMERS One Community, on Verge of Starvation, Starva-tion, Turns Attention to Other Crops Than King Cotton. The farmers of Runnels county, Tex., were on the verge of starvation. They had been depending almost wholly upon up-on cotton, and three out of every four crops had failed. Scores of families wanted to leave the county, but were too poor to move. Conditions got to be so desperate that the planters met at Hallinger, the county seat, to devise a plan for keeping keep-ing the wolf shooed away till another cotton crop could be grown. Yet they still held fast to the one-crop idea. They did not see King Cotton as a tyrant they blamed the droughts and clung to the forlorn hope that their next crop would be a big one. Hut something happened to them at that meeting. A farmer from the northern edge of the county got up and told the crowd that, though he had not given giv-en up cotton entirely, he was making as much money out of wheat and poultry poul-try as he had ever made out of cotton. He was also raising cattle aud hogs enough for his own meat, and a good vegetable garden was keeping down his grocery bill. Diversification of crops, he urged, was the only salvation for the average aver-age cotton grower. His story was received re-ceived with enthusiasm, aud every man in the audience went home and told it to all the neighbors. That was two years ago. Last year the farmers of Runnels county made, money. The cotton crisis did not hurt them seriously. They grew 60,001) acres of grain as compared with 100 acres in 1907. Before the awakening their poultry amounted to almost nothing; noth-ing; this year it is valued at $500,000. or one-fifth as much as they got for last year's cotton. Of course conditions vary in different differ-ent localities, but what these Texans have done for themselves through diversification di-versification can be done to a large extent by fully one-third of the farmers farm-ers in America. Collier's Weekly. |