Franklin Man Explains How You Can Keep a Son on the Family Farm, 1939

Letters to the Editor published in the January 1939 issue of The Southern Planter

Since back in the days when the “Prodigal Son” was giving his dad a severe headache by wanting to leave the farm, farmers everywhere had been troubled with the same question: “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?”

I have a workable solution to this question, speaking from personal experience. Give your boy something to interest him and also something remunerative. For the interesting things, take him hunting and fishing as soon as he is large enough to walk. For the remunerative things, calves, pigs, etc., are fine. If a boy doesn’t respond to this treatment, he isn’t an average boy.

--Charlie J. Ferguson, Route 4, Franklin, North Carolina