Blake Johnson says
he knows farmers who go to town six days in a week and leave little boys at
home to do the work. Unfortunately, their name is legion. They are in almost
every neighborhood. Their places look like widows' houses and their wives have
to pick up wood along branches and glean the fence to get fire wood to cook
their meals of Western pork and such vegetables as they can raise themselves.
They have no houses for the fowls which sleep in trees and under the leaky
shelter of his wagons and buggies. The wife had some chickens she had raised,
but the gate was all to the pieces and the sow got in and ate them up. The
fruit trees are never trimmed; they have run away to wood till they bring no
fruit but knotty, wormy things unfit to eat. These men have no time to do
anything at home; their interest seems to be centered in town. They are deeply
interested in the war in the Far East, and will go to the postoffice and wait
for hours to get the news, and if perchance they happen to stay at home one
day, they will stop at the end of the row, and talk politics to whoever may
chance to come along, till the signal for dinner is given and then wait for
their little boys, or even girls, to come and take their horses to the lot and
feed them the best they may. The stable is a miserable pen, unfit for any
animal to stay in, and is only cleaned when manure is obliged to be had.
Tell these men of
the duties they owe to their families, and it is to them a fable. Tell them of
the great possibilities that lay before them, and is it any wonder that hard
times are present with such? Would it not be in any business followed the same
way? Is it any wonder that the occupation under such management has fallen into
bad repute?
Now, I don't know
Blake Johnson, but he seems to be a man that has the courage of his
convictions. I think he is right. In the interest of humanity, such men as he
speaks of should be sentenced to the roads or some other penal servitude that
they may have opportunity to reflect on their ways and think of the good women
they are murdering. Perhaps some brother may get mad at this, but I have heard
that as long as men get mad at being told of their faults, there is chance for
reformation. They tell us this a free country, and they have the right to do as
they please, but freedom does not mean license to do wrong; and this conduct is
unpardonable.
--J.H.
Parker, Perquimans Co., N.C.
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