Fred Horton Ordered $250 Bull From Michigan; County Agent Doesn't Recommend Growing Tobacco, March 9, 1920

From the front page of The Monroe Journal, March 9, 1920

Fred Horton Buys Fine Registered Jersey Bull. . . Lanes Creek Man Finds Breeding to Scrub Cows Doesn’t Pay

Mr. Fred Horton of Lanes Creek township has bought a registered bull from a breeder at Sidna, Mich., which is said to be one of the best in the country. Local breeders claim it will rank among the leading bulls in this state, and its coming is awaited with a warm degree of interest. Shipment is expected in a few days. The bull cost Mr. Horton $250, and is only a year old. Forty-eight and one-eighth per cent of its blood comes from three cows who have a yearly average production of 17,150 pounds of milk. Mr. Horton, who is one of the latest Union county farmers to join the better breeding movement, gives his experience with scrub cows as follows: “I started off several years ago with two good Jersey cows. I bred them to scrub bulls and discovered that the daughters didn’t produce as much milk as their mothers. Following the same old plan, I bred the daughters to scrub bulls and found that the granddaughters of the two original Jersey cows gave even less milk. Then it was that I determined to get a registered bull if I had to pay $500 for it.”

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Broom Discourages Cultivation of Tobacco. . . County Demonstrator Says the Weed is Certain to Drop in Price—Also Hard on the Land

“Tobacco culture in Union county should be discouraged,” declared Mr. T.J.W. Broom, county demonstrator, when he told that Dr. J.W. Bailey was going to attempt the cultivation of tobacco on his farm in the Roughedge community of Buford township. “We have good tobacco land in this county,” he said, “but farmers who have the future at heart will continue to devote their acreage to cotton and diversified crops.”

Yellow clay and Alamance silt loam lands are ideal for tobacco culture, Mr. Broom admitted. There is some yellow clay in the Roughedge community, and much of the silk loam around Indian Trail and Stallings.

Mr. Broom bases his opposition to the cultivation of tobacco on the recent trend towards over-production of this crop. In Sumpter county, S.C., the tobacco acreage will be increased by 10,000 acres this year, and similar increases are reported form other tobacco counties in both North and South Carolina. All of this trends towards lower prices.

Neither is there a harder crop on the land than tobacco, explained the county demonstrator.