Make Gum Trees Profitable, End Upheaval to Help the Poor, Plant Profitable Corn This Year, Editorials From The Commonwealth, March 30, 1921

It is estimated that there is around 150,000,000 meet of gum timber within a radius of 10 miles of this town. It does look as if a resource of this kind could be used to the advantage and upbuilding of this place. If other interests can buy this raw material and ship a great distance, manufacture, and then ship back to this section, why cannot we manufacture the same products here and ship the finished article to them?

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Another appeal has gone out to American people for contribution to aid the suffering and starving of Ireland. These appeals have been made continuously for the past several years in behalf of nations in all parts of the world. It is just and right that we, the richest nation on earth, should give of our bounty, but does it not seem that it is about time that revolutions, wars and threats of wars should end and the world get down to work again and produce food to take care of the starving in their own midst? The world is indeed yet in upheaval and the end does not seem to be in sight.

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Plant Corn

Every one is interested in the future of farming and anxious to solve the condition that farmers are now facing, for it affects every line of business to a greater or less degree.

Advice has been given to cut down cotton and tobacco acreage at least one half, and to plant food and feed stuffs but all the acreage will not be needed for that. We do now that we can raise corn, and raise it at a profit, but the complaint is often made that there is no sale for it. To a certain extent that is true. There is small demand for corn on the ear, but if any farmer with an excess of corn on hand will shell that corn,put it up in bags of two bushels each, or in fact in any size bags, he will find a ready market right here at home for every bushel he wants to dispose of. This is not theory but a fact. We have just talked with R.J. Madry, Wholesale Grocer of Scotland Neck, who tells us he has bought from local farmers, that he prefers to buy from home people, and that he will buy every bushel offered to him.

Again, thousands of bushels of hominy are shipped into this town every year from the west. There is a grist mill right here in Scotland Neck which could grind every bushel of hominy needed for consumption in this community, if the corn were available, so there is no reason why corn should not be a profitable crop this year and find a ready market right here at home.

From the editorial page of The Commonwealth, Scotland Neck, N.C., Wednesday, March 30, 1921