This county had the opportunity this week to employ a county agent and did not. As we see it, no greater mistake could have been made. Last week Mr. E.S. Millsaps came to the county and saw the commissioners and offered to pay half the cost of the agent if the county would pay the other half. Mr. Millsaps acts for the Federal government, and the policy of the government is to help those counties that are willing to bear part of the cost.
Above every thing else, it would seem, the people of this section need to learn how to do a better class of farming. There are farmers here and there about over the county who have already learned and are now getting good results from their efforts, but the many empty houses all over the county districts stand as silent and sad reminders that some poor fellow was not getting results from his farm efforts and moved away to the cotton factory town.
Years ago England instituted a system of farm education that resulted in the increase of production of the land of that country to a degree that is interesting history. The farmers of England were making only eight or ten bushels of wheat to the acre, and now they get an average of 32 bushels.
The argument against a county agent here is that so many people decline to have any thing to do with him and prefer to knock along in their old way. That is just the reason why the county needs an agent.
Again they say the agent only visits a few farms. That is true. We would guess that a good agent would not be able to get the hearty cooperation of more than a hundred farmers in any year. If he did this well, his work should be a crowning success. To teach a hundred farmers how to do better farming means that you have in a county just 100 little farms that amount to being experiment stations to those who live about them. Some people are too self-conceited to admit that they can be taught anything, and yet they can. We have in mind one good citizen of the county who got credit for refusing to cooperate with a former agent, but, mind you, he kept careful watch on the work that his neighbor was doing under the instruction of the agent and patterned after him. That is the only way you can teach some men—show them. There is not the slightest doubt that the work that Joe Bill Johnson did for this county during the years that he acted as agent is worth 10 times more to the county than it ever cost. And there is every reason for saying that the county commissioners made a mistake when they declined to again start this work. We would suppose that the matter could yet be arranged and public spirited citizens of the county should use their influence to try to get this important work started again.
The lead editorial of The Mount Airy News, July 14, 1921, J.E. Johnson and son, publishers
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