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Growing Cotton Successfully . Under Boll Weevil Con ditions. Farmers in this section can profit by the experience of farmers in the cotton growing states where the wee vil has been prevalent for a number of years. Farmers in Alabama, Mis sissippi and Louisiana are growing some cotton in spite of the weevil. The following from Mr. W. F. Cov ington of Headland, Ala., stating how cotton is grown there under boll wee vil conditions should be of interest to -our readers: How We Make Cotton. The cotton lands are usually brok en during January and February with two-horse plows, plowing deeply and only when the subsoil is dry enough to crumble well. A few harrow. If the land has no clay subsoil, it is geni ally bedded up without flat breaking. After breaking and harrowing, the rows are bedded up leaving a deep water furrow between. We make beds about 3 to 3-12 feet wide, being careful to have beds of even width and of uniform size and height. This is very important in doing good culti vating to the growing crop. The beds are made some weeks in advance of planting so that they will be well set tled by one or more good rains be fore we expect to plant. This is one of the most important features of preparation. The settled bed holds moisture and hastens the germination of the seed. The cotton roots will take hold quicker and the plants will grow off much faster when plante d in fl well settled bed. Now. don't forget this. Bed up early and make them of good height. We find it does not pay to plant too early. Most of our cotton is plant ed the first 10 days of April. If you ^lant earlier, it costs more to culti vate. The lice do more damage, often ruining the stand. One must have good stands, that is, no skips. Every foot of the row must be made to do its part. Before we had weevils, skips did not hurt. So work carefully to get and hold a perfect stand if possible. Cotton plants are like pigs. K they become "stunted" it takes them a long time to get over it. Plant after the ground is warm so that the plants can be made to grow rapidly. Put Down All Fertilizers at Planting Time. iuucl aujji.^x.. means a later crop. The beds are op ened with the fertilizer distributor, using on the foot of the distributor any kind of plow that will open a good size furrow. I prefer using a long 5-inch shovel and a 14-inch heel scrape. This lets the fertilizers well down in the bed and the scrape will cut down the furrow sides covering up the planter. The planter is follow ed immediately behind the distribu tor, planting and covering the seed before the furrow has dried out any. We cover seeds only with the springs of the 'planter. When cotton is up we bar off with a turn plow, using a fen der to prevent too much of the soil falling around the plants, but we let enough slip by the fender to lap around the drill so as to cover up all little grass that might be up, or that will soon come up. The high edges of the bed give the turn plow a good hold so that the water furrow in the middles are well filled. The drill is now left in good shape for the chop ping, especially should a heavy rain fall after the barring. .Some writers object to barring off cotton, claiming that it removes too much soil from the side of the plants. This has refer ence to where the seed were planted on a high bed and covered with a board on the planter. This is a very old style of planting, and does not compare at all to the advantages of planting in the distributor furrow and covering with the side plows of the planter. This sets the drill down in the bed and not on top, and when these high edges are turned to the middles, the barring furrows do not seem so deep, and they are not. Its the ideal way of planting and has been followed by the Headland far mers for the past 20 years, and the writer is pleased to ?note the increas ing popularity of the method every where. s Mist of the seed in this section are planted with a Covington Cotton Seed Dropper, dropping about 10 seeds to the hill and the hills about 15 to 18 inches apart. This takes only about half the seed it does to sow. We are surer of getting good stands, for should packing rains come, the seed in hills will burst through when they will not where sown. The young plants in hills will stand the light frosts and cold winds better due to the protection they give each other. (If any of my readers would like to know more ofthe dropper, I will be glad to mail them a catalog. It is a planter of my own njake and it is the only cotton seed dropper that will put down the seed just like you want them, and it will never miss one sin gle hill.) Leave Two to Three Stalks Per Hill. We thin hills to two stalks and sometimes leave three. More cotton can be made per acre this way than to leave one stalk to the hills and the hills as far apart. I claim we make from 10 to' 20 per cent more. This gives you . the required' number of plants, and sets them far enough apart to let in the.sunshine on all sides of the hills. By having two or three plants to the hill, prevents the plants putting out the long vegetative [limbs, and encourages the growth of I the shorter fruit limbs. ' This gives you an earlier crop and a larger crop. Another advantage is that the limbs will grow towards the middles and as they become heavy with bolls, the two plants will separate, each leaning towards its respective middle. This lets the sunshine in between them to kill the weevils and to prevent the bottom bolls from rotting. I began following this two-or-three-stalks-to the-hill plan some twelve years ago, and I know that it will give you in creased yields, so adopt it. You can follow it best by first planting your seed in hills with one of my droppers, as you then get all hills evenly spaced and at the exact distance you want, and then you are s\ire to have the re quired two or three plants together, to form the hill. The hills can be thin ned just as rapidly as the row can be chopped the old way. After the drill has been properly thinned and the plants given their first working, we then reopen the water furrow in the . center of the rows by running rather deeply a shov el plow. This furrow drains any sur plus water from around the drill and lets in the warmth of the sun. I con sider this a very important operation, as in most cases its effect is imme diately seen in a more vigorous growth of the plants. We do all cul tivating with short shovels and heel scrapes, giving the plants rapid and shallow plowing, which is kept up till about the middle or . last of July. Fighting Weevils and Weather Conditions. Children are sent over the fields tb give me pi?.... . . ... - fact it all depends upon the weather, and especially through June and the first part of July. Being so far south we have a large annual rainfall, yet it does not prevent us from making ?rood yield of cotton. One advantage we have, and I attribute our success largely to this, and that is, we gener ally have hot, dry falls. The cotton plants come to early maturity, and during September shed most of the foliage leaving no food for the wee vils. This hot'sun kills them out in great quantities', and their food sup ply being cut off, they have to leave or perish. This so greatly reduces their1 numbers that we are able to make a good bottom and middle crop of squares the next spring before they become numerous enough to do serious damage. The success we have had in growing cotton under weevil conditions, leads me to believe that our losses in this extreme southern section, is less than are those in the more northern sections of the cotton belt. Our winters are so mild, that I think we keep the weevil in an active state, to a certain extent, and as there is no growing or green cotton to feed on, he dies in larger numbers than if they had been held in a more dormant state by a more continuous cold temperature. The winter pre ceding the last crop was the^ mildest ever known, and our loss from.wee vils was the lightest we have ever had. You know when any living thing is in an active state it must have some food to sustain life. The days of spring-like weather we have all through the winter months tempts him out of his supposed winter quar ters. When he begins^to move he must have food or he soon dies. He may run under some light piece of trash, from one of our weather attempts at frost, but in two or three days the sun is again so warm that he is tempt ed out, and every time he comes out he is weaker, till finally he gives up the job as a bad one and dies. Now, I don't know that any of this is true, but when the weevil is put through our long, hot, dry falls with no food, and then through the warm winter periods just mentioned, I don't be lieve he has but little chance to sur vive. Our first bales are picked the last days of July or the first days of Au gust. The cotton then opens very rap idly, and all is opened by the mid-, die of September. It is picked out about as fast as it opens, and this is one reason why ttys section produces such a fine quality of planting seed. The cotton grows to a height of 2 to 3 feet over this entire section, mak ing an average yield of 1-2 bale and better per acre. The plants fruit heavily, and this fruiting period is completed by the last days of July. Of course lots of squares are made after this d?te, but these are forNthe weevils, and these later, squares give the.weevils food enough to keep them off the immature bolls to a great ex tent. More Important Than Tax ation. Numerous as the crimes, ha ve.been in South Carolina in the last two or three years, they have oeen more numerous and' much bolder in many Northern states. We have had in South Carolina no rioting, few if any bank robberies, no bomb throwing and no serious conflicts between labor and capital. We have had no invasion by "yeggmen." Every day audacious murders and robberies in the cities of the North done, by organized bands are reported ir? the newspapers and often the perpetrators escape in au tomobiles. Crime as "an organized in dustry" in Chicago and New York is admitted by the press and it is said to be intelligently directed. * In South Carolina progress in pun ishing crime has been made in the last twelve months. Convictions have been obtained against white men of property and influence.-Judges and juries have shown "determination to punish felons. If the good progress can be maintained two of three years healthier conditions will prevail in this state than have been observed in a' long time. But we are not of the woods. Men are under sentence whose friends will seek pardons or commutations for them. Bootleggers and moonshiners want above all things friendly and in dulgent administration, county city, and state. They believe that a politi cal upturn in which their candidates were successful would ?cow some of the judges and clear the way for comparatively safe law-breaking. If solicitors, sheriffs and other officers not positively and aggressively re cniuoH tn unhold the laws and enforce for the election of public officers ox tender disposition towards the lawless element of the population. That is a plain truth to be faced candidly. The financial depression has impaired the morale of many good citizens. They care little what happens-because they are discouraged. They are will ing that things drift. Always is an element in the popu lation of this and other states who prefer evil government, wno do not wish to be severely dealt with, if, perchance, it should be their will to perpetrate a crime. The opportunity for people of this kind is this year better than usual. If they can obtain possession of the government of South Carolina, we shall go through a period of lawlessness in contoast with which the worst experienced in the last half century will seem de cent, clean and tame. , Urgent and pressing as are ques tiohs of taxation, the question of law and safety is of incomparably greater import. Who wants property in the state unless life as well as property be safe in it?-The State. Wide Trousers, No Cuffs, Will Be Spring Style. Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 9.-Wider trousers, without cuffs, will be worn by men this spring, according to fashionable haberdashers in the Peachtree Arcade, with its galaxy of men's shops, who have just returned from the annual convention of the National Designers' Association in Washington, D. C. The haberdashers also visited New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, where they looked over the latest designs in men's ap parel. "Black braided sack coats and vests with striped trousers will also be the mode on semi-dress occasions," said one of the Arcade dealers. The shoulders will be natural with straight er lines for coats, shorter and less pointer vests, and the boxed back effect for,spring overcoats." WANTED: Salesmen with car to call on dealers with a low priced 6, 000 mile fabric and and 10,000 mile cord tire. $100.00 a week with extra commissions. UNIVERSAL TIRE & RUBBER CO. Michigan City, Indiana. 7 ? REGISTERED F.S.ROYSTER GUANO COMPANY Norfolk, Va Richmond, Va Lynchburg, Va Tarboro/N. C. Charlotte, N. C. Washington, N.C. Columbia, S. C. . Spartanburg, S.C. Atlanta, Ga Macon, Ga Columbus, Ga Montgomery, Ala Birmingham, Ala Baltimore, Md Toledo, Ohio . i 1 . ' * licauv~ rumor, going the rounds of legisla tive and political circles in connec tion with the mention of the name ol Representative Eugene S. Blease, ol Newberry, for the governor's race to the effect that the former govern or, already announced for the race, might withdraw in favor of his broth er. The former governor stated that he does not plan to withdraw in his brother's favor. .Eugene S. Blease has stated that he will not run if his brother runs. Abbeville-Greenwood Mu tual Insurance Asso ciation. ORGANIZED 1892. Property Insurred $17.226,000. WRITE OR CALL on the under signed for any information you may desire about our plan of insurance. . We insure your property against destruction by FIRE, WINDSTORM, or LIGHT NING and do so cheaper than any Com pany in existence. ' Remember, we are prepared to prove to you that ours is the safest and cheapest plan of insurance known. Our Association is now licensed to write Insurance in the counties of Abbeville, Greenwood, McCormick, Edgefield, Laurens, Saluda, Rich land, Lexington, Calh?un and Spar tanburg, Aiken, Greenville, Pickens, Barnwell, Bamberg, Sumter, Lee, Clarendon, Kershaw, Chesterfield. The ' officers are : Gen. J. Fraser Lyon, President, Columbia, S. C., J, R. Blake, Gen. Agent, Secretary and Treasurer, Greenwood, S. C. -DIRECTORS A. 0. Grant, Mt. Carmel, S. C. . . J. M. Gambrell, Abbeville, S. C. J. R. Blake, Greenwood, S. C. A. W. Youngblood, Dodges, S. C. R. H. Nicholson, Edgefield, S. C. J Fraser Lyon, Columbia, S. C. W. C. Bates, .Batesburg, S. C. W. H. Wharton, Waterloo, S. C. . J. R. BLAKE, General Agent. Greenwood, S. C. _. * I VIE RS BANK ?EFIELD, S. C. _?ST BANK IN EDGEFIELD \ SAFETY FIRST IS AND WILL BE OUR MOTTO Open your account with us for 1922. At the same lime start a Savings Account with us, or invest in one of our INTEREST BEAR ING CERTIFICATES OF. DEPOSIT. 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