The Meridian Tribune (Meridian, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, July 14, 1922 Page: 11 of 16
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By J. H. LOWRY
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{
harvest as this is writ-
time ten the reapers
are winding up
their work in the
grain fields and
the thresher men
are oiling up their
machines. As an
old-timer watches
the huge self-
binders skimming
through the
wheat fields and
leaving behind them bundles of grain
well-tied and ready for the shock, his
mind wanders back to the grain-field
scenes of fifty years ago. The wheat-
harvesting device of that period was the
cradle, and to the man of that time the
cradle was truly a triumph of inventive
genius. It was perfect; nothing better
could be imagined, nothing better was
needed or desired. As a youngster I
used to wonder how the human mind
worked out such a perfect device—how
any man could be so smart. Had I been
brought face to face with the inventor
I would have been glad to fall down and
worship him for making the work of
grain-harvesting so rapid and so easy.
I had heard my father tell of how wheat
had been harvested in the days of his
youth. Such a thing as a wheat cradle
had not been dreamed of then, and the
grair^ was cut with a reap hook, a blade
abo;at eighteen inches long that describ-
gfa a half circle and had a wooden han-
dle. My father had kept one of the **eap
hooks as a memento of other days, and
occasionally he got the old hook down
and showed us how grain was saved in
his youth. The process was very sim-
ple, the reaper grasping as many wheat
stalks as he could in one hand and
whacking them down with the reap
hook, which was held in the other. I
judge that three men, working long
hours, could harvest an acre of grain in
a day! But finally that restless, ambi-
tious thing we call the mind of man
worked out the wheat cradle, and with
this wonderful invention a man could
cut three acres of wheat in a day; yea,
an expert could cut three and a half
acres, as much as ten men could do with
i*feap hooks. I know one or two men
who, it was claimed, could cut four
acres. They were the real heroes of
the community, and the glitter of their
haloes was excelled only by the glitter
of the halo of the community's best fid-
dler. *
* * *
There are yet a few grain cradles in
the world, but many who will read this
never saw one, and the chances are that
they will never see one, for the hand of
the iconoclast was laid on this once
great labor-saving device long ago. The
grain cradle consisted of a scythe blade
about three and one-half feet long, five
wooden fingers, and a crooked wooden
stock. The blade cut the grain, which
fell on the fingers and was removed
therefrom with one hand of the work-
man, or "swathed" on the ground by a
quick jerk of the cradle. But I must add
that hot all cradles had five fingers. All
the cradles bought from the stores did,
but these were called "Yankee" cradles,
and some of the good old Johnny Rebs
wouldn't use them. They made cradle
stocks of their own, from seasoned ash
timber, and put only four fingers there-
in. There were many heated arguments
every harvest time over the merits of
the two kinds of cradles—the Yankee
kind and the home-made type with four
fingers. I never knew a fight to grow
out of the arguments, but I have seen
men grow very red in the face and heard
them intimate that busniess would pick
up if certain assertions were repeated.
The question had not been settled when
I was run out of Tennessee more than
forty years ago.
* ♦ *
One day a strange looking machine
was unloaded on the platform at the
railway station of the village. Men
crowded around it even as ants crowd
around the bung hole of a molasses bar-
rel. The machine was painted bright
red, it had a long tongue, a big wheel, a
little wheel, an apron that looked like
the bars of a fish trap and a reel of re-
volving blades. Everybody wanted to
know what it was, and a well-dressed
fellow who was in charge said it was a
reaper—a wheat cutter! The well-dress-
ed man said the machine would cut the
wheat and drop it in bundles, ready for
binding. The wise men of the commun-
ity shook their heads and said it
wouldn't do it. In a few days the red
machine was taken to a field for trial.
It did cut the wheat, and, by working a
lever with his foot, the driver could drop
the grain in bundles, ready for binding.
Still the wise ones said it wouldn't do—
said it would waste the wheat, and of-
fered other objections. But when I was
run out of Tennessee the cradles were
hanging in the tool sheds at the sides of
the barns, their blades rusty and their
stocks worm-eaten. The dropper-reap-
er, however, was short-lived. The self-
raker soon pushed it aside, and was in
turn pushed aside a few years later by
the self-binder.
* * *
A patriotic congressman has intro-
duced a bill to prevent imitation of roy-
alty in America. He would prohibit the
use of such titles as "king" and "queen"
at carnivals, pageants and other blow-
outs or social functions. That's the
idea; we must not ape royalty in this
land of the free even to the slightest de-
gree. Down with the Queen of May
and the queen bee. And let a bill be
introduced at once to change the name
of the King snake to the President
snake.
» ♦ »
About twenty-one years from now the
wicked Republican party will be buried
so deep under an avalanche of ballots
that the political world will know it no
more forever. The Republican tariff bill
doubles the tax on safety pins. Won't
there be a rush from Republican ranks
twenty-one years from now when the
infants of today learn how the Repub-
licans of today tried to rob them of the
protection of safety appliances and get
them stuck?
* ♦ *
Twenty years hence, no doubt, such
things as horses and horse wagons will
never be seen in town. Of course it will
be a swifter and a better age, but in
some ways it will be hard on both men
and dogs. The men can not engage in
the great American diversion of horse-
swapping and the country dogs will
never get to come to town.
* * *
JULY UNHAPPY July is a very un-
MONTH. popular month, and
during its reign
there is more unhappiness among the
people of the world than in any other
month of the calendar year. In taking
its name from Caius Julius Caesar the
month burdened itself with an unhappy
title, and when it permitted Julius to
yank it out of fifth place and stake it in
seventh place a fatal error was made.
July would have been May, the queen of
months, if it had held its place in line
against ambitious, meddlesome Caesar,
and but for the unlucky swap would
have heard the early bird songs, seen the
blush of the first roses and looked upon
the great army of sweet girl graduates,
instead of beholding so much- human
misery and having her ears pierced by
the wails of the discontented. As it is,
July comes just in time to witness the
disillusioning of the June brides. Only
a month before these rare and radiant
creatures led the men they had cap-
tured down flower-strewn aisles to Hy-
men's altar while the strains of Men-
delssohn told the sweet story of undy-
ing love. They knew John, or Henry,
or Charley, or Reginald, was the dearest
man on earth, and that their soul's affin-
ity was sent from Heaven that they
might be smiled upon and petted for-
evermore. No thought that the smile
on John or Henry's face might ever be
curled into a frown; no thought that the
soft and tender words of love that had
come as sweet as the tones of a golden
harp from John or Henry's mouth
would ever freeze into a harsh "gosh"
or a cruel "damn" before such a trifle
as an unpaid bill. Happy in the belief
that John's immaculate shirt front
would never become soiled, that his
shoes would never lose their polish, that
his trousers would always be neatly
creased and his face would always car-
ry a fresh shave—yea, soothed by the
blessed thought that John would never
emit the odors of perspiration, neither
would he snore in his sleep, or lose his
smile, or become impatient, the June
bride entered into connubial bliss as
lovely, as hopeful and as happy as an
angel of light. And poor July must wit-
ness the disillusioning and watch the
bitter tears of disappointment stain the
rosy cheeks of hope. Poor John was not
a man of steel, but a man of clay, and
he has already fallen from the beautiful
pedestal and broken to pieces. The poor
fellow is of the earth earthy. He ac-
tually perspires when he becomes warm
from exertion, and horrors, sometimes
he smells sour! Furthermore, John's
mind isn't on his wife all the time. The
scoundrel is a bundle of deception; he
lied! He swore he'd never grow tired
of sitting with his dovey-dove and pour-
ing into her ears the words of love.
What a deceiver. His mind is on other
things already. He hurries away in the
morning; he hurries away at noon; he
wants to read the paper a little at night.
He's making of life a workaday routine
instead of one grand sweet song of love.
His ideals are no longer hung upon the
clouds or pinned to the stars; he dreams
not of the Elysian fields of love, but of
bank accounts, store bills, cotton, corn
and hogs. He actually showed temper
the other day and was pettish when he
paid a store account that was larger
than he had anticipated, and when his
June bride attempted to kiss away his
troubles he turned away and was harsh.
And poor July must see the tears and
hear the sobs of the disillusioned June
brides.
• * ♦
big COTTON We are to have a
CROP ASSURED, fine crop of cotton
this year. Present
conditions being somewhat unfavorable,
many will question my prediction, and
some will receive it with titters and
scorning. i know very well that the cot-
ton crop is late and that the plant lacks
much of being in good condition at this
time. i know the worm family is mar-
shaling its mighty hosts to pounce upon
the South's great staple crop. i know
also that grass and weeds are matted
with the cotton plant and that the de-
structive weevils are here in full force,
waiting for the plant to square and
bloom, that they may steal the fruit.
But in spite of these things I say wtih
boldness and with perfect confidence
that we will have a fine cotton yield this
year, and I invite all to chalk down the
prediction and confront me with it next
December when the returns are in from
the fields. I am not basing my predic-
tion on what the experts of the schools
or the agricultural bureaus say, but upon
the word of one who knows. There is a
good old negro in Lamar county who
knows all about cotton signs, and when
he speaks I never question. This wise
old Senegambian says when there is a
big crop of ants there is always a big
cotton crop. I never saw a larger crop of
ants than we have this year, therefore
I know we will have an unprecedented
yield of cotton. I don't know what kind
of a spell the ants exercise over the cot-
ton, and it isn't necessary for me to
know. I only know that the old negro
of.whom I speak and whom I trust im-
plicitly can discern the signs of the
times, and when he reads the signs and
tells me what to expect I never doubt.
It was the same negro who exploded the
ground hog theory of weather forecast-
ing, a theory that has deceived millions
of good people and caused them to lose
millions of dollars' worth of garden
truck and countless millions of cabbage
and potato plants. He it was who
taught me that winter is never over
until the lizzard opens its mouth.
HOW THE BONES GROW.
Our bones grow with the rest of the
body, but the teeth are never larger
than when they first come through the
gums. The reason for this is that the
outside of the teeth, or the enamel, as it
is called, has to be very hard, so that
they can cut and grind the food. This
substance when once made is finished,
and does not grow any more. If the
first teeth should remain in the head
they would be too small when their own-
er grows up, and as the jaws grew they
would be far apart instead of close to-
gether. So the first set begins to be
shed about the seventh year, and new
ones—larger and more in number—take
their place little by little.
The first bale of the 1922 cotton crop
of the United States was sold at auc-
tion on the floor of the Houston Cotton
Exchange for $1,200. The bale was
raised by Mack Mize of the Riohondo
community, Lower Rio Grande valley,
30 miles north of Brownsville, Texas.
The cotton classed as middling, 29-30
millimeter staple. The bale weighed
533 pounds.
Secret of a Happy Marriage
By
KATHLEEN NORRIS
"Fluttered and Radiant Over Clothes."
What are the facts about your mar-
riage ?
Is it 80 per cent—or only 50 per cent
—a success ?
And of the 20 per cent, or 50 per cent,
failure, what share is your fault?
These are great days for tables of
statistics, in connection with education
and with business. And it might be
worth while for those of us who are en-
gaged in the extremely educational busi-
ness of marriage to analyze it along the
same lines.
The failure of the American home, as
an institution, is the failure of the Am-
erican nation. And who can study the
divorce problem, the race suicide prob-
lem, the servant problem, the notorious
"flapper" problem, the problem of hun-
dreds of thousands of dissatisfied, rest-
less, extravagant, idle American wives,
and assert that we are not racing to-
ward national failure?
Golden Eye Dust.
Happy marriages—which mean hap-
py wives and good mothers, contented
servants, and obedient sons and daugh-
ters—are obviously the solution to all
these problems. But what has happened
to marriage ? If we can find the answer
to that question, we shall find the an-
swer to them all.
Perhaps one painful truth is that we
American women are too apt to forget
that no human life is entirely happy.
We are not educated to face this simple
fact.
Everything conspires to throw a sort
of golden dust in our eyes when the
grave hour of marriage comes. We are
fluttered and radiant over clothes, pres-
ents, flattery, the first delicious excite-
ment of house-finding, and we hear on
all sides such idiotic phrases as "ideally
happy!" "not a cloud in the sky!" "dear-
est fellow on earth!" "just one of the
perfect things of lif%!"
Poor Bride—Poor Bride!
To most brides the wedding day seems
the accomplished ambition rather than
the dubious beginning of a hard, long
road.
Poor bride—poor bride! If she was
graduating from the medical college, or
opening a gift shop, how much more
reasonable we would be. How we would
talk then of possible failure, of insur-
ance, of competition; how we would
warn her about her impulsiveness, and
her fatal indolence and vacillation!
"I don't expect to be a success right
away," the doctor or the shopkeeper
would assure us buoyantly, "but you
watch me for a few years, and you will
see!"
Even then the shopkeeper or the
doctor would have the advantage, in
that she had at least studied her busi-
ness for years or months before plunging
into it. But the bride has been study-
ing geometry and algebra and the sec-
ond book of Caesar; nobody has told her
anything about duty, self-denial, house-
keeping, wifeliness, and the glory that
is motherhood.
In six months she is bewildered with
misery, in 12 she is wretched. Two or
three years later she is free. She con-
fesses failure—but she is free!
Betty, Bob—and Fred.
Then comes a salutory year or two
of loneliness and unpopularity. Betty
gets utterly weary of telling her friends
how horrid Bob was, and how right she
was. And even her friends somehow
can't believe that Bob was quite all to
blame. As for Bob's friends, they tell a
very different story, and Betty's mother
weeps, and Betty begins to study sten-
ography or interior decorating. '
And then Fred comes along, comfort-
ing and big and tender, and how thank-
fully Betty turns to him, and how proud
she is of her new name and her new hus-
band and her new home! How she pets
and praises Fred, and what a darling
little girl they presently have, and then
what a darling boy, and what a wife and
mother Betty is! Those old unhappy
days as Bob's wife, she says, are as if
they had never been.
Two Facts About Men.
But, of course, Bob and Fred are ex-
actly alike; all men are. If Betty had
married Fred first, then she would
have flown with just the same love and
gratitude to Bob.
Both men only wanted companion-
ship and sweetness, and a comfortable
home with children in it. It was Betty
who changed, who learned and developed
through mistakes and unhappiness; Bob
and Fred made exactly the same de-
mands of her.
"And what of men?" Betty asks in-
dignantly. "Aren't they to learn and
change and develop, too?"
Well, yes, of course. But there are
two significant facts about the educa-
tion of Bob and Fred.
Firstly, they get a good deal of edu-
cation along the way. School is harsher
with them than with their sisters; their
first jobs discipline them. Our civiliza-
tion gives them a far better chance than
it does women to become useful, reason-
able, inexacting citizens.
We Make or Break Them.
Secondly, the vital, absorbing, inspir-
ing interests of a man's life are outside
of his home.
And there might be a thirdly—that
in all the matters of the spirit, wherever
actual "goodness" is concerned, men
look to women for guidance. Almost
any woman can make almost any man
a successful husband, father and citizen,
or she can ruin his life and crush out
his faith in human nature.
It is only in the exceptional case that
the reverse is true.
Woman, for thousands of years, has
had for her ideal the life of the absolute
parasite. Men, in my opinion, have
formed and given her that ideal—but it
doesn't matter how she got it, the inter-
esting thing is the need for her to get
away from it.
We have been educated to believe that
to have other men and women serving
our meals, making our dresses, washing
our hair, teaching our children every-
thing from catechism to dancing and
driving our cars, is the secret of happi-
ness.
A Truth Wives Must Learn.
Now the great fundamental fact that
we American women have to learn is
the truth that, in the words of the
greatest of all our teachers, "He that
would be first among you, let him be as
one that serves."
Service—anywhere, everywhere, any-
how. That is the one and only secret
of happiness.
That is what makes your husband
contented, while you mope at home
wishing you could act, or write, or even
go into one of the beautiful shops and
handle gowns.
You don't know it, unhappy wives
all over the nation, but what you want
is—work.
You may think it is fame or money,
but no sane person gets anything but
annoyance >and increased responsibility
from these. A woman poet has well
called them merely "a gathering jeer."
And-wasn't it Mr. Dooley who said, "We
build our triumphal arches of bricks,
Hinnessy, so that we can throw the
bricks ofter our heroes whin they've
gone through thim" ?
No Success Like Motherhood.
No, you want service. Service in
nurseries, big public nurseries that re-
place all the little separated rooms
where babies . are toppling blocks and
wishing the rain would stop today.
Service in the big new schools of the fu-
ture, where mothers are teachers, and
lesson hours have nothing to do with
clocks. Service in all the magnificent
big clubs of all sorts that will come to
solve women's problems, when women
realize, as men do, the importance of
their position and the glorious possibil-
ity of their uniting to serve.
Children, whole families of them,
must come back into fashion—not be-
cause of duty, no, nor because the na-
tion needs them, no. But because the
woman of the future will be wise enough
to know that no fame, no fortune, no
success brings to a woman a self-expres-
sion and a joy comparable to the glory
of reigning over a group of little sons
and daughters; and because the nation
of the future will be educated to know
that mere bridge-building, stock-brok-
ing, mere finance and commerce are but
shadows beside the importance of her
work who replenishes life itself.
"Just to Be UsefuI.,,
The discontented women of the na-
tion, who think they want clothes,
think they want travel, lovers, glory,
can find a sure road toward the happi-
ness that ia better than all—and, inci-
dentally, to fame and fortune, if they
choose to try. They need only, first,
solve their own problems, whatever they
are—make the little circle happy before
they attempt to increase their responsi-
bilities; and then, secondly and lastly,
look for a place to serve. Not to be ad-
mired, not to become famous and rich,
but just to be useful.
Any woman who cannot solve her im-
mediate personal problem naturally has
nothing good to spare to a hungry world.
But the women who know in their
hearts that they can increase their pow-
er and their audience may well ponder
Shakespeare's lines:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our
stars, but in ourselves, that we are un-
derlings."
An Old, Old Promise.
And there is another promise, two
thousand years old, that bears directly
upon all the unhappiness and mistakes
of modern marriage, and, indeed, of
modern life:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you."
FARMERS IN THE LEAD.
"The biggest users of motor trucks in
the world are the American farmers,
. with 79,789 motor trucks in operation,"
says an authority. "Manufacturers come
second, with 75,928, and retailers third,
with 74,086.
"These figures are taken from reliable
statistics for the year 1917. Estimates
for 1918 show a tremendous increase in
the number of motor trucks in use, but
the farmer is still in the lead,
"It is estimated that during 1918 ap-
proximately 350,000,000 tons of farm
products were hauled to market in mo-
tor trucks by the farmers and gardeners
of the United States.
"The motor truck handles life's neces-
sities. Legislation which hits motor
trucks hits at the very source of the life
supply of the people. To unwisely legis-
late against the motor truck is to take
food away from those who ne^d it and
to increase its cost.
"The motor truck is the people's
friend and servant, and legislation
aimed to injure and handicap motor
truck transportation is a blow against
the best interests of the people—both
producers and consumers.
"Much of this 350,000,000 tons of food
products hauled from the farm to the
city by motor truck was of a perishable
nature, and hundreds of thousands of
tons of it would have been lost but for
the motor truck."
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Dunlap, Levi A. & Dunlap, Teel W. The Meridian Tribune (Meridian, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, July 14, 1922, newspaper, July 14, 1922; Meridian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth404318/m1/11/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Meridian Public Library.