Peninsula Enterprise, March 20, 1886

Letter From Commander Evans.

Infrastructure -- Public - Government : Lighthouse service

OFFICE OF LIGHT-HOUSE INSPECTOR,

FIFTH DISTRICT,

BALTO. MD., March 15, '86.

EDITOR PENINSULA ENTERPRISE: --

Dear Sir: My attention has just this morning been called to an article in your edition of Feb. 27, 1886, removing the cuticle from my body in the most masterly style. The "freedom of the press" is a great thing, but in your able hands the tension is greater than should be applied. Having, as above stated, removed the cuticle from my unoffending body, won't you be fair enough to restore it by publishing the following?

I was not aware until I read your able editorial that there was, or was to be, a light-house at Killick Shoal, Va. I never received an application, petition or other writing, of any kind, shape or verbal request from any one for the position of keeper of said light-house. If I had received such, I should have returned it at once to the sender with the information that the station was not in my district. Anyone who charges me with being an offensive partisan -- either Republican or Democratic, does not tell the truth. I never cast a vote in my life and never expect to -- nor did I ever influence anyone to cast a vote for any party. I am an officer of the Navy and as such have no business with politics. Under the last administration I was charged with being a Democrat. Knowing the honorable instincts and practices of newspaper men generally, I have no doubt that you will give this card the same prominence given to the unjust attack which has called for it.

R. D. EVANS,

L. H., Inspector.

Diversity of Crops.

Farmers -- Innovation

MR. EDITOR: -- Will you give me the space in your valuable paper to talk a little with our farmers on the importance of a "diversity of crops." There was a time with our farmers, that the want of a broad and general means of transportation, justified the notion of making the sweet potato crop a specialty, and I might say an entirety of money making power of this peninsula, but now that we have the great blessing and advantages of railroad transportation, ought we not to begin to look around ourselves, and ask if a greater diversity of crops will not yield to honest labor more money? Much indeed can be said in regard to all the sections of our country, as well as the people living more remote from us, that have met with ruinous depression in their agricultural interests, by clinging too tenaciously to the one crop idea. The vast and wealthy Island of Cuba, for instance, thirty years ago had almost a monopoly in sugar and syrups, which was then thought, could not by any possibility be taken from her, and their production excluded almost every other industry, but to-day we find, that the great nations of western Europe are not only producing from the beet enough sugar for their own consumption but are exporting their surplus by the thousands of tons all over the world. Their present, and the prospect of increased production, must in a very few years, demonstrate to the people of Cuba the fallacy of the "but one crop system." Coming nearer home, let us consider the ruinous consequences of the one crop system of the cotton States before the war. Cotton was their main and almost only crop, depending upon other sections to produce their corn, wheat, bacon, besides innumerable other articles of subsistence and of comfort -- the consequence of which was that the great Northwestern States were built up, which afterwards became the most powerful factors in the destruction of their liberties and institutions. Numbers upon numbers of like lamentable consequences might be recounted, that have befallen those people who have depended specially, as an agricultural people, upon one crop alone as a means of revenue.

Viewing the matter at our own homes has not the fallacy of the one crop -- the sweet potato -- been proven of late years by the small returns and is not the query pertinent, when will our farmers seek to better their condition by a greater diversity of crops? If we are to cling to old ideas, what profit may we expect to derive from the great blessing of certain and speedy means of transportation, that has been given us? What the need of a railroad if we are not to seek the advantages to be derived from it? Why should we plant five acres in sweet potatoes if they will not yield us as much money as five acres of Rutabaga turnips, when their cultivation will cost us five times as much? Let us plant sweet potatoes, but much fewer of them, but let us plant turnips, cabbage, kale, spinach, musk-melons, in fact all the field and garden trucks, and in as large quantities as we do sweet potatoes, and this being done and equal attention being given to them as has been to the sweet potato, in my opinion our farmers would have more money for their labors. Let us reason this matter together on a mathematical basis in a word let us use figures.

Now let us look again:

Thus we see by a diversity of crops better results.

Muskmelons could also be planted to an advantage. At the smallest calculation an acre will yield one hundred barrels and are rarely, if ever worth less than one dollar per barrel clear, to this add two acres in Rutabaga turnips that are now clearing in the city of Norfolk 75c per barrel and one acre in spring cabbage -- five thousand heads at two cents each, and the diversity of crops must become apparent to any sensible farmer.

Again, why should not our farmers utilize their glass potato beds for winter purposes? They have certainly cost too much money to be allowed to lay idle for a single day if it could be avoided. -- Now I will take as a base on which to work, a potato bed one hundred feet long and six feet wide, which gives us 600 square feet of surface and from this calculation any farmer will be enabled to know many square feet he has and what he can produce under his potato frames in winter when laying idle. We will plant in our potato bed of 600 square feet, spinach, which we can sell the last of February and it will in no case fail to clear us $5 per barrel and we think that our bed of 600 square feet will produce 10 barrels. Now take the large growers of sweet potatoes who have beds that could be utilized for winter's use, not of hundreds but of thousands of square feet and think of the profits that our farmer could make which they are now letting slip through their fingers. I have invited my friend, Capt. O. A. Browne to say something on this subject and I hope that our prominent men all over the E. Shore may take up the subject of a "diversity of crops," and, as I feel sure will more certainly offer something stronger in behalf of the theory than I am able to do. One fact is positively certain, that as an agricultural people, we are rapidly becoming poorer each year, and unless a change can be brought about the thrift and comforts, with which we have been so bountifully blessed for these many years will depart from us.

Respectfully,

T.G. ELLIOTT,

Mappsburg Mar. 17, 1886.