Peninsula Enterprise, September 26, 1891

Our Public Roads.

Transportation -- Road - Maintenance

MR. EDITOR --

I am glad you again call attention to the wretched condition of our public roads, and declare you are going to continue to agitate this question until a better road law is adopted. That is the right spirit. When the leading newspaper on the Peninsula comes out in that style, it is a hopeful sign for better highways -- Stand up for the right. The people are certainly with you in this matter. Look at our roads for the last year. Mud! Mud! Mud! Look at the road from Onancock to Drummondtown -- the largest two towns in the county and but a few miles apart! Isn't it disgraceful in a civilized and prosperous community? Look at it -- mud, water holes, deep ruts, ungraded, miserable! But it is a fair sample of the roads in the county. Many are much worse -- some almost impassible during the wet season. Is there any reason for this condition of our highways? Certainly not. We have the finest soil in the world to make good, smooth, hard, dirt roads -- a mixture of clay and sand. Is it impossible to devise some means of grading, draining and raising the centers of the roads? This is what is required, and without it we shall continue to flounder in the mud. Let our candidates for the Legislature give forth no uncertain solutions on this all important question. Our real estate in greatly depreciated in value by the wretched condition of our highways -- indeed it effects all classes, and properties, and retards the prosperity, progress and development of our beautiful and fertile country. Let us hear from the Legislative candidates -- and let all who feel an interest in good roads speak out. We want a full survey of our roads by a competent engineer, a good road law, and then work, work, work, until our roads are good.

J. D. PARSONS.

Untitled

Fields -- Crops - Sweet potatoes : Quality controlFarmers -- InnovationFarmers -- Tenancy

EDITOR ENTERPRISE --

Will you kindly allow an outside observer -- one without personal interest, but also is nevertheless deeply interested in all that pertains to the welfare of the people of the Eastern Shore, to offer a few suggestions in regard to the farming outlook for another year.

The almost fatal failure in the sweet potato market this fall is entirely due to two causes, the most important of which has been the enormous crop and exceedingly low price of peaches. The market has been literally gorged with that fruit since the first of August, the best fruit sometimes selling for 25 cents a bushel. Both private families and hotels have used scarcely any other fruit this season.

Farmers should know that the sweet potato is not a staple but a luxury; and is subject to the same fluctuation as any other article in the market.

The other cause of low prices in the too heavy shipment of small potatoes too early in the season.

In fact, there are too many of them raised, unless they were used to a greater extent then they are now. Virginia farmers would do well to turn their attention, at least a greater part of it, to the producing of staple articles of food -- breadstuffs, irish potatoes and onions.

The heavy tax on the two latter articles is bound to make them in demand next season; while the scarcity of breadstuffs and the ever menacing prospect of war in Europe are equally bound to make a strong market for corn and wheat.

No farmer should plant over 40,000 sprouts of sweet potatoes. An early crop of irish potatoes, well fertilized, a moderate output of peas, some strawberries and half of the farm, at least, in corn, would in the opinion of the writer, be much better than to risk everything on a crop which is only in demand during a few months in the Autumn, and that a limited demand.

Neither should the barnyard be neglected. Cattle, hogs and horses we must have. Eggs are taxed 5 cts. a dozen, and will be high next Winter. Pork is never a drag, and good horses always in demand.

But there is one crying evil on the Eastern Shore, as well as in other parts of the World. It is the evil of landlordism. It ruined Ireland, and is the bane of civilization. So long as the majority of farmers have to rent their farms, the farmer himself as well as the soil must remain poor. The poverty of one increases the poverty of the other; while the landlord finds in his poor and uncollected rentals a precarious investment at best: and if men must rent they should effect leases of many years, instead of the year to year system, which cannot possibly be beneficial to landlord or tenant. Indeed, a poor man is better off with ten acres and a cabin of his own, than to be the tenant of a hundred acre farm with no means or capital to carry it on, and having to depend solely upon his crop of sweet potatoes from which to support his family and pay his rent.

Look around you, my friends, and you will see that every industrious man who owns his little farm goes ahead, while the man who has to move from year to year and lives on rented land, but leaves one poor place to find another poorer still, and himself at last a beggar.

If capitalists would invest in something else than real estate, and poor men might make it their object to secure a humble home of their own, times would be better.

OBSERVER.

New York, Sept. 20, 1891.

The Oyster Question.

Sea -- Shellfish - Oystering : LegislationNatural resources -- Conservation - Commons

MR. EDITOR --

I have noticed the letter of a person signing himself S. M. W., and as he seems greatly displeased in a long letter, heretofore published, in defence of the rights of oystermen against the schemes of monopolists, I will at present briefly say, that the oystermen of Accomac will lull themselves into a most dangerous, if not fatal delusion if they imagine that their interests are all safe if placed at the mercy of an Advisory Board which looks to the disturbance of our people in the enjoyment of free fishery in our public waters. And I would say to oystermen, be on your guard against monopolists who have their eyes especially on Tangier and Pocomoke sounds and other public waters in Accomac. And it would be well enough to consider how it is and why it is that S. M. W., interest himself so much to decry the efforts of those who are struggling to aid the oystermen in their contest with the monopolists.

A FRIEND OF OYSTERMEN.