6. Put away thirty cents for every dollar you spend.
7. Keep a good supply of poultry. Set your hens. Keep your chickens until they will bring a good price.
8. Go to town on Thursday instead of Saturday. Buy no more than you need. Stay in town no longer than necessary.
9. Starve rather than sell your crops before you raise them. Let your mind be fixed on that the first day of January, and stick to that every day in the year.
10. Buy land and build you a home.
The various states are beginning to establish institutions in which agriculture and industrial training may be given. Among these may be mentioned that of Alabama at Normal, and of Mississippi at Westside. Alabama has also established an experiment station in connection with the Tuskegee Institute.
In Texas there is an interesting movement among the Negro farmers known as the "Farmers' Improvement Society." The objects are:
1. Abolition of the credit system.
2. Stimulate improvements in farming.
3. Co-operative buying.
4. Sickness and life insurance.
5. Encouragement of purchase of land and home.
The Association holds a fair each year which is largely attended. According to the Galveston News of October 12, 1902, the society has about 3,000 members, who own some 50,000 acres of land, more than 8,000 cattle and 7,000 horses and mules. This organization, founded and maintained entirely by Negroes, promises much in many ways. In October, 1902, a fair was held in connection with the school at Calhoun, Ala., with 83 exhibitors and 416 entries, including 48 from the school and a very creditable showing of farm products and live stock.
Besides these general lines which seem to be of promise it is in place to mention a couple of attempts to get the Negroes to purchase land. There have been not a few persons who have sold land to them on the installment plan with the expectation that later payments would be forfeited and the land revert. There are some enterprises which are above suspicion. I am not referring now to private persons or railroad companies who have sold large tracts to the Negroes, but to organizations whose objects are to aid the blacks in becoming landholders. The Land Company at Calhoun. Ala., started in 1896, buying 1,040 acres of land, which was accurately surveyed and divided into plots of fifty acres, so arranged that each farm should include different sorts of land. This was sold to the Negroes at cost price, $8 per acre, the purchasers to pay 8 per cent on deferred payments. The sums paid by the purchasers each year have been as follows: