“Shucks,” his father exclaimed. “You raise an acre of corn? Why you wouldn’t get twenty-five bushels!”
“Twenty-five,” said Jem, contemptuously. “I’d get a hundred.”
“A hundred,” said his father. “Here, look here, boy, I have been farming this land for thirty odd years, and the best I ever done on an acre of corn was seventy bushels. I’ll tell you what, though,” he added conclusively, “this here talk about corn clubs makes me tired. You and your hundred bushels! I was looking over the paper when it came in this noon, and I saw a piece about a chap over by Southport with over a hundred bushels to the acre. Do you know what I’m goin’ to do tonight? I’m goin’ to write that editor a letter, and tell him that any paper that publishes lies like that ain’t fit for my family to see. This year’s subscription ain’t run out, but they don’t need to send me the rest. I’ll get a paper somewhere else.”
Despite home opposition, Jem persisted and prevailed. His father gave him an acre grudgingly, but it was a good acre. And when, following the rules which he and the other boys who had agreed to enter the contest read over with the teacher, he disked his land and ploughed his narrow, deep furrows, he listened, not without misgivings, to the remarks which his elder brother passed at his expense.
“Say, Jem,” this brother remarked, “you have spent three times as much time on that acre as any acre of corn raised in this county was ever worth. Are you diggin’ graves for ’possums?”
When, later in the season, Jem cultivated with persistent regularity, he was forced to listen to similar comments. Jem wasn’t good at repartee; so he said nothing; but, sustained by the encouragement of the new teacher, who came to see his acre every week, Jem followed the rules to the letter.
He had his reward at harvest time. When the ears first set it became apparent that Jem had a good crop. As they developed, the goodness of the crop became more manifest; but when the acre had been harvested, put through the sheller and bagged, and Jem had stowed in his pocket a certificate of “ninety-six bushels on one acre,” it was time for some explanations.
“Jem,” said his father at the supper table on the evening of that memorable day when Jem’s corn went through the sheller, and his certificate showed ninety-six bushels, “I wrote a letter to that editor, and sent him next year’s subscription in advance.”
IV Club Life Militant
The experience of Jem’s father has been duplicated many times by parents and communities during the past ten years of club growth in the South. The school, working through the children, has educated fathers, mothers, villages, and whole counties.