On Pine Mountain

"President Roosevelt as a practical farmer," began a dispatch to the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune last week, "has given concrete proof that agriculture can sustain itself and even operate at a profit without the aid of his New Deal."

On the brow of scrubby Pine Mountain, five miles out the Franklin D. Roosevelt Highway from Warm Springs, Ga., the Herald Tribune's correspondent had sought out lanky Otis Moore to find how things were going on the 2,500-acre farm which the President bought while convalescing at Warm Springs in 1925 (TIME, Dec. 10). Manager Moore, father of five, reported the best crops in years, said the farm's two white and five Negro tenant families looked forward to a reasonably comfortable winter. The farm, which directly adjoins a New Deal homestead project, has never paid its own way, but this year Manager Moore thought that it might even show a profit. Most of the farm's crops go to feed its 130 cattle, he explained, so he could not tell for sure about profits until next spring's stock sales.

Only about 150 acres of the President's hilly farm are cultivated and his barns and Negro shacks are only now being made less down-at-heel than those of his cracker neighbors. Largest crop this year was corn, with some 100 acres producing an average of 15 bu. per acre -- not enough to justify an AAA corn contract.

"We don't sell hogs," drawled Otis Moore. "There's more money in other products. Of course, we raise all we want to eat, but we depend on our cattle and our grapes [15 acres] for cash. We got $1,200 or $1,300 last year for our cattle and ought to get at least that much this year."

Other income will be from 500 bu. of sweet potatoes, from lumber cut by a sawmill installed a few months ago. "I begged the President to let me plant a little cotton," said the employe of the man who has cut the South's cotton production 20%, "but he just gave me that big broad smile and shook his head. So of course I didn't raise any cotton."

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