This week in Canton history...
CANTON HERALD, Jan. 26, 1950
Quarterback Club to sponsor a colored ball game; Thursday night: Jan. 24 a negro ball game will be staged in the Canton gymnasium at 7:30 o’clock. Teams from Prairie Creek, Ben Wheeler and Cartwright School in Wills Point will meet. Sam Sparks, principal of Cartwright School, is to bring four members of his choral club who will sing. Pre game tickets are on sale at Eagle Drug, Reynolds Barber Ship and White Auto Store. Admission will be 60 cents for adults and 30 cents for children.
Canton Farmer Is Making Pay off With Diversified Crops: (by Cecil Chaney) No one need apologize or be embarrassed because he lives in the watermelon or black-eyed pea county of East Texas. Those deep sandy hills can be fertile and just as productive as a man wants them to be. If your friends don’t believe that the black-eyed pea and needle grassland can be fertile, best take them to Forest Bailey. Mr. Bailey lives on highway 17, five miles northeast of Canton. He tells that a few years ago his farm produced about 125 pounds of lint cotton per acre. Last year, he harvested 465 pounds of lint cotton per acre on his sandy farm land in East Texas. How did he do it? Well, forest had never planted any legumes before last year but with the aid of the county agricultural agent, he planted ten acres of hairy vetch Sept. 1949 and added 80 lbs. of 60 per cent super-phosphate per acre. By increasing their yields Forest and family have made more money, which has been used to improve the farm. A few years ago the average yield for this farm was about 15 bushels per acre. But this year I gathered 50 bushels of corn per acre on this sandy land of East Texas and I had big healthy green corn stalks when most of the corn is this community was brown. Forest is sold on special conserving and soil improvement practices now. Because someone told him he could increase yields in the East Texas sand and because he did those things and has seen what can be done. This year Forest planted 30 acres of hairy vetch to be turned under as green manure crop. In the past two years Forest, Syble and Edward have bought and paid for a new pickup truck, a new tractor and equipment a butane system for the house, new refrigerator, new gas stove, new dinette set, new washing machine and a new water pump. They have built a tractor shed, a dairy barn, a 2000 box sweet potato house, a wash house and bought several head of cows for calf production. With the aid of the soil conservation service and the county agricultural agent, Forest is gradually building up his farm so that his children will inherit a fertile East Texas sand land farm.
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