SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III. 79 



that they are starving to death, and that the only relief for them is to go 

 West. Men are not on the verge of ruin when they have the opportunity 

 to sell spring water at 2 cents a quart, or when the opportunity is offered 

 them to sell certified milk at all the way from 8 to 15 'cents, or where 

 fruit, eggs, meat and vegetables of a special character can be handled at 

 enormous prices. Not all have these opportunities, and yet the skillful 

 and the strong go after them. I do not know whether certified milk is 

 a product of your country yet or not. In the Easl it is a business. A 

 dairyman fits up his stable, cares for his cows under the supervision of 

 a local board of health. The doctor comes and looks around to see that 

 he lives up to his contract. The milk is tested from time to time and 

 when assured that it is perfect the doctor and others recommend it to 

 their patients and their customers and immense quantities of it are sold 

 in that way. there are many of us who are able to sell every apple that 

 is fit at $2.00 or more per bushel box. You can imagine what this means 

 per barrel. In my own case I have found road advertising most effective 

 and we have a blackboard nailed to the fence and whenever we have any- 

 thing to sell the name is chalked on this board and you would be aston- 

 ished to see how much is sold in this way, for one traveler, if he does 

 not want what is offered, will carry the news of it on his way. It often 

 passes from man to man until a customer is reached. There was one 

 case in New England where a man was asked to try this plan. He said 

 he had nothing to sell but a dog and no one wanted such a thing as that. 

 Still he tried it and put up a sign. People who went by all laughed at 

 him, calling it a ridiculous thing to offer a dog for sale. Finally one 

 man went by, laughed with the rest, and told his brother-in-law about 

 it. This man thought it was a bigger joke than the other and he went 

 about telling what a fool a man was to offer such a thing for sale. 

 In this way the news was spread until it actually reached a woman in a 

 town some miles away who wanted just such a dog for her children, 

 and she came and bought it. I bought a road cart in just that way. A 

 man miles away put up a sign that he had a road cart for sale and the 

 news came to me through a dozen different people. I should not have 

 known anything about it had he not put up that sign. We have learned 

 in the East that it is a necessary part of our business to toot the horn 

 or blow the bugle whenever we have anything to sell, for I am safe in 

 saying that if it were not for our high prices our local markets and op- 

 portunities to get lots in our country you would drive us out of business, 

 even at a long range. It is our salvation, this local market, and if you de- 

 velop local markets in your own State, as they might be developer!, you 

 will help both yourselves and us. And yet, speaking as I have about 

 the material prosperity and possibilities of the eastern farmers, I must 

 say that there is a shadow — and a black one — behind the picture. If you 

 were to have located in your State a city like New York or Philadelphia, 

 with their millions of people, with all the sins and crimes of a great city, 

 and all the depressing influences which they send out, it would be one of 

 the greatest calamities that could fall upon your State. Many would say, 

 "We would welcome such a city, for it would give us a great local market 

 where we could sell our corn and our cattle." It would increase prices 



