Page Six 



t 



THE I. A. A. RECORD 



Farm Philosopher 



Talks About Egypt 



DeWitt C. Wing, Associate Editor, Breed- 

 er's Gazette, Discusses Farming 

 In Southern Illinois 



(Following is Mr. Wing's interesting address 

 delivered recently, on the I. A. A. program over 

 radio station WJJD. Mr. Wing is one of Amer- 

 ica's foremost agricultural writers and philoso- 

 phers. He is owner of Skillet Fdrk Farm in 

 Wayne county. — Editor.) 



'CX)R the first time in seven years Dan 

 A the foreman was conservatively opti- 

 mistic when I went over Skillet Fork 



Farm with him a 

 week ago-. He was 

 almost cheerful. 

 This uncommon 

 condition filled me 

 with uneasiness 

 and suspicion. I 

 asked his wife if 

 she was sure that 

 he was well and in 

 his right mind. She 

 guessed that he 

 was about the 

 same as he'd al- 

 ways been. TJhe 



De Witt C. Wing 



only thing that she could think of at 

 the time which might have unduly 

 brightened his attitude toward the 

 farm's business standing and prospects 

 was that lightning struck the house on 

 a July night, and jarred him and her 

 out of bed. "Of course," she added, 

 "that electrical treatment might have 

 helped him some, bjit I doubt it." 



Be that as it may, Dan has a new 

 vision or else he is "seeing things." He, 

 has changed the tone of his comments- 

 on farming in the past year. "Is the 

 farm going to pay its way and the 

 taxes this year?" I asked him. "It 

 will do considerably more than that," 

 he answered. I then changed the sub- 

 ject, fearing ihat if it were further 

 pursued Dan would disclose some 

 "buts" that would take all the shine off 

 his first encouraging announcement. As 

 we grow in experience of life, we are 

 likely to learn that it is not always 

 profitable to spend most of our time 

 looking for niggers in woodpiles. If 

 we keep on sawing wood, maybe they 

 will slip out without our seeing them. 



That ligTitning stroke aroused Dan's 

 interest in rodding the house. The 

 Building has been standing for more 

 than 30 years. It' was never struck 

 until this year. But for the fact that 

 a heavy downpour accompanied the 

 electrical storm, the house would have 

 been destroyed by fire on that wild 

 July night. One of the chimneys re- 

 ceived the charge. It cracked some of 

 the bricks, branched off and ran down 

 water pipes at each .corner of the 

 house, and tore off plaster and wall- 

 paper in several rooms. Some of us 

 sometinies are aided by lightning. A 

 friend of mine says -that anything is 

 good for us if it doesn't quite kill us. 



Since 1920 some marked changes 

 and developments have occurred in 

 southern Illinois farming. Changes 

 equally noticeable probably have taken 

 place in most other agricultural com- 

 munities. Young people do not ob- 

 serve changes, unless they be sudden, 

 because their experience and memory 



are short in pedigree. It is well for 

 us that .endless change should be a 

 law of nature. So far as I am con- 

 cerned, the world is a better place to 

 live' in than it was when I was a boy ; 

 although it still needs a lot of chang- 

 ing and improvement. I wonder just 

 how much of a hand each of us is 

 taking in bettering it, according to the 

 ideas of the best minds of the past and 

 present. 



Limestone literally sweetens hu- 

 manity where it has soured on acid 

 soils. It seems to me that gooseberries 

 grown in our garden are gifted with a 

 little mor£ and a little sharper acid 

 than any that I have eaten g^reen else- 

 where. Maybe .that's imagination. 

 Well, it takes a pile of Cuban sugar 

 to S\veeten a gallon of ihis fruit for 

 a hunting-case pie. Also a gn^een per- 

 simmon in southern Illinois will pro- 

 duce a mouth pucker that is unique in 

 the history- of facial contortions. 

 Ground limestone has been applied to 

 many fields in- our neighborhood. Farm- 

 ers ane rtbt down and out who, de- 

 spite the waning depression, have the 

 will to buy limestone with which ttf re- 

 build their soils. 



We economize and practice thrift 

 and go on because we must. Necessity 

 governs us, but the politicians take 

 credit for the job. We are constantly 

 urged to reduce production costs and 

 maintenance expenses. Having heard 

 a talk on this subject, a 250-pound 

 young woman in our county fasted 

 for 35 days, in order to reduce her 

 weight, lessen her maintenance ex- 

 pense, and discipline herself to be a 

 southerh Illinois farmer's wife. Her 

 sacrificial, beautifying experiment got 

 into the newspapers, and ten Scotch- 

 men, always interested in economics, 

 proposed to her. I have never seen a 

 fat Scotchman in Scotland or in south- 

 em Illinois. 



Cows of dairy breeding are more nu- 

 merous in our area than they have 

 ever been in the past. That's a new 

 development that we welcome. It 

 means jour soils are going to' be im- 

 proved and little children- better fed. 

 Ten years ago sheep were scarce in 

 our county; now there are many farm 

 flocks in it. They are being improved 

 by the use of purebred mutton rams, 

 and their owners are learning how to 

 feed and manage sheep. Men who be- 

 gin in a small way, and learn to* do 

 things by doing them, are on the right 

 road .toward better stock and increased 

 net returns Sheep hus- 

 bandry, in competent hands, looks like 

 a sound farm business for years to 

 come in the United States. But no 

 one is qualified to make a success of 

 sheep-raising if he acts like a sheep, 

 for a sheep is so trustful, unselfish, and 

 narrow in its experience of a many- 

 sided world that it will follow false 

 leaders down to its own destruction. 

 An old Billy Goat is used at the Kansas 

 City stockyards to lead sheep to the 

 slaughtering house. 



There are more large flocks of 

 poultry of fair to standard breeding 

 on more farms in southern Illinois than 

 have ever been seen there before. 

 Small, mongrel flocks, receiving little 

 or rno care, have practically disap- 



peared from our landscape. Poultry 

 production has come to Jbe a consider- 

 able and well-established farm enter- 

 prise, to which farmers themselves are 

 giving special attention. Chicken 

 thieves also are keenly interested in it. 

 If most local officials were not both 

 lazy and cowardly, they would run 

 down, arrest and jail these nocturnal 

 crooks, who are chiefly young loafers 

 and wastrels in our villages and small 

 towns. If we have got to police our 

 own poultry yards and hoglots, we 

 shall be compelled to quit raising poul- 

 try. In fact, it seems to me highly 

 probably that poultry production is 

 going onto a volume basis in the hands 

 of large, well-equipped specialists, who 

 are better prepared than most farmers 

 to apply the principles of sanitation 

 and scientific nutrition to the business, 

 and to market eggs, baby chicks, broil- 

 ers, and capons to bettfer advantage. 



We are selling purebred but unreg- 

 istered Hereford bull calves at wean- 

 ing iime for $50 a head at the farm. 

 Neighbors come for them in their 

 own or hired trucks. Heretofore 

 we have sold the same grade of calves 

 for $35 each. Buyers now are paying 

 cash, and some of them desire to buy 

 heifers that we won't sell. A new and 

 lively interest in beef cattle has mani- 

 fested itself in our region during the 

 past six months. Evidently our farm- 

 ers have been inspired by the reports 

 of big prices at the terminal markets. 

 Southern Illinois is mostly as well 

 adapted to the production of feeder 

 cattle as any zone in the United States. 



The demand for work horses and 

 mules in our county is listless. A 

 shortage of both impends on many a 

 farm. The brayings of a neighbor's 

 jack have advertised him far and wide, 

 but only a few mares were bred to 

 the jack this year, and there isn't a 

 draft stallion in our township. I saw 

 a new small tractor at work in a neigh- 

 bor's wheat field the other day. We 

 have plenty of good horses and mules 

 on our farm, and plenty of cheap feed 

 with which to fuel them at work. If 

 a man likes to handle and work 

 horses, he can always prove to his own 

 satisfaction- that they are more . eco- 

 nomical than tractors; if he lilces to 

 monkey with machinery and drive a 

 tractor, he can always prove to his sat- 

 isfaction- that it pays him to do so. . . . 



Two years ago our taxes were con- 

 siderably higher than they were last 

 year. For the reduction we have to 

 thank the Illinois Agricultural A.sso- 

 ciation, whose tax expert, John C. 

 Watson, has earned the gratitude of 

 every farmer in this state. It costs 

 us $15 a year to enjoy the benefits of 

 membership in our Wayne County 

 Farm Bureau, which makes a small an- 

 nual contribution to the Illinois Agri- 

 cultural Association. It is the best 

 investment that we have made in any 

 year. But a few of us are paying for 

 services which benefit others who don't 

 pay a cent for them. There are 3,000 

 farmers in our county; about 10 per 

 cent of them belong to our Farm 

 Bureau, through which all of the 

 others are getting something valuable 

 for nothing. How long should the 90 

 per cent ride a free horse? Probably 

 so long as it declines to buck. 



