448 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 15 



is before me. You have been willinfr to listen to all 

 honest sustrestions for helping to overthrow wrong, . 

 and for setting up the good; so I venture this simple 

 message. You believe in depending on the popular- 

 vote plan I practically direct legistation i, or local op- 

 tion, for fighting down the liquor-traflic. Why not 

 depend on it for banishing cigarets, tobacco, the social 

 evil, gambling, and the merciless business monopolies 

 that are grinding to-day the face of the poor? Prof. 

 Frank Parsons, a good authority, says in his book, 

 "The City for the People," "Direct legislation will 

 open the door to all other reforms as fast as the people 

 desire them." " It will compel the people to think and 

 act." "It will develop the people's interest in public 

 affairs." Besides, as he points out, this reform is 

 necessary to real self-government and to justice— and 

 many other strong reasons are stated. I have often 

 longed to see you show an appreciation of the un- 

 measured possibilities for good in this refoi'm of re- 

 forms. To-day, in the Sunday-school, when you so 

 calmly ignored it I was stirred up to make known to 

 vou, in some way, my sentiments. 



Thanking you sincerely for your hearty support to 

 many reforms that help us all, and hoping you will 

 consider this humble appeal, I remain 



Even if such matters could be decided or delayed by 

 money only, your answer would be wrong, it seems to 

 me; for the people are richer than any corporation. 



Medina, Ohio, June 28. O. K. HswES. 



I like that concluding sentence, "the peo- 

 ple are richer than any corporation;" and, if 

 I am correct, the whole wide world is grow- 

 ing toward direct legislation. Just now 

 great crops of wheat are being harvested in 

 our locality, and perhaps in many others. 

 If the farmers receive the prices quoted in 

 our daily papers for wheat they are some- 

 what excusable for getting excited; and I al- 

 ways rejoice in seeing those who till the soil 

 get good prices for their products, even if it 

 should be a little hard on those who have to 

 buy their daily bread. Just now is the time 

 for making a short cut in the way of leaving 

 out the middleman entirely, and letting the 

 producer meet the consumer. Let the two 

 get acquainted. In our own home we pro- 

 duce our own eggs and we also produce the 

 excellent dry old corn that I feed to our 

 hens. So you see no middleman has any 

 thing to do with it. Brother Hutchinson 

 tells us in this issue how a man who pro- 

 duces honey can get acquainted with the 

 consumer, and get straight 10 cts. per lb. in- 

 stead of 7 cts. Perhaps this is not direct 

 legislation, but it is direct finance. 



There is another pleasant feature about 

 carrying your product direct to. the consum- 

 er. You establish friendly relations and 

 make pleasant acquaintances. This morn- 

 ing the man who brings us our weekly sup- 

 ply of butter took his little girl along: and 

 Mrs. Root remarked how much the girl look- 

 ed like her mother, for she and her mother 

 used to be close neighbors fifty years ago. 

 Now, it is not possible for the farmer to 

 market all his products in this way, perhaps, 

 but we can go a great way toward it. The 

 Rural New- Yorker has been figuring up to 

 see what per cent of the prices the farmer 

 receives for his produce that is sold in the 

 city markets. I believe they decided that 

 the producer got only about 40 cts. out of a 

 dollar the stuff sold for. The other 60 cts. 

 went to the middleman, the express com- 

 panies, and railway companies. Of course 

 it is some work to peddle out your fruit and 

 eggs and grain; but if by so doing you can 

 get 75 cts. or a dollar for what otherwise 



brings less than half that amount, would it 

 not be a profitable way of doing? When 

 we come to fixing up matters like the exist- 

 ence of the saloon in a friendly way, letting 

 the majority rule, we find that local option is 

 direct legislation and nothing else. Another 

 thing, if the producer and consumer get 

 well enough acquainted so they can pull to- 

 gether, all in one direction, there would not 

 be very much chance for millionaire specu- 

 lators, and we shall have but little use for 

 them either. May God help us in this sort 

 of direct legislation, for it certainly will help 

 us on the way to righteousness, and God 

 will bless us as a people as he did old father 

 Abram and his descendants. 



Poultry 

 Department 



By a. I. Root. 



FIRELESS BROODERS, AND BROODERS THAT 

 ARE NOT FIRELESS. 



On p. 384 for June 1st issue, I said, "I aiu 

 inclined to think the chickens sometimes hov- 

 er around the hot-water pipes when they do 

 not need the heat."* In the footnote Mr. R. 

 R. Root says, "A healthy chicken will never 

 stay in the brooder during the daytime un- 

 less it needs warmth." Well, this may be 

 true; but, unfortunately, we do not always 

 have all healthy chicks. During the fore 

 part of June, this year, it rained almost ev- 

 ery day. We took some chickens out of the 

 incubator about the first of the month. They 

 are out on the grassy lawn, but they must 

 either be kept in until the dew is off. and 

 driven in before every shower, or else have 

 some heat in the brooder to dry them off 

 when wet or damp. They soon learned to 

 go out in the wet grass, between showers 

 for a while, but they soon hustled back to 

 the hot-water pipes. I at first thought this 

 was a wonderful illustration of the value of 

 the Root brooder, even in the month of June; 

 but after about ten days, when it still kept 

 rainy, I began to feel the chickens were not 

 doing as well as they ought to do, as they 

 kept spending a great part of the time in 

 hugging the hot pipes, even when the weath- 

 er was warm and the grass dry. About this 

 time I came across the following, which I clip 

 from Poultry for June: 



I will not go back to the artificial heating of brood- 

 ers, as I know it is more or less detrimental to our fu- 

 ture stock. Since we have used the lampless brooder 

 we are not troubled with chicks pasting up behind as 

 we formerly were. We seldom have any dwarfs or 

 weakly cockerels or pullets. Chicks raised this way 

 seem more hardy and vigorous. The time, labor, and 

 expense it takes to run a lamp is quite an item in the 

 course of (he breeding season. 



The firs* thing in the morning the chicks are let out 

 of the brooder, given water and feed in their litter of 

 hay chaff, and tliat's the end of it until noon, then they 

 are cared for again and again just before time to get 



*Just now I find in the Poultry AdvocateXhe following, 

 written by a woman: 



We have always believed that one of the greatest mistakeH 

 made with the raising of chicks was that of too much heat, 

 which made them weak, but whldi was hard to overcome with 

 the use of the brooder. 



