AGRICULTURAL PAPERS AND BOOKS. io 



interferes with its value. A manufacturer of fertilizers will 

 not advertise in a journal which persistently advises its 

 readers to compound their own fertilizers; and if the money is 

 needed, the editor must keep still, whatever he thinks. The 

 commission merchants will not advertise 'in a paper which 

 urges the farmers to form cooperative marketing associations, 

 or the insurance companies in those which advocate farmers' 

 mutual insurance companies, and so on througli the list. In 

 fact, to most agricultural journals the free discussion of the 

 real merits of any article or interest in which private capital 

 is involved, is practically impossible. Wild horses would at 

 the present time be unal)le to drag from any agricultural 

 editor his printed opinion as to the relative merits of the com- 

 peting milk separators. AVe may say that this is not right; 

 that the subscriber i)ays the journal not only for the infor 

 mation which it gives, but for the best jndgment of the editor 

 on all questions that concern agriculture. The reply, how- 

 ever, must be that the farmer does nothing of the kind. As 

 a class he pays next to nothing for the paper, after deducting 

 the cost of getting the business. Tliere are, of course, some 

 agricultural journals of which this is not true, but of the 

 majority it is quite true. They get their income from others 

 than farmers, and must so shape their course that those who 

 keep them alive are satisfied. If they do not they will die. 

 They do the best they can, and seldom or never lend them- 

 selves to actual deception, but free discussion, wholly in the 

 interest of farmers, will never be possible until the farmers 

 supply the income to support it. On tliese terms they can get 

 it any day. 



Another limitation is the intricacy of modern agricultural 

 affairs, the constant intermingling and conflict of agricultural 

 interests wiih each other and with competing interests, and 

 the world-wide ramifications, which it requires world-wide 

 information to comprehend. There is also the constant prog- 

 ress of science, whicli must be followed and treated. Before 

 all this the agricultural journal is positively helpless. No 

 such journal in the world can pay from its receipts the 

 expenses of adequate treatment of agricultural topics. 



