fed, but these two classes deprive you of the op¬ 
portunity of getting from 50 to 60 per cent of the 
fruits of your labor. I unhesitatingly an<l without re¬ 
serve make the statement that the express companies 
and commission men, and they alone, are behind this 
mail-order argument concerning parcels post and for 
selfish motives. These are the two concerns standing 
between you and the consumer, and they are the 
ones who pocket from 50 to 60 cents of every dollar’s 
worth you produce, or are the direct cause of de¬ 
priving you of the opportunity of getting it. A 
parcels post will supply the missing link in the chain 
connecting you with the consumer. These two parties 
want to avoid this, and to accomplish this purpose 
they are shifting the scene to the country merchant; 
away from their real purpose and aims, knowing only 
too well the verdict of the people if the real issue 
was presented. The express and commission Samari¬ 
tans anointing the wounds of the poor country mer¬ 
chant with a limited, yes, very limited, parcels post. 
The first requisite for competition in any business 
is for the parties involved to handle the same goods-; 
not necessarily the same brand, but their cost and 
value must be about the same. Goods sold by mail 
order houses are generally the total product of an 
entire factory. They are manufactured expressly for 
these houses, to be sold in competition with local 
stores found in large cities and many of the larger 
towns. In many instances the line of value has been 
drawn extremely close in their efforts to compete 
with the regular trade. Do not misunderstand me 
to mean that these goods are not good values for 
the money paid; I mean to show that where their 
articles sell for $10, another brand sold by your 
local merchant may be worth $12, and every dollar 
so paid may repreesnt a true item of value. What 
percentage of the large stores in large cities fear 
parcels post, either in connection with other stores in 
other cities or the regular mail order houses? None, 
except those possibly who have not studied it thor¬ 
oughly, or had not the means to get at the true facts, 
and bring out this necessary point. The catalogues 
sent out by these houses in a year represent a large 
expense in the mail order business. We will value 
them at one dollar; and postage ranges from 22 to 
28 cents, so that we have an expenditure of $1.25 for 
each catalogue. How many customers of these houses 
buy goods and receive them by mail, the profit from 
which defrays the expenses of catalogues sent them? 
The really profitable sales, both to the mail order 
house and to the customer, are shipments that can 
be sent by freight, the charge for a 20-pound ship¬ 
ment being practically the same as for 100 pounds. 
These houses always urge patrons to make up large 
orders for shipment in this way. So unprofitable 
have small articles of small value become, on which 
the profits are exceedingly small, that one house at 
least has adopted the plan of requiring you to take no 
less than a dozen articles on an order; and then 
telling you to have sent with other goods by freight, 
so as to get the benefit of any saving there may be. 
Mail order house logic, you may say; the larger the 
order the more profit there will be for them. It is 
this way; the more profitable the order has been to 
you, the more likely you will be to repeat the order. 
This is one essential in any business, value received. 
The simplest and yet the most forceful fact I could 
give regarding this mail order scare is the method 
pursued by a large drygoods store in Greater Pitts¬ 
burg, in their mail order department. This firm dis¬ 
tributes thousands of catalogues in a year, but they 
only send them to rural districts, and by that I mean 
to places where they have no large stores carrying a 
complete line of goods, and who otherwise would 
have to go to the large cities. If you happen to live 
in the city where you have access to stores which are 
not materially different from their own they will send 
you a card, stating that they do not send catalogues 
to your city, and therefore cannot comply with your 
request. Could anything be more plain as to the 
reason for this? Knowing as they do that they can¬ 
not compete with similar stores and goods through 
the mails, they have adopted the next best thing, 
saved the expense of sending out catalogues where 
no trade could be hoped for against other stores. 
There are of necessity many expenses connected with 
the mail order business. Goods are sold unseen, you 
might say, and on a positive guarantee to please and 
satisfy, or goods can be returned and money will be 
refunded. A large mail order house receives on an 
average 10 large sacks of returned packages a day. 
This must all be counted when prices are made and 
their percentage of profit added. Many of the smaller 
and cheaper articles can be bought for less money 
in our five and 10 cent stores. For example, 250 
No. 5 envelopes cost in five and 10 cent stores, 25 
cents; mail order price 22 cents plus letter postage 
to them and return postage to you. A well-known 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
novel sold here in department stores, for two parts, 
90 cents; mail order price for it is 98 cents plus 
postage of 30 cents, together with postage to store. 
These are not picked, but they are the first articles 
of the same name and make that I found, and on 
which a fair comparison could be made. Even with 
free postage the articles cannot compete against regu¬ 
lar stores. This holds true in 90 per cent, of all 
cases provided a fair comparison is made in value and 
price of goods. 
What holds true between mail order houses and 
department stores holds equally true between these 
houses and the country stores. Any of these stores, 
no matter where located, that carries goods offered 
by the trade anywhere, and sells at the market figure, 
will have the trade of their field, and no parcels post 
or any other change will deprive them of it. Where 
is the country store that carries anything like the 
goods city stores do ? They are few; but show me 
one and I’ll show you a store that has and can get 
business. People will get goods that represent the 
styles of the times and their needs, and if the mer¬ 
chant does not carry these goods they will get them 
by going to the city and larger stores. If the mer¬ 
chant will not supply these goods can he blame the 
railroad for carrying them to stores that do? If the 
distance to these stores is great so that railroad fare 
is high can people be blamed for using the next 
cheaper method? Let the country merchant supply 
standard goods at a standard price and he will un¬ 
questionably get the trade, and this in spite of a par¬ 
cels post. B. E. EVANS. 
Maryland. 
A FARMER ON PRESENT CONDITIONS. 
At the present time we are reading much about 
getting back to the land, and also about abandoned 
\ 
V 
BRUSH HARROW FOR ALFALFA. Fig. 142. 
farms. The writers of a large portion of such litera¬ 
ture seem to have but one object in view, and that 
object is, to have so many people move to the farms 
and raise so much farm produce that it will cause a 
surplus, or an overproduction of the things to eat, 
and at the same time lower the cost price to the con¬ 
sumer. For the past 25 years it has been quite in¬ 
teresting to watch the process (especially if you own 
twb or three farms) of abandoning a farm. It is 
quite a complicated process to abandon even a back- 
hill farm, and usually takes a number of years to do 
a thoroughly good job. For 37 years I have been 
watching one farm (it is not my own) that is being 
abandoned, and it will take quite a number of years 
more to complete the job. During the time seven 
families have slid off from that place into the village, 
and everyone of them has helped to abandon some 
portion of the place. Some of them sold hay and 
grain. One drained the barnyard into a ditch, and 
there was a brook connection a short distance farther 
down. Another cut and sold the saw timber, and the 
next one cut the cord wood and' sold it. Some of 
the better parts of the pasture were plowed and 
planted to potatoes, and nothing put back. At the 
present time there is a large barn, a mortgage, and a 
few acres of land that will grow a fair crop of hay. 
About every family, when they moved to town, took 
along a cow or horse or both, enough produce, fruit 
and stove wood to give them a good start for the 
first year; some of them had a little money and paid 
the house rent for some months in advance. The 
men and larger boys found plenty of work in the mills 
and shops and the school was very convenient for 
the younger children. There was more in the way 
February 4 , 
of entertainment, they appeared to wear better clothes, 
had more time night and morning, and when Satur¬ 
day night came they could clean up, and there was 
nothing to do till Monday morning. Sunday was a 
day of rest, with plenty of time to attend church, 
and perhaps take a drive in the afternoon if the 
weather was pleasant. They paid their debts and 
seemed to have no desire to move back on a farm. 
At the present time many of the older generation 
are “passing on,” and the children have grown up 
and are taking their places, living much in the same 
way, but with this difference. When we farmers 
sell them farm produce in the Fall, instead of buying 
enough apples, potatoes and other things to last 
through the Winter, they will take one or two bushels, 
and for pay it will be something like this when the 
pay check comes at the end of the week: Credit on 
account at store, $4; house rent, $2; for some article 
bought on installment, $2.50; life insurance, $1, and 
lodge dues, 50 cents. The next week it will be about 
the same, and many of them are from 450 days to a 
full year back on payments. The last census shows 
conclusively that people are drifting to the cities, and 
it is fair to assume that they have bettered their con¬ 
dition, or they would move back. The people will 
soon have to take hold of this problem in an in¬ 
telligent way; when that time comes, they will dis¬ 
cover that nature is now furnishing sap and substance 
enough every year that is growing brush, water 
sprouts and cull cider apples to furnish all the peo¬ 
ple of New England with choice fruit at a reasonable 
price. C. P. goss. 
Vermont. 
DRILLLING WHEAT BOTH WAYS. 
On page 34 you ask your readers to tell you as to 
drilling in wheat both ways. I have had many years 
experience in wheat seeding, and can say this: Two 
and one-half bushels per acre is too much if one seeds 
to Timothy and clover with the wheat. The true way 
to put in wheat is one bushel per acre each way, and 
let the cross drilling be at right angles to the pre¬ 
vailing Winter winds, because the cross furrows will 
fill with blowing snows which act as a blanket pro¬ 
tection. With 2)4 bushels of seed per acre, however 
sown, the stand is too thick for Timothy and clover 
seeding, and will either choke them out or cause the 
young grass plants to grow so weak and spindling that 
when the grain is cut the protection is gone, and hav¬ 
ing grown in the shade, the hot Summer sun will de¬ 
stroy many if not all of the young plants. With one 
bushel sown each way we never have had less than 
23 bushels to the acre, and it often went from 30 to 
42 bushels. R. 
Michigan. 
The following has been my experience: That a 
better crop will result when the seed has been drilled 
the one way. In cross drilling, as is evident, at each 
intersection of the drill rows a double amount of 
seed is sown at the expense of an unnecessary dis¬ 
tance between the grains of the intersecting spaces, 
brought about by sowing one-half the required amount 
per acre in each direction. The grain may thin out 
sufficiently to warrant a good crop, but at the same 
time a vast amount of undeveloped straw and grain 
heads will doubtless result from the procedure of 
sowing. At least such was my observation in a 
similar experiment. - C. D. b. 
Skillman, N. J. 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
Don't you think our agricultural education, u-i* to date, 
has been a little one-sided? Don't you think it has dealt 
too exclusively with how to produce, and overlooked the 
broader financial and economic problem of cost of pro¬ 
duction? Don’t you think it time we farmers had a lit¬ 
tle “primer science” along this line? We are ignorant as 
mules in this matter, and we need instruction. We need 
it far more than we need to be told how to dump a ton 
of $40 fertilizer into an acre of soil that we may dig 
300 or 500 bushels of potatoes, haul them seven or 3 2 
miles, to receive 15 or 30 cents a bushel; potatoes that 
eventually will be sold to the city wage earner for 15 or 
20 cents a small measure (four quarts), and if he wails 
at the high cost be told with a significant shrug that 
“the farmers ai'e getting rich.” J. b. w. 
We certainly do think so, and we have been ex¬ 
pressing that thought for years. Any man who wants 
to do so can be told how to produce large crops. We 
do not need more food in this country', but rather a 
fairer distribution of what is now produced. The 
“consumer’s dollar” is the greatest question of the 
day. We know that this dollar is paid, and we know 
what the producer gets out of it. Who gets the bal¬ 
ance? Where does it go to? Does its investment 
help or hurt the farmer? We need the cold-blocxied 
facts in reply to these questions far more than some 
of the items of “research” attempted by the agricul¬ 
tural scientists. We can get analyses of almost every¬ 
thing from ashes to water. Now analyze the con¬ 
sumer’s dollar for us and see where it goes to. 
