830 
THIS RURA1^ NBW-YORAS: 
June 2v». 
pointing towards the fore feet, with this type of 
back. Tine tail should he large at the base, and 
should taper nicely down to the end, which should 
reach the hocks or below. And I like to see a good, 
heavy switch, too. As one of our best dairy au¬ 
thorities once said, “A cow that hasn’t vitality 
enough to grow a switch isn't much good anyhow.” 
UDDER AND HIDE.—The udder should he very 
capacious, but very flexible. Avoid a fleshy udder. 
The quarters should he all well developed, and the 
front ones should extend well forward. The teats 
should be placed well apart, and point straight 
down, and of course they are better of medium size. 
The skin should be of medium thickness, but very 
soft and loose under the hand, and mellow. The 
hair should he fine, thick and of an oily appearance. 
Now this question of the skin is not a matter of 
beauty alone. It is the only outward indication 
that we have of the inside lining or mucous mem¬ 
brane of the cow, and of course this has much to 
do with her function as a milk producer. Other 
outward indications of the inside workings of the 
cow are her milk veins. The nourishment is 
taken from the food and poured into the arteries, 
and is taken down to the udder on the inside of 
the cow. The milk is secreted by the udder glands 
from this arterial blood, and then the “used up” 
blood, as we might say, is sent back to the heart 
through the milk veins. If these veins are elastic, 
large and tortuous, we conclude that a great deal 
of blood is being sent to the udder for milk extrac¬ 
tion, because a great deal comes away from it. 
BOVINE BEAUTY.—I think’that perhaps I have 
touched upon most of the really essential points, 
but there are a few “beauty marks” that will win 
favor. I like to see a pair of small black incurving 
horns. No horns at all are better than big, ill¬ 
shaped horns, and we sometimes have a suspicion 
that bossy might have had such horns before they 
were cut off. A large, full, placid eye helps might¬ 
ily also. Such an eye shows not only health hut 
a good disposition, which is very essential. It will 
profit you nothing, though your cow may give you 
40 quarts of milk a day, if she kicks it all over you 
and the barn just before you arise from milking 
her. And but few men are so constituted that such 
conduct will not eventually tend to injure their 
good nature. Then the color really does make a 
difference. A Holstein may be dark, hut I like a 
nice big star or shield of white in the face, the 
legs all white, a good part of the tail, and, of 
course, the switch. Then if the belly is white, and 
that color extends well up around the flanks, we 
have a very prettily colored cow. On the other 
hand, if she be light, I like to have the sides of the 
head and neck black, leaving a nice strip in the 
face. A few big spots on the body help also, but 
I do not like a speckled one- Perhaps the best 
color is the evenly marked cow with big spots, with 
possibly the white a little in preponderance. 
J. GRANT MORSE. 
billed. These agents were to notify the farmers 
upon arrival of the goods, and assist in the unload¬ 
ing of the cars. For this service they received a 
commission of 7.1 cents per ton. The farmers were 
notified of the arrangements and requested to send 
their orders to the men handling the goods at their 
respective shipping points. Accompanying each or¬ 
der an advance payment of $2 was demanded, as a 
guarantee that goods would be taken and paid for 
promptly on arrival. In the face of all sorts of 
opposition and misrepresentation about 2,000 tons 
were placed for use in the Fall of 1913. 
INCREASING BUSINESS.—The success of the 
movement was so pronounced that the entire output 
of the factory was purchased on the same terms for 
the Spring trade of 1914, and by the same system 
of distribution 20,000 tons of fertilizer have been 
placed in the hands of the farmers composing the 
organization at a saving of over $80,000. The vol¬ 
ume of business has been so great as to outrun the 
capacity of the company through which we have 
done business, and some vexatious delays have been 
occasioned. The success of the movement threatens 
its failure. Plans are now under consideration to 
buy, if possible, the output of other fertilizer com¬ 
panies and greatly broaden the movement. If farm¬ 
ers will only work together it is possible to effect a 
still larger saving in fertilizers. Under a somewhat 
similar plan of distribution nearly $5,000 worth of 
paints and oils has been purchased by the Geauga 
County farmers with a saving to them of $600. 
EXCHANGING PRODUCTS.—There is a big field 
for the exchange of products between farmers of 
different sections of the country. Green County, 
Ohio, produces corn and Alfalfa. Portage County 
produces potatoes, and Geauga maple syrup, and 
these counties are consumers of corn and Alfalfa. 
A number of cars of Green County’s products have 
found their way direct from the farmer producer in 
Green County to the farmer consumer in Portage 
and Geauga counties, and Portage County potatoes 
and Geauga County syrup have gone to the con¬ 
sumer in Green County. The dollar in these ex¬ 
changes has been undipped save by the railroads. 
A quantity of clover and alfalfa seed has been pur¬ 
chased from seed producing sections; this has been 
entirely satisfactory. Where county agents can give 
personal attention and inspection pure, clean seed is 
guaranteed. 
REQUIREMENTS F(>R DISTRIBUTION.—Some 
of the progressive farmers of this section are begin- 
ing to realize something of the fearful cost of dis¬ 
tribution under the present system, and are clamor¬ 
ing for the cooperative purchase of all supplies. 
This seems unwise without suitable warehouses and 
equipment, a tried organization and business expe¬ 
rience. If the movement can be held in check 
while these requisites are being built up and per¬ 
fected, this phase of the county agent movement 
may contribute much toward the solution of the 
great problem of the age. f. l. ai.len. 
THE COUNTY AGENT AND CO-OPERATION. 
T ^IIE county agent’s field is an exceedingly large 
one. His activities might be grouped under 
four heads: 
1. To suggest to the farmer on his farm ways 
of handling his soil and managing his business so 
that he may receive more bushels or pounds for the 
labor and capital employed. 
2. To help him solve the problems of marketing 
so that he may receive move dollars for what he 
produces. 
3. Assist him in his purchases, so that those dol¬ 
lars may go further—buy more of the necessities 
and embellishments of life. 
4. To help organize the forces of society so that 
country life may become as full and rich as we all 
believe it should be. 
EXPERIENCE IN OHIO.—As thus outlined, co¬ 
operative buying and selling may assume large pro¬ 
portions in the association work, and is capable of 
almost indefinite extension as experience may justi¬ 
fy. In Ohio we are feeling our way along, and 
work of this kind has been restricted largely to the 
purchase of commercial fertilizer. The history of 
this movement is as follows: Early in 1913 Mr. 
H. P. Miller, agent for Portage County, by placing 
an order for 1,000 tons, and paying cash on deliv¬ 
ery, secured prices on fertilizers that saved the con¬ 
sumer over $4 per ton over the prevailing price paid 
for fertilizer. One or two other counties were given 
the benefit of Mr. Miller’s contract, and the organ¬ 
ization for the distribution of the fertilizer was 
begun. Men were selected at each shipping point 
in the organized territory who would receive orders 
from the farmers, and to whom the cars should be 
A SENSIBLE COUNTRY MERCHANT TALKS 
A FTER reading the articles on “The Local 
Store,” on pages 618 and 739, I am incited 
• to write a few words in reply. I am a farm¬ 
er and always have been one, therefore my sym¬ 
pathies are with the farmer, but I am also in the 
mercantile business, so I know whereof I speak. 
The articles referred to above do an injustice to the 
average country storekeeper, and do not indicate a 
broad understanding of the conditions a merchant 
has to contend with. B says he can see no reason 
why the country merchant cannot sell as cheaply 
as anyone else. That statement alone would tend to 
show he had not used his reasoning powers. Ile.also 
states that the mail-order houses are getting rich, 
which would indicate they are not selling too cheap. 
That is very true. Let us find the cause. 
In the first place, all the reputable mail-order 
houses are hacked by plenty of capital. They have 
an establishment valued .at several hundred thou¬ 
sand dollars. They do a business of several mil¬ 
lions. The capacity per unit for filling orders in a 
mail house is a hundredfold that of the country 
store whose clerk will spend an hour pulling down 
all the dress goods it contains in order to sell a 
customer a few yards, in exchange for a roll of but¬ 
ter that he will have to dispose of at a loss. The 
majority of mail-order houses till your orders 
through outside firms. They have your money to 
pay for same, therefore get large discounts and con¬ 
cessions which we can never hope to get. I used to 
buy large quantities from these firms before I went 
into business for myself. Their prices are much 
lower, but when you take into consideration the 
quality, the loss of the use of your money for sev¬ 
eral weeks, the delay in getting them (on se\eral 
occasions the goods were so long en route, I had no 
use for them when they finally arrived) the freight 
bills and the fact that the goods are not always 
what you expected, yet one does not want to go to 
the trouble of returning them, I don’t think the 
average purchaser is much ahead after a term of 
years. 
Right here is where the shoe pinches. Every coun¬ 
try merchant carries all his customers some of the 
time and some of his customers all of the time, for 
the simple reason that every blessed cent the debtor 
can rake or scrape up he or she will fire into the 
city man and live on their obliging country mer¬ 
chant. who is forced to borrow money to hold them 
up. We are an independent race. I do not dispute 
the right of anyone to buy where he chooses, but 
would it not seem to be purchasers’ duty, after car¬ 
rying them through sickness and lean years, to ap¬ 
ply the money they send away on their old ac¬ 
counts, thereby enabling us to sell to them cheaper, 
as we are compelled to tack these poor accounts on 
the selling prices, or go to the wall? If it was just 
the poor it would not be so bad, but a large per 
cent, of prosperous farmers with bank accounts and 
automobiles will not pay a store bill “till the last 
dog is hung.” They say, “He is glad enough to get 
our trade, let him wait.” Does my friend know of 
any merchant who for the amount of work, anxiety, 
risk, the capital invested, is getting any richer than 
he ought? Don’t judge by appearances, but. look on 
his books and note the thousands he is carrying from 
year to year; you will be surprised to see the names 
and accounts written there. Th « mail house runs no 
risk. Your local merchant risks everything. The 
expenses in proportion to the volume of business are 
not to be compared with his city rival. Don’t kick 
your benefactor, but boost. If all advocates of mail¬ 
order houses would pay us for goods before they get 
them, we would quote you prices that would put our 
city brethren out of business. That is the only way 
we will all get our equitable division of the results 
of our labor. b. c. wood. 
New York. 
HARVESTING GRAIN WITH POULTRY. 
A YEAR or so ago there were several paragraphs in 
Tiie It. N.-Y. about letting chicks harvest their 
own grain. Last year we had a small piece of 
\N inter wheat which we allowed some half-grown 
chicks from colony houses to harvest. \Ve never had 
chicks do better. Later they helped themselves from a 
buckwheat field. We could devote six or eight acres to 
growing grain for feeding chicks in this way and it 
would be the most profitable way in which to use the 
land. Most of the straw would go back. We have 
wheat which was planted in the Fall, also rye, although 
I believe that rye grain is not good for young chicks. 
Is there a succession of grains that would give the 
chicks a continuance of feed from about the middle of 
May to the last of October? h. b. 
Maryland. 
We often have reports from people who turn a 
flock of chickens into a buckwheat field, and leave 
them to clean up the grain. This seems to give very 
general satisfaction. In some cases where consid¬ 
erable grain is grown, hens are kept in portable 
houses, which are hauled about in various parts of 
the field, leaving the hens to pick up the scattered 
grain. In this way the birds obtain a good share 
of their food, and the grain is saved. There might 
be cases where this plan of leaving hens to harvest 
grain crops could be followed out. We have never 
been able to get our hens to relish rye as a whole 
grain. They appear to dislike it, but will eat it 
fairly well in a mash, mixed with cornmeal and 
other feeds that they like, or when the rye is mixed 
with cornmeal and baked into a cake. The hens 
will probably not thrive in a rye field, but they will 
take care of oats, barley, peas or wheat. They could 
be started in the wheat field from a Fall seeding, 
then turned into oats and peas, then barley, and then 
finished off with buckwheat, pains being taken to 
seed these crops at intervals so as to make a suc¬ 
cession of grains. Such a plan would not pay, ex¬ 
cept under rather extraordinary circumstances, but 
it should be worked out if desired. As is well 
known, in many parts of the West hogs are kept 
very economically by letting them graze or pasture 
a succession of cropg. They may start with rye or 
wheat in the Spring, and follow through oats and 
peas and buckwheat, to corn and rape. In these 
cases corn is often planted in drills, and rape seeded 
a«t the last cultivation. The hogs are turned in when 
the corn is soft in the ear, and left there to clean up 
rape and corn, which they do successfully. Some¬ 
thing of this plan could be followed with poultry, 
although we do not know of any cases where it has 
been actually carried out. 
'I'n e dwarf fruit tree suits the older man, for it is 
a giant at early bearing. For the young man it seems 
more like a toy. 
