208 
'i' H hC HUKA1. NEW-VOKKEK 
that the only way the results reported could have 
been obtained would be by using a stick made for a 
certain type of can in another type of can of great¬ 
er or less diameter or height. Paying for milk and 
cream by the measuring stick is a primitive method, 
and it is rather strange that its use is allowed at 
the present time. The use of the measuring stick 
gives great chances for error and it is mighty un¬ 
sanitary. For example, if the stick is not thrust 
straight down into the center of the can, the read¬ 
ing will not be exactly accurate. Then there are 
the two possible errors mentioned above that might 1 
be made. 
The measuring stick cannot be too strongly con¬ 
demned as it is sometimes used by the gatherer of 
milk from the farm. The stick is used in A’s milk, 
then wiped vigorously on the driver’s overalls or 
jumper, then it is thrown under the driver’s seat 
from which it is taken to take the measurement of 
B’s milk, and so on throughout the route; certain¬ 
ly an unsanitary procedure. The only reliable way 
to sell wholesale milk is by weight. I am of the 
opinion that there should be a law prohibiting the 
use of the measuring stick. H. F. J. 
ABOUT FARM BOOKKEEPING. 
N EED OF CLOSE FIGURING.—Much has been 
said and written in these latter days, of farm 
bookkeeping. Modern methods with their ap¬ 
plied science require the farmer to keep close track 
of expenses and receipts, if he is to know to a cer- 
tainty whether the new game is worth the candle. 
This is particularly true of changes of method that 
are largely experimental. Many things are not 
what they seem, even to the check-row, trial-patch, 
pure-blood experimenter, unless he calls in those 
proverbial truth tellers, the 10 digits. Almost all 
farmers keep accounts of some kind; sales accounts, 
cash receipts, individual accounts, and so on, hut a 
systematized bookkeeping on the farm is rare. 
There have been good reasons for this in the past, 
that do not exist now. Even so short a time as 25 
years ago, bookkeeping was a specialty taught only 
in town high schools, or in so-called business col¬ 
leges, and few farmers started at their life tasks 
with a working knowledge of any approved sys¬ 
tem. But these reasons do not hold good in Penn¬ 
sylvania in 1915, and all sorts of excuses for ob¬ 
solete methods are offered. “I have not time”; “too 
old to change”; “I do not believe in it”; “too high- 
toned for me”; “I prefer my own way,” etc., etc. 
SIMPLICITY NEEDED.—I believe much of the 
opposition, neglect of opportunity rather, is due to a 
mistaken idea that the modern system of farm 
accounts is necessarily a highly complicated affair; 
going into minutiae that are largely incomprehensi¬ 
ble, and useless to the busy farmer. And I also be¬ 
lieve that this neglect is mainly due to the manner 
in which the subject has been presented to the 
farmer by a class of farm papers devoted largely to 
the interests of men to whom farming is a side is¬ 
sue, to the managers of thousand-acre farms, large 
stock farms, etc. The foundation of this belief is 
a somewhat extended study of specimen accounts 
given in these papers, and offered as models to the 
man who goes to work at five in the morning the 
year ’round. 
SOME COMPLICATED SYSTEMS.—Looking at 
modern farm accounting from the standpoint of 
these specimens the average farmer is justified in 
standing shy of it. I recall one writer on the sub¬ 
ject who gave the record of a 20 -acre field of wheat, 
lie had a good crop for the year and got a good 
price for it. But after he had charged against it 
man labor and horse labor; interest on cost and 
depreciation in value of team and plow and har¬ 
row and drill; cost of seed and fertilizer; cost of 
man labor and horse labor and depreciation in value 
of machinery for harvesting, ditto for hauling to 
barn, ditto for thrashing, ditto for hauling grain 
to depot; cost, of boarding laborer; interest on cost 
of farm buildings and fences and depreciation 
thereof; cost of insurance on crop in barn; share 
of taxes—after he had worked this all out by rule 
of book he was out of pocket about $40, or $2 per 
acre. And he really did not have it all down then; 
he should have added a salary for himself, and 
wages and depreciation in value of his wife and her 
b.elp in cooking for laborers. Otherwise I think we 
can conclude it was all there, lacking possibly a 
broken trace-chain or plow point. And there was 
little to criticise in the account as such. Cost, la¬ 
bor, depreciation, interest, taxes, insurance, are 
ical things, and wheat is not a remunerative crop 
in the East. His widely mistaken thought was 
hat what he gained was what was left after he 
’ad raked the fence corners for charges against 
the field, had made it pay him $1.50 per day for 
his work, and interest at six per cent, on its per 
acre share of value of land and buildings, and as 
there was less than nothing left, his books told him 
he was a loser. That sort of bookkeeping would 
drive the average farmer to the limbo of lunacy. 
When his yearly balance was struck he would find 
himself over head and ears in debt to every goose¬ 
berry and turnip he had grown; even though he 
knew he had made a good living and had nearly 
enough in bank to buy an automobile. 
BUSINESS DIFFERENCES.—The mistake has 
been to apply the system of the tradesman or fac- 
toi - y to our occupation. Unlike these, the business 
of farming has values and expenditures which can¬ 
not be put in visible shape in accounts. Aside from 
the individual efficiency of the farmer, there are the 
exceedingly variable forces of nature, always work¬ 
ing for or against his plans. Suppose a rain at the 
right time to be effective had fallen on the wheat- 
field mentioned above, and caused an increase of 
three bushels per acre. There was no possible place 
for it in the account, though it alone made a credit- 
balance instead of a deficiency. The farmer always 
has Nature for a silent partner, and the dame will 
not allow her name to appear on the books nor 
her share of the investment, nor the checks she 
sometimes draws against the firm, and so farm ac¬ 
counting must be incomplete as compared with a 
merchant’s books. And she is secretive, and even 
her partner must guess at what she is doing and 
its effects; and as guessing is forbidden in ac¬ 
counts, a great bunch of his assets and liabilities 
must be excluded from any system of bookkeeping 
suited to his calling. 
COMMON-SENSE SYSTEMS.—There is a happy 
mean between modern complicated and involved 
records of farm operations and simply counting the 
cash in one’s pocket at the end of the year, that 
would commend itself to numbers of farmers if 
rightly presented to them. The farmer does not 
want or greatly need an accounting that will show 
him his mistakes and failures. If he is at all 
worthy of his calling he sees them all too readily, 
without searching his books for them. He will 
never spend his time computing the relation between 
what his hired labor costs him, and what that labor 
is worth to him in crop production. It is his busi¬ 
ness to know this, just as it is a physician’s busi¬ 
ness to recognize the symptoms of smallpox without 
consulting his text books. His present need at least 
is an easily comprehended, easily kept record of the 
direct costs and returns of his various crops. He 
often lacks mental training, and seldom has time 
or inclination for more than this. 
HELP FROM EXPERIMENT STATIONS.—Our 
State Experiment Stations do the questioning into 
the work of our silent partner, Nature, for us, and 
we accept their findings as authoritative. That 
they see the necessity for a special system for farm 
accounting is evident from the fact that the Agri¬ 
cultural Department of State College, Pa., adver¬ 
tises a farm bookkeeping correspondence course. 
Though past the three-score age limit and conse¬ 
quently somewhat "set” in my ways of doing things, 
I was one of the first to take this course, and have 
been recommending it to others ever since. It costs 
the Pennsylvania farmer less than a dollar, and 
that sum is for postage and stationery; the lessons 
are free. It seems to me to include all a farmer, 
fruit grower, or gardener needs of accounting to 
enable him to keep a very accurate and satisfactory 
record of his work and pay, and the man who puts 
it aside this Winter is missing something he ought 
to enjoy. He is missing the pleasure of being a 
boy again, and studying under the evening lamp. 
He is losing the satisfaction of being a college stu¬ 
dent and graduate; no small joy even for a grown¬ 
up. This course is at once simple and comprehen¬ 
sive, easily learned and practiced, and for the 
high-brows among us, it can be expanded to include 
protein units, soil analysis or even “salary.” 
Pennsylvania. e. j. baikd. 
THE OCEAN WATER AND POTASH. 
O N page 134 you say that experiments have actual¬ 
ly been made in trying to extract potash from 
sea water. Is it possible that such water really 
contains potash? 
Without any question. The sea water contains 
every substance man has yet discovered. Naturally 
this is so, since the ocean contains the leachings 
from the land, and all substances are more or less 
soluble. Traces of gold, silver, iron, all the rest, 
are found in sea water. We may look upon the 
ocean as the world’s great final storehouse where 
wastes are collected and stored for future use. Ni¬ 
trogen and phosphoric acid are leached into the sea 
February 13, 
where they serve to feed billions of fishes—much of 
it being brought back as food. Hilgard gives the 
following composition of the solids of sea water: 
Sodium chloride (common salt). 2.7 
Potassium chloride .07 
Calcium sulphate (gypsum) .14 
Magnesium sulphate (Epsom salt).23 
Magnesium chloride (bittern).36 
Magnesium bromide .’ .002 
Calcium carbonate (limestone) .002 
Water . 96.495 
This may seem a small amount of potash until we 
consider the vast quantity of water in the ocean. 
There is only half as much lime, yet this small quan¬ 
tity is enough to provide all the shellfish and the 
mighty stores of coral found in the tropics. The 
human mind can hardly conceive of the immense 
amount of lime needed for these things, yet there 
is more than twice as much potash in the ocean. 
As for getting at this potash and extracting it from 
the water, there is no hope at present that it can 
be done economically. The world must depend for 
its potash chiefly upon the product of the German 
mines. We have of course the potash found in wood 
ashes, but that cuts but little figure in commerce, 
and the greater part of it is not even saved. During 
the past few years a new industry has sprung up 
o!) the Pacific Coast in taking potash from the ocean. 
This is done by tearing up seaweed or kelp and 
drying and grinding it. This kelp may be said to 
extract the potash from the seawater as shellfish 
take the lime. Tt is not a large business,. and will 
have only a small influence upon trade, only enough 
to emphasize our great dependence upon Germany. 
It is an interesting story and we will try to tell 
about it next week. 
LET TREE DOPERS ALONE. 
ENCLOSE circulars advertising a remedy for San 
Jos£ scale called “Treewax.” It is in powder form, 
and is inserted in the tree by means of an auger 
hole stopped up with cork or grafting wax. I wish 
to know if you know anything about, such a remedy, and 
if you think it would do any good, or harm, fn the 
case of this woman’s (Mrs. Meese, see testimonial) pear 
tree we all know that if the dead limbs were trimmed 
out it would renew itself. We had one once that had 
the blight: after trimming it renewed itself and bore 
lots of fruit. I know a man who used “Treewax” last 
Fall who says the scale is dropping off his trees now. 
The idea is that the drug enters the sap of the tree 
the same as a doctor’s drugs enters the blood of a hu¬ 
man being, with the effect that it kills the scales that 
live on the sap. Surely it is a great thing if true. My 
cousin said he paid $1 per pound and that a pound 
would do a small orchard of 40 trees. The agent who 
was here, sold it for $1.50 for small can, $2.50 for 
large. c. E. A. 
Hickville, O. 
We do not know about this particular “Treewax,” 
but we may safely brand all such things as fakes. 
The horticultural authorities say that certain parts 
of Ohio are overrun with agents who offer various 
kinds of “dope” for killing scale, borers and other 
insects as well as diseases. We have one general 
and strong advice about those things—let them 
alone! The theory of “curing” a tree by boring a 
hole and poking in powders or w T ax is wrong, and 
has been exposed over and over. In New Jersey 
and Pennsylvania, a few years ago, this scheme was 
worked on a good many fruit growers. The scien¬ 
tific men denounced it and exposed its folly, but 
some farmers would not listen to. reason because the 
“treatment” did not show any immediate harm. 
Time has proved that the scientific men were right, 
for trees treated in this way are badly injured or 
dying. It is a favorite argument with these “tree 
dopers” to compare the tree to a human being, and 
to find fault with doctors because they do not cure 
all diseases at once. We know of a good many cases 
where humans demand the doctoi’s in this way. 
Usually we found upon investigation that the doc¬ 
tors gave their patients some unpleasant truths and 
told them to stop using liquor or tobacco '•/ 1 
eating or other habits if they expected t". 
A tree is like a human in one way. ’ 
“treat” it too much and it will die. Let the 
dopers alone. 
A 229-EGG HEN. 
E intend to give from time to time pictures 
of noted hens. By that we mean birds of 
the various breeds at official contests. This 
is done on the same principle that we print pictures 
of cows which are giving certified records for milk 
and butter. The hen pictured at Fig. 6 S is a S. C. 
Buff Orpington owned by the Old Forge Poultry 
Farm in Pennsylvania. This hen laid 229 eggs in 
365 days, and we will all agree in saying that this 
is “some hen.” Of course we all know men who will 
smile at this and say they have plenty of hens that 
can beat it. These gentlemen are very careful not 
to get into an official egg-laying contest. 
