THE KURAL, NEW-YORKER 
July 3, 1915. 
big public question. They realize new 
that they have worked hard for years, but 
that the lion’s Bhare of the proceeds has 
gone to those interests which have been 
“organized,” and able to protect them¬ 
selves. Not only so, but the naturally big 
men who dominate things by force of 
brain and personality have gone to those 
interests which control money and busi¬ 
ness. We have simply got to organize 
farming, and give it the character and 
the business standing which will attract 
these big men as organizers and leaders. 
Out of this reorganization of our State 
Board will come a department or bureau 
of marketing which will standardize Jer¬ 
sey products and work up a home market 
with the slogan, “New Jersey for Jersey- 
men.” That is one of the things which 
the builders of this legislation know will 
surely follow. The average farmer, try¬ 
ing to sell his goods as an individual, can¬ 
not standardize and control his crop aftei 
it leaves his hands. With the help of a 
State department controll •! by farmers 
he could in time do both things. I find 
that these Jersey farmers are following 
the New York Department of Poods and 
Markets carefully. They know that the 
moment Commissioner Dillon started 
really to do something that would help 
farmers the storm of abuse broke upon 
him. Every crook and grafter who have 
had both hands in the farmer’s barrel 
turned upon the Commissioner, and all 
the papers which support them turned 
in to yelp and snarl. It would be even 
worse if some Jerseyman representing the 
State undertook to file the teeth of these 
grafters. Any man appointed so that the 
politician could touch him would be 
jerked out of office so quick that his head 
would be snapped off. That is why the 
farmers want such representative officers 
elected by the Board of Agriculture and 
responsible to it. H. w. c. 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th St. New York City 
The Price of Progress 
87f« 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
A Big Show. —IIow would you like to 
see a couple of acres of Jcrscymcn and 
their families? Had you been interested 
in this solid and valuable crop you could 
have seen it at Somerville on Saturday, 
June 19. The New Jersey State Board 
of Agriculture was holding its Summer 
field day meeting at the farm of Senator 
J. S. Frelinghu.vsen. At the back of the 
Senator’s big house the lawn slopes gently 
away through a small grove. There was 
a speaker’s stand at the back door and, 
facing it, were grouped seats for 800 peo¬ 
ple. These were all occupied and 700 or 
£00 more men and women wore packed 
into the aisles and around the seats. The 
house windows were crowded, the porch 
and its seats packed, and a fringe of 
sturdy farmers sat around the platform 
edge. Jerseymen, Jerseywomen and Jersey 
children everywhere—and not a mosquito 
in sight. 
A Representative Company. —I sup¬ 
pose they were mostly “agriculturists?” 
That’s where you make your mistake. 
There were all sorts of people present, 
but the majority of them were plain, 
working farmers with tan on the backs of 
their hands and horns on their palms. Do 
you mean to tell us that any fair propor¬ 
tion of the great park of cars lined up on 
the lawns belonged to farmers? Kxact- 
ly ; a large proportion of them bought and 
earned with proceeds from farm crops. 
The farm-owned car made such a meet¬ 
ing possible. When I was a boy eight 
miles would have been about the limit of 
a day’s travel to such a gathering. That 
would have meant old Dobbin and the 
buggy over a poor road. There were peo¬ 
ple at this meeting who came 50 or 60 
miles—starting after breakfast and get¬ 
ting home for supper. Our fine Jersey 
roads make such a thing quite possible. 
Every county in the State was repre¬ 
sented in that great gathering—all the 
way from New York State to Cape May. 
Think of it for a moment and yon will 
see how the motor-car is mixing people 
up and getting them out of their older, 
narrower views of life. In former years 
such a meeting would have been local— 
perhaps 150 people with the same general 
ideas and views of life ^chaaging notes 
without seeing visions of what the out¬ 
side world is doing. 
A Human Dynamo. —It was a great 
meeting—larger than was expected—and 
good generalship was required to organize 
such a crowd and keep it good-natured. 
Senator Frelinghu.vsen is president of the 
State Board. Some men seem to think 
such an office is merely honorary and 
nothing more. The Senator did not take 
that view. He was everywhere. He met 
practically every car or carriage and 
shook hands with the people as they 
stepped out. There might be some delay 
in unloading a car, the supply of hard- 
Ixiiled eggs might run short, the coffee 
might not be passed out fast enough, the 
band might get weary and stop for 
breath. Instantly a big man with a shock 
of iron-gray hair would be on the spot, 
and the machine would start running 
again. Just before the speaking began a 
great barrel of ice cream was opened by 
the speaker’s stand. A crowd gathered 
around unorganized and eager. It would 
have taken half an hour to distribute the 
cream, if part of it had not been lost in 
the scuffle. As if by magic the big man 
with the iron gray hair pushed up to the 
barrel and passed out the boxes of ice 
cream bricks so that people could help 
themselves—which they did quickly and 
well. 
What Was It Fob? —It meant more 
than you think when this great crowd of 
people took a day off at a busy time and 
got together in this way. They saw a 
well-kept dairy farm of high class, and 
they had a pleasant outing, but that was 
not what they came for. The Jersey far¬ 
mers have learned that they must help 
themselves if they are ever to be helped. 
It has. taken them a long time, but they 
are coming to it—more rapidly and solid¬ 
ly I think than in any other State of the 
Union. They understand that they must 
make a marked showing of strength and 
unity if they ever expect to get anywhere. 
When they can put 1.500 earnest people 
into a meeting of this sort they express 
themselves in italics. Had there been a 
mere handful of people gathered at Som¬ 
erville in the name of agriculture no one 
would have paid much attention to it. 
A Meeting of Protest. —That is what 
it amounted to. Last Winter, after a 
hard struggle, the farmers put through 
the New Jersey Legislature a bill for re¬ 
organizing the State Board of Agri¬ 
culture. At present the powers of 
this Board are few and perfunc¬ 
tory. It has the finest representative 
organization of any State in the Union, 
since the State Board is made up of rep¬ 
resentatives of county boards—these in 
turn from townships. It is like a well- 
equipped engine running powerfully but 
not belted directly to the proper machin¬ 
ery. The new law proposed to make this 
farm machinery fully useful. New and 
large powers were given to the Board of 
Agriculture, but the management of it 
was given to the farmers themselves. In¬ 
stead of having the officers appointed by 
the Governor and used as a political foot¬ 
ball in the Legislature, these officers were 
to he elected directly by the. Board and 
would be held responsible to the Board. 
You see how this would work out. The 
farmers of each county wonhl elect mem¬ 
bers of their county board. These county 
boards would elect members of the State 
Board of Agriculture and this Board 
would elect the officers who would con¬ 
duct the new State departments. That is 
a system simple and straight which has 
been followed for some years in New Jer¬ 
sey. It was now proposed to use much 
the same system, but give the Board lar¬ 
ger powers and direct responsibilities in 
handling State farm matters. 
Tiie Governor Killed It. —This bill 
passed the Legislature, but was vetoed by 
Gov. Fielder. He claimed that the scheme 
was unconstitutional, but his evident rea¬ 
son was political, as he thought the Gov¬ 
ernor and not the farmers should appoint 
the officers of the new department. In 
order that this may be understood we 
have printed on page 879 the strong and 
dignified resolution presented by the State 
Board at this meeting. It well expressed 
the opinion of those who were present. 
I want everyone to read this, for it lays 
down the principle which will underlie 
the struggle that is coming in all the 
States sooner or later. Are the farmers 
themselves to handle and work out their 
own department, or are they to stand by 
and see the politicians play football with 
their rights? In theory our system in 
New Jersey is right, and it should be de¬ 
veloped so as to n.ake the State Board 
fully representative and responsible. I 
know after that great meeting at Somer¬ 
ville that our Jersey farmers ar ready 
to do this, and assume responsibility for 
their own department. 
TV11at It Means. —The far-seeing men 
who put that bill through our Legislature 
know how it will work out when Jersey¬ 
men put their courage and patience to the 
test. These Jersey farmers are proud of 
their State. They honestly believe that a 
good farm in New Jersey offers greater 
possibilities to a young man or to an old 
man than equal money land value in any 
other part of the country. We know that 
with cover crops, lime and chemicals we 
cai do just about what we want to with 
our soil. There is no place in the world— 
not even around great European cities, 
which offers better market possibilities. 
Here we are a regular highway between 
two of the greatest cities in the world. 
More people come down from the hills to 
play and eat on our seacoast than upon 
any sand of equal length in the world. 
All these people want food, and here we 
are ready to hand it to them if we can 
only get past the useless middleman. I 
asked many farmers at that meeting 
about farming. The inevitable answer 
was: “We can produce all right and 
readily learn how to increase production, 
but the markets are all wrong. When¬ 
ever a farmer ships to the general market 
for sale he absolutely loses control of his 
property the moment it leaves his hand.” 
Here and there are men with the capital 
and character and credit which enable 
them to control prices and say: “The 
price is so much!” The great majority 
who ship to commission men must con¬ 
tent themselves with saying: ‘‘What will 
you give!” or “Give what you can!” 
Those men lined up in the sunshine on 
that Jersey farm know that this question 
of marketing, or the 35-cent dollar, means 
more to them than the tariff or any other 
T HE Panama Canal stands as 
one of the most marvelous 
achievements of the age. Into its 
construction went not only the high¬ 
est engineering skill, but the best 
business brains of the nation, backed 
by hundreds of millions of dollars. 
Suppose conditions not to be fore¬ 
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present canal with a new and larger 
waterway of the sea-level type, to 
be built in the next ten years. 
Also suppose that this new canal 
would be the means of a great sav¬ 
ing in time and money to the canal¬ 
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progress in canal engineering. 
This sounds improbable; yet it 
illustrates exactly what has hap¬ 
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telephone, and what will certainly 
happen again. 
Increasing demands upon the 
telephone system, calling for more 
extended and better service, forced 
removal of every part of the plant 
not equal to these demands. Switch¬ 
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phone instrument itself were changed 
time and again, as fast as the ad¬ 
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improve them. 
It was practical to do all this 
because it greatly increased the 
capacity of the plant, reduced serv¬ 
ice rates and added subscribers by 
the hundred thousand. 
In ten years, the telephone plant 
of the Bell System has been rebuilt 
and renewed, piece by piece, at an 
expense exceeding the cost of the 
Canal. 
Thus the Bell System is kept at 
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apace with the telephone require¬ 
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