“She RURAL. N E W-Y O R K E R 
87 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
By Rev. George B. Gilbert 
^ SxAPPY New Year. —The usual Happy 
New Year of this section seems to have 
been turned into a Snappy New Y'ear, 
to put it miclly. For just one week today 
the thermometer has played around be¬ 
tween 18 below and nine above—not once 
going above that. Last Sunday, as the 
Parson started out for church, it was 
just 14 below at 10 o’clock. Fortunately 
he had no long trip ahead that day. In 
‘’act, he preached in a large city church 
to a city congregation. 
Tit for Tat.— The Parson took occa¬ 
sion to tell something of the farmer’s side 
of this food que.stion. lie had recently 
been stopped on Main Street and asked 
where it would be possible to buy pota¬ 
toes for a figure which was just 24 cents 
below the actual cost of production. IIow 
would the merchant like the farmer to 
go from store to store trying to buy goods 
for 20% below the actual cost of produc¬ 
tion? _ The Parson had a similar experi¬ 
ence in^ regard to onions. City people 
.persi.st in thinking that it costs no more 
to produce a thing on the farm now than 
before the war. 
Hack-door Maxxers. —“I wouldn’t 
keep a ten-dollar bill in the ornamental 
sugar bowl on the mantlepiece and hand 
Spekdixg Up.— The Par.son admits 
that .somehow we must raise more stuff. 
Envelopes keep coming into the house 
with the government stamp “Food will 
win the war.’’ With fertilizer and help 
so scarce it is a problem. In the first 
place we must save and make better use 
of our home fertilizer, and then we minst 
do more with machinery. IIow much 
time is wasted, for instance, in hoeing 
corn by .hand, when if marked both ways, 
it could practically all be done with a 
horse and straight-tooth cultivator. No 
one could ever compute the time spent 
last Summer in hilling up potatoes by 
hand with a hoe. Most likely they would 
have been better off not hilled up at all. 
and even if in very wet land they need 
to ‘be, how easily and quickly it can be 
done with a big tooth put on the back 
of the cultivator. 
A Great Tool. —Eight here in this 
rambling letter, let the 1‘arson pay his 
respects to the modern cultivator. It is 
simply wonderful what it does on this 
farm. It has four different sized teeth 
to go in back ; a great big one to do any 
furrowing, hilling up in wet land and 
digging potatoes, another about half as 
large for shallower furrowing about the 
Talking Back to Each Other 
it out to every farmer till I wore it out.” 
said the Parson. Tlu're is mulling jilinis- 
ant in apiiroaching a house with a dozen 
eggs and meeting with a cloudburst of 
astoni.shment. to put it mildly, becau.se 
you have the mu-ve to ask what the .stores 
are getting. One way to stimulate pro¬ 
duction is to send the farmer down to the 
.store or office to get his much-needed 
money, where he can wait around and 
cool his lieids for half an hour, only to 
be told after a 10 minutes’ harangue on 
liow rich the farmers are getting, that 
if he will pre.sent his bill duly made out 
and receipted at the end of the month 
he will get his pay in a check. 
Shoes axd Gow IITdes. —How scarce 
leather is! Of course shoes have to be 
high. How could it be otherwise! If 
one only had a cowhide to sell! It 
would be a big mortgage that could not be 
covered with a cowhide. We butchered 
our beef for eating and loaded the hide 
into the wagon and took it to a thorough¬ 
ly reliable place. Lo and behold ! “Hides 
have had a big drop,” said the man. 
“Last week we were paying 18 cents but 
now they are only 14 and 1 shall probably 
lose at that.” “The concern that gathers 
hides through here told us-they had thous¬ 
ands of them stacked up that they did not 
know what to do with—could find no 
.sale for them at any price.” How kind 
it was of him to buy it at all! Being in 
the Christmas season, ought we not have 
given it to him? But at last he made us 
out a check. The price of the I’arson’s 
last pair of shoes was just 04 cents more 
than that check. 
A Good Text. —lYay back in Isaiah’s 
time the value to the country of the 
small farm owner was appreciated. What 
did this prophet cry? “\Voe unto them 
that join house to house, that lay field 
to field, till there be no more room, and 
ye be made to dwell alone in the midst 
of the land.” This was the text the 
Parson took as he spoke to the city folks. 
It is bad enough that the mass of the 
I)eople in the cities can never own their 
houses—never have a home, but for the 
country, this must never be. Putting aside 
all considerations but that of production, 
and even then it is astonishing how much 
greater that runs among land-owners than 
tenants. For instance, the Parson reads 
that there are seven times as many silos 
on farms cultivated by the owners as on 
others, taking an equal number of each. 
garden, another with side arms for weed 
cutting, and the regular tooth like the 
other teeth. We could not get along with¬ 
out the straight tooth or .so-called harrow 
cultivator' besides. This, we use in the 
corn altogether after the first cultivation 
and to put in the cover crop. When 
closed up tight it will go through the 
garden rows and be a tremendous help. 
it'll help scarce and time precious, it 
c(M-tainly jiays to mark out everything so 
that the adjusted cultivator will just 
I'each both sides at once. 
Better Tools. —The small farmer 
must have better tools. It is no time to 
be thrashing small grains in any quantity 
with a flail and all potatoes, in pieces of 
any considerable size, really ought to be 
planted with a potato planter. The best 
way fur us to halt this corporation farm 
taik is to get together for modern ma¬ 
chinery to raise more food. It seems to 
avoid much chance for trouble for one 
farmer to h.ave charge of a neighborhood- 
owned machii ;> and to run it himself with 
his team if p >ssible, and the others pay 
him for his and team. He would be 
responsible for i'-.s being oiled and proper¬ 
ly used, would be exi)ected to know about 
simple repairs a-rm to keep it well housed. 
A strong ste.c’v pair of horses is a great 
factor with compl’cated machinerv. 
That Htor.v-e Battery.— “Papa,” said 
the oldest boy ;he other day, “are you 
going to use the aiito again very soon?” 
“Why, I don’t 1 now,” said the Parson, 
wondering what he had in mind. “Quite 
likely not till next Sunday.” “Won’t it 
be too cold for the battery put in the car,” 
he asked. And then it flashed upon me 
what he had in mind. The boys have a 
little electric motor, but of course it takes 
some kind of a battery to run it and dry 
cells are expensive now. The battery cost 
a -pretty penny, and it cost to have it re¬ 
charged, and the thought was .so new to 
me—to use it to play with in the house! 
II'ow often our first impulse to a child is 
to say no. It is too apt to be, “Don’t, 
don’t, don’t.” I doubt if I have ever 
seen a boy more pleased over anything 
than when I told him they could use it. 
They got it out of the car themselves and 
tbok it over to the 'house on a sled. It 
was landed by the dinlng-i'oom stove, and 
such a time, through these bitter cold va¬ 
cation days, have those children had with 
it. It was the best thing that could have 
(Continued on page ) 
Strength in 
Flour 
N 
[XXXXf.-j 
What Is Gluten? 
Gluten is the protein element in wheat. 
It is the foundation of all flour. On it de¬ 
pends a flour’s strength, rising power, flavor 
and nourishment. Therefore, the more and 
better quality gluten a flour contains, the 
better the flour. 
Patriots are saving wheat by mixing wheat 
and rye flour; wheat with corn flour, etc. 
Success with mixed flours depends largely 
upon the quality and character of the wheat 
flour so used; —get the best and strongest 
wheat flour available. 
Pillsbury s Best is milled from selected 
wheat which is rich in gluten. Consequently 
it is a strong flour and is well suited for use 
with mixed flour recipes. When used by itself, 
it makes a large, sweet, bigbly-flavored loaf of 
bread that will not dry out quickly. 
The Flour Question Settled 
Assures 
Good Bread 
f/' 
V^i. 
/ 
