998 
Vhe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 24, 1918 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Big and Small Farms 
Part II. 
Tiik Big Enterprise. —Let us see 
what advantages the big swamp farm, 
mentioned last week, will have. First 
will be the soil. It is like a bank on 
which Nature has been depositing Liberty 
bonds ever .since this marsh rose up out 
of the sea. This plant food is there, but 
it has been held up tight in acid forms 
which hold it secure. With the water 
taken out of it by drainage the air 
W'orks in and, after plowing, lime will be 
the neisied application. This will neutral¬ 
ize the upper surface and enable the 
bacteria to work at making the nitrogen 
available. A small quantity of well- 
rotted stable manure would help—not be¬ 
cause the soil needs nitrogen, but because 
the manure would “inoculate’’ the soil 
and till it with life. Probably a small 
quantity of nitrate of .soda at the be¬ 
ginning would pay, much as the fine 
kindling wood starts a fire of hard wood 
or coal. Such soils are usually short of 
phosphorus, and bonemeal or acid phos¬ 
phate will pay. After they have started 
going such soils will give large croi>s for 
ye.ars from the u.se of ground lime.stone 
and pho.sphorus. There will be little need 
of cover crops, for there is organic matter 
enough in such soil to run it for a dozen 
year.s. Such soil will never give quite as 
good results as it would if some stable 
manure were used, but for gi-ain, potatoes 
and most vegetables it will outyield most 
of our upland soil with barely 20 per 
cent of the outlaj' for fertilizer or ma¬ 
nure. It remains to he seen how much 
cheaper one acre of this big tract can be 
worked as compared with a 50-acre faimi, 
but 1 think the unit of cost of plowing 
and cultivating will be cut nearly in two. 
I think the cost of i)roducing a bushel 
or a pound will run below such cost on 
our smaller farms. In handling and mar¬ 
keting the big farm would seem to have 
an advantage. This might not be so 
under the old system of shipi)ing hy ex¬ 
press or freight, but the motor truck is 
changing that, and a large company with 
abundant capital can own a lleet of these 
trucks and put their goods anywhere on 
short notice. Such a company could 
establish stores of their own and raise 
enough of a variety to keep them sup¬ 
plied. Looking ahead into the future I 
see the possibility of handling more of 
this marsh land in much the same way. 
Suppose tracts of 500 acres each were 
started on the coast of Massachusetts, 
Connecticut. .Jersey or Delaware. Caro¬ 
lina, Georgia and Florida. That would 
give a long succession of crops, and if 
jmt under one management it wmuld still 
be much smaller than many of our pres¬ 
ent big corporations which have stand¬ 
ardized necessities and almost monop¬ 
olized their handling. 
The SifALT.ER Farm. —With all these 
evident advantages of nature and human 
organization can the 50 or 100-acre 
farmer near the coast compete and hold 
his home? We know his limitations of 
capital and labor, the cost of keeping up 
his soil, his handicap in the market and 
the growing disjiosition of all other 
classes of peoi)le to “work” and exploit 
him. Is the big farm develoi)ment to 
“eat him up,” as the big factory has 
eaten up the small one? I do not think 
that follows, for the production of food 
crojis is not the same' as that of shoes or 
chairs or tools. The tractor is a big 
thing and many of the other great ma¬ 
chines are wonders, but no development 
of gasoline or steam can ever be made to 
equal the human hand, much less the 
human brain. In farming the work of 
the hand and brain shows itself best, so 
far as quality goes, when worked on a 
small scale; that i.s, with rather limited 
jiroduction. “The master’s eye makes the 
fat ox.” I cannot conceive of any big 
farm enterindse turning out any such 
fruit or vegetables or seed grain or po¬ 
tatoes as is now grown on smaller places 
by men who can look over every small 
detail. From the very nature of the big 
enterprise it is better fitted to turn out 
large quantities of ordinary or common 
goods. The higher class stuff must have 
the close oversight and per.sonal atten¬ 
tion which only the “boss” can give. For 
example, take fruit like the Marshall 
strawberry or McIntosh apple or Rose 
j)ear. I cannot think how these fine 
fruits could ever be grown at their best 
on any big farm where the owner cannot 
give iiersonal supervision. Much the 
same thing will follow all through the 
long list of farm products, from seed corn 
to live stock. You will notice that at 
the egg-laying contests the higher scores 
are usually made hy hens from compar¬ 
atively small fiocks. where men are able 
to give full attention to their birds. This 
idea will be found running all through 
farming and it will prove the salvation 
of our smaller fanners. 
Quaeity Goods. —I think we must all 
admit that when it comes to producing 
just common goods, without any distinct 
character to them, the big faring with its 
possibilities for using power, will have 
an advnatage. It may be a question 10 
years from now how our smaller farms 
can compete with this big farm on the 
marsh at raising just ordinary potatoes 
or sweet corn or tomatoes. The chance 
for the smaller man lies along the road 
of quality—that is, producing goods a 
little finer than the average and then let¬ 
ting people know' what he has for sale. 
IVhen I first moved into this neighborhood 
nearly 20 years ago, many farmers in 
this county felt that farming ns a busi¬ 
ness was fast getting away from them. 
Small grain and corn barely paid, and 
melons, Lima beans and potatoes were 
being produced and distributed below 
the cost of their production. There was 
then much talk of the “good old times” 
when the markets seemed to belong to us. 
Yet, today, I think many farms in this 
county are producing more and earning 
more for the workei's than ever before 
in their history. That is because this 
w'ar and the labor shortage have forced 
us to cut out the unprofitable crop and 
take up the things which require least 
labor. For instance, Lima beans were 
once very profitable up here, but they re¬ 
quire !i vast amount of hand labor, and 
are now only suited to a family where 
there are many children, all ready to 
work. We also find that a good purebred 
sow will earn about as much net profit 
as a dairy cow, with less than 10 per 
cent of the labor required to care for 
her. Then we are learning to use cover 
croi)s to save manure and fertilizer. The 
plan to use fertilizer on the cover crop 
like clover and peas so as to get more 
nitrogen and more organic matttr is a 
trick that will be worth millions to our 
smaller farmers. 
Power. —I do not think the coming de¬ 
velopment of power will concentrate it 
so much in the hands of the rich or in 
cities. That was largely what happened 
with steam power. I'lie world adopted 
the plan of building great boilers in town 
or city and bringing the coal to them. 
That gave the city and the railroad an 
advantage. It pulled our boys and girls 
away from us, and gave the railroads 
control of transportation and trade. I 
hear farmers who say the development of 
gasoline and other powers will work the 
sjime way, and put another rope around 
the farmer. I do not think so—I think 
it will work the other wmy. A barrel of 
gasoline can be carried out in the coun¬ 
try in a wagon or car. and produce power 
to compete with that in several tons of 
coal, which must be hauled from the 
mine. I think the future is to see more 
and more of a distribution of power 
which \vill in time break up the monop¬ 
oly of steam and the present railroad. 
Any farmer who uses a car or a truck 
can tell you how they have given him 
passenger and freight service. The cost 
is still too high, but I believe it will be 
reduced, and that engines will be im¬ 
proved and cheapened, so as to give the 
smaller man a fairer chance at power. 
Our roads will be improved, there will 
be tunnels under the Iludson and Dela¬ 
ware, and trucks and tractors will be 
made more practical than they are now'. 
I think there will be a redistribution of 
pow'er w'hich will give the smaller farmer 
a better chance. It will, I believe, be 
harder for him to live as an individual. 
He w'ill be obliged to combine in some 
way with other farmers, but a combina¬ 
tion of small well-w'orked units will al¬ 
ways have the advantage over one big 
l)roi)Osition worked on the principle of a 
factory. For example, that big farm in 
the marsh will cover about 700 acres. 
It cannot compete wdth 15 farms each 
averaging 50 acres, each under the per¬ 
sonal oversight of its owner, and all 
combined in a co-operative plan for buy¬ 
ing and selling! 
Power and Brains. —Some of us 
speak carelessl.v about the development 
of power, without realizing what has hap¬ 
pened to man since he got his first glim- 
mei’ing notion of practical force. In a 
little book entitled “Earliest Man.” the 
author gives the following suggestion as 
to the way man first learned the art of 
projecting a weapon : 
“The early man, unable to take refuge 
in trees, hides in .a cleft in the I'ocks. His 
mate and offspring crouch as far inside as 
they can crawl. In his terror at an at¬ 
tack by some carnivorous beast, he 
flings around his arms, clawing every- 
Biing within his reach. A stone detaches 
itself in his grasp, and flies away from 
his swinging arms. An accidental hit. 
and his carnivorous pursuer turns and 
flees. The whole family are saved. IMan 
has done something he had never done 
before and never thought of. It does not 
impress itself upon his brain, however, 
till he is hunted again, and then he learns 
to seek better hiding places, and that 
loose stones have a use.” 
Perhaps this guess is as good as an¬ 
other, but consider what has happened 
in the application of power since then. 
Go and see a baseball player in right field 
throw the ball to the home plate with a 
runner coming in from third base. The 
Germans are using a cannon Avhich 
throw's shells into Paris from a distance 
of about 75 miles. The Allies are de¬ 
veloping a cannon which will carry a 
big shell 90 miles with reasonable ac¬ 
curacy : "We may w'ell pause and consider 
what it means in development from the 
accident of throw'ing the stone to this 
90-mile range of bombardment. Yet w^e 
must all realize that in both cases it w'as 
merely the four fingers and the thumb of 
the human hand working put the thought 
of the brain, I have no doubt the hand 
of this “Earliest Man” had greater 
pow'er and stronger muscle.s than that of 
the engineer who invented the cannon. 
Rut the skull of the earlier man con¬ 
tained 9,50 cubic centimeters wdiile the 
skull of Bismarck contained over 1.900 
c.c. In the past farming has been some¬ 
thing of a contest betw'een human mus¬ 
cles. In the future it will be more of a 
contest betw'een human skulls and the 
brains packed aw'ay in them, and that is 
why I think the smaller farmer w'ill hold 
his ow'n. n. w. c. 
The Cornell Farm Unit 
The organization of the Cornell Farm 
T’nit of girls, largely high school and col¬ 
lege students, was formed to help meet 
changed economic conditions caused by 
the world war, and to solve an agricul- 
tui'al i>roblem of the first magnitude, rela¬ 
tive to the production of food. The train¬ 
ing of an army of w'orkers W'illing and 
anxious, but partially or wholly inexperi¬ 
enced. to w'ork on the farm and get in 
touch w'ith real, primitive, and i)ractical 
life from the standpoint of the producer, 
has proved a stupendous undertaking and 
a notable success. So many men are re¬ 
quired for the actual fighting force of our 
nation, that w'omen no less patriotic and 
self-sacrificing are nobly doing their part 
to win the war for humanity and demo¬ 
cracy, and the Cornell Farm Unit, the de¬ 
tails of the operation of which ai'e very 
interesting, is one of the monuments to 
the inventive genius of American woman¬ 
hood. 
The Cornell Farm T’nit is located near 
Cornell University, one mile from Ithaca. 
The farmerette movement having at¬ 
tracted the attention of farmers. Mrs. J. 
W. Tourtellot donated grounds and a fine | 
old Colonial mansion for the use of the , 
camp. The house, situated on an eleva- ! 
tion, commands a magnificent view of the 
city, the campus and college grounds, and 
of the surrounding country with its ver¬ 
dure-clad hills and farms dotted with 
farm buildings and cattle grazing. The 
camp opened .Tune .9, w'ith a registration 
of 20 girls, but this number soon increased 
to 27, where it remained until in .Tuly, 
when a few' of the girls left to attend a 
flummer school at Cornell University. 
New recruits of high school girls have 
filled the vacated places, and are fully up 
to the higb standard of the college girls, 
who represent Cornell T'^niversity and 
other colleges, and come from various 
cities, and some from distant places in 
the Ignited States. One young girl is 
from China. The camp is under the able 
supervision of Mrs. Bertha B. Beard of 
Brookton, with Mi's. Madora Barnes of 
Trumansburg as nurse. The unit is con¬ 
ducted on a partially coiiperative basis. 
The members sleep in tents donated by 
the Y. M. C. A. The rising bell rings at 
5 i.’lO A. M. The girls w'ork on farms near 
the camp, and the W'age received depends 
ujion the efficiency of the w'orker—a stim¬ 
ulus to increased earnestness of effort. 
The gross earnings of the w'orker are 
turned over to the supervisors, wlo de¬ 
duct for the individual share of the run¬ 
ning expenses of the camp, and return 
the balance to the worker. IMost of the 
food required is purchased at wholesale 
prices. The girls carry their lunch to the 
fields. Dinner is served at six o’clock, in 
the spacious dining room of the Tourtel- 
lott manor. Each girl furnishes a knife, 
fork, spoon, plate, and a bowl. 
While the work of the farmerette does 
not entirely replace that of the farm hired 
man, so readily do the girl recruits adjust 
themselves to various lines of work, that 
it seems likely the successful operation of 
other similar units will release large num¬ 
bers of men for war service. A specialty 
is made of truck gardening and the rais¬ 
ing of small fruits. The girls have picked 
strawben-ies for three cents per quart, 
raspberries for five cents per quart, peas 
for 40 cents i)er bushel, and have done 
washing and hoeing at 20 cents per hour. 
Their w'ork is a silent tribute to the prac¬ 
tical patriotism of our w'omeu in helping 
to attain a decisive Allied victory. 
ARNOLD n. BELLOW'S. 
Children 
Like 
ihe attractive ■fla¬ 
vor of the healthful 
cereal drink 
POSTUM 
And it’s fine for 
-them too, for it 
contains nothing 
harmful - only the 
goodness of wheat 
and pure molasses. 
PoSTUM is now regu¬ 
larly used in place 
of tea and coffee 
in many of the best 
of families. 
Wholesome econom¬ 
ical and healthful. 
"There’s a Reason ” 
MICA 
AXLE GREASE 
Cuts down repair bills— 
ask any farmer. Lightens 
the load—ask any horse. 
Never thins out; never 
runs off; never gums. 
Eureka Harness Oil 
makes new harness out 
of old. 
Standard Oil Co. of New York 
Principal Offices 
New York Buifalo Albany Boston 
Superior ROOT Cutters 
WILL CUT 
any kind or size Of vege- 
tabies very fast and easy 
(1 to 3 bu. per minute) in 
Hne shape for feeding. 
They save time, labor and 
mukeyourfeed go farther. 
Made for hand or ))ower 
and with Electric Motor 
attached. 
If not at your dealers 
write us—Place your 
order early. 
SUPERIOR CHURN & MFC. CO., Box 454 NorthviUe, Mich. 
Electric 
CutUr 
Two Excellent Vegetable Books 
By R. L. Watts 
Vegetable Gardening.$1.75 
Vegetable Forcing.2.00 
Clearly written, practical, convenient for 
reference, covering outdoor and green¬ 
house vegetable work. For sale by 
The Rural New-Yorker 
333 W. 30th St., New York 
This Man Saved $49.20 On 10 Acres By Testing His Soil At Home! 
Mr, Oscar Kurzer, Sebewaintf, Mich., says : “I find 1 have much more 
lime than is needed on soil where I intenoed to put lime. On the lO-acro * 
field 1 tested, the tester saved me $49.20 as 1 would have put Zl4 tona ( » 
of lime per ecre» costiocr me $1.(^ per too at plant**' ^ 
Simplex Soil Tester 
not only prevents you from wasting lime and ground limestone, 
but prevents you from wasting crops by planting in starvins: soil. 
Automatically resristers exact amountof liraeand nound limestooe 
soils contain and require. Take five minutes ana cost one-half 
cent per test. Guaranteed accurate. Money back if you want it. 
Very low priced. Don’t Ruess any lonjrer—BE SUkE your soil 
is RIGHT, Mail postal for free literature* X^lve dealers and 
agents wanted. 
Simplex Manufacturing Co., Dept. 853H3,Woodsboro,Md.' 
