864 07* RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Farmer as an Advertiser 
Publicity Needkd. —In - arly a dozen 
years of experience on newspapers in 
cities with from 10.000 to idi.OOO popula¬ 
tion, in New York and other States, both 
as a reporter and in nu edt orial capac¬ 
ity, I often have had occas'em to marvel 
at and comment on the poor showing made 
by 05 per cent of the farmers as adver¬ 
tisers. I can .see every farmer reader of 
tliis sniff and hear him say : 
“That fellow’s boosting his own game 
all right. Lot of good it would do us to 
spend money for advertising.” 
While I believe that advertising in the 
general sense of the word would pay the 
farmer, for I have yet to see any business 
in which excellent, consistent and well 
directed advertising did not pay. T have in 
mind now publicity which doesn’t cost a 
cent! “Well, now, that's different; let's 
see about this.” I can hear my erstwhile 
critic say. 
Local Items. —To get to the point at 
once, why doesn't the farmer tell his 
neighbors and many who are not his 
neighbors more about himself and his work 
through the medium of the daily news¬ 
paper which circulates in his vicinity? 
Newspapers in the smaller cities, and 
many in the larger ones, are anxious to 
publish items about farms and farmers. 
It is easier to sell a managing editor in a 
city of 50,000 a series of articles on the¬ 
oretic farming than one about any other 
subject, so how much more eager he must 
be to get hold <>f news of his own county, 
from men reading his own paper. Did the 
farmer ever notice articles in his favorite 
daily about, say a new model of automo¬ 
bile that si.me local dealer has just put on 
the market? ITe probably did. and if he 
thought about it at all chalked it up to 
“pull” of the agent. Not so. usually, for 
there are so many automobile owners that 
anything out of the ordinary about motor 
cars is good news. There are lots of 
farmers, too, and anything about farms 
and farm crops that is out of normal is 
news likewise. 
Live News. —Tn the city in which I 
am now news editor of a daily paper with 
considerable urban and not a little rural 
circulation, we have a reporter visit the 
office of the Farm Bureau Agent every 
day. Ilis news about top veil thins, insti¬ 
tutes and demonstrations is all good, but 
the story that gets the niggest headline is 
something special from , some nearby or 
county farm. When there is a tractor 
demonstration this same reporter climbs 
into the auto with the Farm Bureau 
Agent and sticks on the job until the last 
farmer has gone home to milk the cows. 
And his story doesn't get buried inside 
in the paper, either. If there is a big 
Grange picnic, like Pomona, he is found 
there ; also he is on hand to write up what 
is going on at farm institutes. 
Tell Yoitr Story. —Now this is 
what I am driving at: If you raise a big¬ 
ger pig than the average of your neigh¬ 
bors. tell the editor or a reporter about it. 
lie will be glad to make a story out of it. 
If you have a bigger yield on an acre of 
hay, wheat, oats, corn, potatoes or any¬ 
thing else than you had last year, let the 
newspaper you read know about it. It's 
news. If you have a cow that makes a 
good record as a milk or butter producer, 
let the editor have the figures. Even 
send him a picture of the cow, and I will 
bet a pound of butter, which is reckless 
under the prevailing retail price here, that 
he will publish that, too. If you are 
building a new barn or house, tell him 
that and he will be glad to write it up. 
Your farm paper will give you National 
records, etc., but cannot hope to print 
smaller items about each neighborhood. 
But, you say, I don’t know the editor or 
any reporter, and how can I let him 
know? Well, if you have a telephone, it 
is not a difficult job to iiud the number of 
the newspaper office, and anyone who 
answers will take the facts. Better still, 
drop into the office sometime when you 
are in the city and get acquainted. And 
then there is always the mail. Write 
the editor a letter, giving the details. 
Never mind if you mis-spell a word or 
two, for he probably will have the story 
written over. In our office it is a rule 
that no one writes farm news who has 
not lived on a farm and can consequently 
write it intelligently. 
Grange Correspondence, — Most 
Granges have a correspondent. About 
one out of 10 sends in a renort of a meet¬ 
ing. Put a live, one in this position and 
see that he or she gets an account of the 
meeting into the earliest nail—not next 
week some day. I know a newspaper in 
a city of nearly a half million population 
in this .State which gives a page every 
Tuesday morning to Grange meeting re¬ 
ports. This paper has a circulation of 
nearly 100.000 copies daily and its space 
is very costly to one who pays for his ad¬ 
vertising. 
Tiie Tai.b of a Potato Crop.—A little 
while ago a farmer came into the business 
office of the paper I am working on to pay 
his subscription, and while the young 
woman in charge was writing a receipt lie 
told her of his big potato crop. She sent 
him up tn me, and during the course of a 
long visit lie detailed to me the kind of 
seed he had used, how much fertilizer, date 
of planting, methods of cultivation, yield 
and much other information. The next 
day I wrote it into an article a column 
long, and published it with a noticeable 
headline. He has since informed me that 
he has had repeated requests for seed, 
much of the business coming from city 
folks who would not have read of his 
crop had it been written about in the 
Farm Bureau Bulletin alone. 
Value of a Trademark. —A farmer 
with a prize herd of Jerseys had been 
making a particular brand of butter and 
cottage cheese for years, and the trade 
mark, which I will call “Ramnh Farm,” 
had considerable local reputation. One 
day I met him on the street and asked 
him where he got the name “Ramali” 
from. lie told me its Indian origin and 
meaning, how he came to select it, and 
something of the history of the farm and 
herd. It made a half-column story. Good 
news, for I heard several comments from 
city subscribers w ho Lad read the article, 
and surely it did not retard the sale of 
“Ilamah" butter and cottage cheese! We 
are in the first county in the United States 
to adopt the Farm Bureau idea, and one 
of the biggest dairying counties in New 
York State. We are seriously consider¬ 
ing hiring next Spring a special man with 
knowledge of farm life and farm problems, 
May 17, 191!> 
providing him with a flivver and sending 
him out among the farmers to get news 
from them and educate ..them in the art of 
getting their lights out from under bush¬ 
els. PHILIP JI. WERTZ. 
Jeffersou C v \, N. Y. 
Restraining Breachy Cattle 
I s. e where II. S. asks Low to keep a 
cow from jumping a fence. T had a three- 
year-oid bull that jumped fences like i 
cult, f- took a cow chain and put it around 
his neck, and at the lower end T put a pule 
about f ve feet long and about six imh*‘-> 
thick. At one end T bored a hole and in¬ 
serted the toggle of the lower end of • 
chain, and drove a 40-penny nail through 
the pole and chain. f never had any 
more trouble with him. Drill the ho!» 
about eight inches from the end. and e.i that 
<ho front end will he off the ground when 
the animal has his head up. When he 
tries to jump the end will be caught in 
the fence and lie will stay there as though 
he were tied. E. a. h. 
Joppa, Md. 
Young Wife (in the country 1 : “This 
is a nice place you’ve brought me to. 
We've been here for four months and 1 
haven't seen a new face." Hub—“No new 
face! Why, my dear, we’ve changed our 
help eight times.”—Boston Transcript. 
Cattle have been one of the steadiest t>roJucts a farmer sells 
on the market. Compare them with widely soaring potatoes 
Cattle—the safest “crop” 
on the farm 
The farmer who plants potatoes cannot tell you within 
30 per cent what he will get for the potatoes next fall. 
They may be worth $6 to $8 a barrel. He may not be 
able to sell them for $2.50 a barrel. 
But a farmer can tell within 10 or 15 per cent what he 
will get for his cattle. 
Why? It is because the cattle business has been made 
fairly steady. In spite of the uncontrollable flurries from 
week to week, you can be surer of what you’ll get for your 
“cattle crop” than you can for most of your other crops. 
Swift £3b Company has helped to steady the market for 
you by providing a wide outlet. Refrigerator cars supply 
every town and village in the far corners of the nation. 
We distribute meat where it brings the most money; we 
ship abroad when prices are better there; and we will pay 
you in cash all that your animals are worth in the form of 
meat and by-products. Swift CSh Company’s profit last year 
(including by-products) was less than 2 } 2 cents on each 
dollar of sales. 
Isn’t that a low enough commission for a service that 
guarantees the highest possible price for livestock? 
Swift GBi Company, U. S. A. 
Founded 1868 
A nation-wide organization owned by more than 25,000 shareholders 
