912 
‘Px RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 31, 1919 
Things To Think About 
The ocject of this department is to give readers a chance to express themselves on farm 
matters. Not long articles can be use-'—just short, pointed opinions or suggestions. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER does not always endorse what is printed here. You might 
call this a mental safety valve. 
i ! 1, tr-A'-SS**- A v • ■'*- 
“Bossing the Hen Roost” 
| 
A letter from .T. G. M. and your reply, 
recently published in The^R. N.-Y., does 
not cover the question raised in a very 
clear manner: at least, not from the view¬ 
point of those most concerned. I am 
speaking of many young men who adver¬ 
tise themselves as poultry managers. Per¬ 
haps you are right in saying there are 
many people with only some backyard ex¬ 
perience who select poultry farming as an 
eiisy and pleasant occupation but I would 
hardly call these a good proportion. The 
others, and the large majority. I believe, 
aye made up of young men with a genuine 
liking and ability for the work, several 
years of sound experience, and possibly 
an agricultural college education. They 
ape not afraid to work; they expect to 
Work. and. in fact, they must if they are 
to hold their positions. As you know, 
fnanager in this cas> does not mean one 
who sits around an office or leaves all the 
manual work for others: but it does mean 
carrying the entire responsibility of the 
plant. I think you are wrong in stating 
that “thousands are rushing back into 
poultry” and insinuating that they are 
finding ready employment. Many who 
are advertising now are men who have 
left the business for various reasons and 
are attempting to return to it; if investi¬ 
gated. they could show references to back 
up their claims' for experience. Compare 
the advertisements in recent issues of 
your paper with those of the same dates 
three or four years ago. You will find iu 
Tecent issues men wanting positions most¬ 
ly. while those of 1015-1 C> will largely ad¬ 
vertise positions wanting men. 
,7. G. M. remarks how seldom a plain 
hired man advertises. Why, may I ask, 
should anyone advertise for such a posi¬ 
tion when he can find work with almost 
the first farmer asked : or. at least be ad¬ 
vised where his services are needed ? 5 on 
say our present form of agricultural edu¬ 
cation is turning out too many would-be 
managers. Doesn't a man who wants to 
make a success of farming get an educa¬ 
tion for himself, both theoretical and 
practical, so that he can become a man¬ 
ager. either of his own or another’s place? 
If a young man. fresh from the agricul¬ 
tural classrooms, and with no _ practical 
experience, d s not make good in a man¬ 
ager’s position, it seems to me the em¬ 
ployer is to blame for offering this op¬ 
portunity for a premature failure rather 
than the young man for his failure. 
.7. G. M. thinks ,a young man miOit 
tackle a bigger job than that of roosters.— 
bossing a henroost—(farm hand, for in¬ 
stance. le probably means). Is that so? 
Well, if bossing a henroost, is such a 
graft, I would like to see .7. G. M.. or 
anyone else demonstrate : manage a small 
plant alone, say one of 800 chickens and 
raising 1.500 each season. If he wasn’t 
able to place the details of his work into 
an efficient routine, as well as. possess a 
thorough knowledge of the principles of 
poultry husbandry, he would just natural¬ 
ly make a grand mess of the whole works 
if given time. john s. folk. 
Virginia. 
Depressions, Panics, and Farmers 
I have been reading Babson’s book. 
He states that since history began, pe¬ 
riods of depression have followed periods 
of prosperity, and the depression exactly 
equalled the prosperity. He states that 
the.way these things come about is like 
this: At the peak of a period of pros¬ 
perity manufacturers have orders on 
their books sufficient to carry them say a 
year ahead, labor is drawing fat wages 
and doesn’t care a whoop whether they 
hold their, jobs or not. because another 
one is waiting if they-lost this one; mer¬ 
chants, have good margins and are making 
sufficient money so that they do not espe¬ 
cially care whether their customers are 
satisfied c- not. Graft, corruption, in¬ 
competency. laziness, extravagance and 
unrighteousness become prevalent. 
Now. applying this principle to nations. 
It is obvious to my mind that if any na¬ 
tion were able to remain at the peak of 
prosperity for say 25 or 50 years, they 
would degenerate into worse than decad¬ 
ence. You might as well bury them and 
be done with it. The period of depression 
seems to be necessary in order to maintain 
a moral equilibrium. Without these pe¬ 
riods of depression no nation, apparently, 
would be worth much inside of half a 
century. We would all be asking for 
double pay on about a two-hour day in¬ 
stead of full pay for eight or 10 hours. 
At the peak of prosperity, however, en¬ 
terprisers are disappointed. They have 
handled a large business, worked pretty 
hard, and they find that they made less 
than they expected to. Labor, at the same 
time, finds that their high wages buy 
less than they expected them to. A wave 
of disappointment comes over the country, 
and enterprisers begin some retrenchment, 
they bid less hungrily for supplies, the 
price of commodities therefore drops. 
People watching this become as anxious 
to sell commodities as they were to buy 
when the prices were advancing. The 
selling pressure puts commodity prices 
down rapidly. Labor is thrown out of 
employment. Manufacturers cease opera¬ 
tions entirely, or else curtail them. Pos¬ 
sibly a panic ensues. 
During this time of depression every¬ 
body tries to savi^'money, looking for still 
worse times. A laboring man who has a 
job sees three othehs looking hungrily 
over' the fence, waiting to grab his if he 
loses but, and lie,’therefore, does his best. 
The ,manufacturef .is doing a curtailed 
'business, but competition is keen and mer¬ 
ciless, and he serves his customer to the 
best of hie ability because he dare not 
lose ,him. The same v tlpng applies to the 
merchant. Extravagance entirely ceases, 
economy, thrift and saving become the 
rule with everybody, aud nobody is 
ashamed of their economy because it is 
the popular thjng just now. The period 
of depression is marked by hard, consci¬ 
entious work, by service with all that it 
means, thrift, saving, energy and righte¬ 
ousness. Even the effect is plainly shown 
Tomatoes in a Greenhouse 
on churches. During the period of pros¬ 
perity church membership declines, and it 
increases during periods of adversity. 
In reading about financial conditions in 
the past. 1 have been impressed by two 
or three things. One was the number, of 
panics which have been postponed owing 
to good crops; the number of periods of 
depression which began their recovery 
with good crops. Does not this mean, to 
a certain extent, that farmers have pushed 
sturdily ahead, year in and year out, in 
times of depression as well as good times, 
while labor was nursing its wrongs in 
strikes and sometimes business was timid¬ 
ly holding back? Has not the farmer 
really had more courage and enterprise 
in these trying times than either labor or 
business? c. B. w. 
How I Helped My Husband to Make 
More Money 
It is a little hard to write something 
definite and concrete on the above sub¬ 
ject, and tell of a particular idea that 
helped my husband to work out his prob¬ 
lem, for the reason that I have never 
considered it his problem. It has always 
been our problem, and we have worked out 
our- .ideas together so enthusiastically 
that we often could not tell with which 
they did originate. My husband is a 
horticulturist, and that is a business in 
which a wife may give very practical 
help. Possibly a little recital of our ex¬ 
perience may suggest to other wives simi¬ 
larly situated - koine ways of being helpful. 
We began as renters, but we had an 
ambition to own a home of our own, and 
as I was a teacher when I was married, 
I did not at once give up my position. 
My husband had just bargained for -40 
acres of heavily timbered land. He sold 
the saw timber, and in Winter worked 
at clearing the land, while I taught 
school. My wages and the money re¬ 
ceived for the timber paid for the land. 
But this was not land suited to his busi¬ 
ness. It was low swamp land that had 
to be thoroughly ditched as wel 1 as 
cleared, and when ready for cultivation 
it would be a “corn farm.” 
So we rented ground nearer town that 
was more suitable for fruit growing. 
Strawberries were our specialty, aud af¬ 
ter -chool closed in the Spring I could 
help about marketing the crop. It was 
my part to receive the berries from the 
pickers and inspect them. We employed 
women and girls to do the picking, and 
they picked directly into the boxes. They 
were instructed to put nothing into them 
that they would not be willing to buy 
for themselves. I think that my vigilance 
in enforcing this rule was a big factor 
in our success, as my husband’s name on 
the box was a guarantee to the customer 
that he was getting good fruit clear to 
the bottom of the package. I crated the 
boxes of berries, paid the pickers and 
relieved my husband 1 of all such details, 
that he might give his entire attention 
to disposing of the crop. 
Our market is a thriving manufactur¬ 
ing town of the Middle West, and the 
berries were left with the grocers to be 
sold on commission. Men work better 
when the master is around, so when the 
berry season closed I took the accounts 
and settled with the merchants, while 
husband worked with his men in the berry 
fields. Following this plan it was not 
many years until we had our corn farm 
of black land under cultivation, with a 
man living there to work it under my 
husband’s direction. 
Next we bought a piece of land joining 
that we had leased, and began to build 
our home. ■ Our greatest problem was the 
labor. Satisfactory labor was hard to 
get and hard to keep. Finally we con¬ 
cluded that if we had a comfortable cot¬ 
tage in which a man and his wife could 
live, and a greenhouse to furnish the 
man with employment through the Win¬ 
ter months, that problem might be par¬ 
tially solved. So we got the cottage, the 
man and the greenhouse, or rather green¬ 
houses. for there are four now, and added 
the raising of Winter lettuce to our busi¬ 
ness. 
Lp to this time I cannot point to any 
one thing and say, “That was my idea.” 
Now. I can, but the only reason that 
I can is because it has been so recently 
developed that we have not forgotten 
who made the suggestion. No one here 
was raising hothouse tomatoes, and I 
thought it would pay as a Spring and 
early Summer crop in the greenhouses. I 
read up on the subject, sent for bulletins 
and “kept it before the people” until it 
was tried and proved successful. In the 
years since we started together we have 
sold over 7.000 bushels of strawberries, 
to say nothing of the other fruits, such 
as blackberriees, cherries, pears, etc. We 
have added to our black land until there 
are now 123 acres, a valuable grain farm 
with good buildings. A tenant farmer 
works it satisfactorily. Our home place 
is ^improved until it is worth at least 
$25,000. and we have town property to 
rent and a Winter home in the far South, 
where we go for a few weeks’ well-earned 
rest and change each year. 
We have had no legacies left us, and 
no unusual “good luck.” What is ours 
we have made by working together. 
There have been side lines that helped 
that were my peculiar care. Two of 
these were bees and baby chicks. After I 
quit teaching 1 bought incubators and 
hatched baby chicks to sell by the hun¬ 
dreds. and one season I sold over a ton 
of honey. In these ventures my husband 
turned “helper,” doing the heavy lifting 
of hives, etc. So all the way through 
ours has been a true co-operation. 
There is no longer necessity of my 
giving such material aid, and I have 
given up a large part of it. The active 
Working with, the Bees 
help in the fruit, the incubators, etc., are 
only matters of history, but I still have 
a few hives of bees. Fruit culture and 
apiculture seem to dovetail together per¬ 
fectly. The bees are really needed to 
pollenize the blossoms, and of course the 
blossoms are for the bees. Aside from 
that, I am now content to give only the 
sympathy hud moral support that is every 
true wife’s perogative. Of course this 
has been given from the first, and there 
were times when it was sorely needed. 
Those who work with old Mother 
Nature do not find her always a loving, 
kindly mother. She is ofteu a capricious 
old dame and her c.,’e” Iren* need comfort¬ 
ing. As for instam when they see a 
whole year’s work blighted in a single 
night by Jack Frost; or the fires of Old 
Sol slowly but surely consuming it when 
the clouds fail to give of their stores to 
temper his heat; or when it may be 
riddled in a few minutes by icy pellets 
dashed from lowering clouds. ITe who 
succeeds must not be discouraged when; 
Nature frowns, but must learn to take 
advantage of her propitious moods. 
Indiana. MRS. L. c. 
A Trip to Florida 
Part II. 
The liability to killing frosts in the 
northern half of Florida makes agricul¬ 
ture more of a gamble than it is in mpst 
of the Northern States. One experience 
of a friend who used to be in business iu 
New York, but whose health made it nec¬ 
essary to live iu the South, is rather an 
extreme case, but it illustrates the point 
I wish to make. He has lived nine years 
in Florida, but has not lost his Northern 
hustle. Reading in his daily paper that 
a frost had killed nearly all the young 
plants in the States north of him, lie sent 
for 200 lbs. of cabbage seed and planted 
it all on his seveu-acre field. This seven 
acres is covered by an overhead irrigation 
plant, the water being taken from a lake 
which, .adjoins the field, and forced through 
the pipes by a gasoline engine. The cab¬ 
bage plants grew nicely, the man who 
furnished the seed agreeing to take a 
million of the plants. When they were 
large enough for transplanting, the seeds¬ 
man came down to see to the packing and 
shipping of his million plants. There was 
$5,000 worth of plants on those seven 
acres when they went to bed that night. 
The next morning there was not five 
cents’ worth. All had frozen to the ground 
during the night. But, being a Yankee, 
he was not easily licked. He telegraphed 
that morning for more seed, plowed that 
seven acres while the top inch of it was 
still frozen, put in the new lot of seed, 
and got out of it $800 ahead after all. 
But this is not so discouraging as the case 
of a man who pays a dollar apiece (the 
price for young budded orange trees), 
sets them out and cultivates, sprays, fer¬ 
tilizes them for three or four years, and 
dreams of the time when the crop from 
those trees will place him on “easy street” 
for the rest of his life, only to find some 
morning that the trees are all frozen to 
the ground. To keep life in the trees 
above tin* place where it is budded on to 
the root stock, it is the custom to hill up 
the sand about two feet high around all 
young trees >during the Winter, when 
frost may be looked for. This sand is 
hoed away in April. The object of this 
hilling is to protect all the wood possible 
above where it is budded, for from this 
sprouts will grow up that later form the 
tree. 
It is not uncommon to ride past old 
orange groves that have not a single tree 
in them. They have been frozen to the 
ground : then six to a dozen or 15 sprouts 
have started, grown up together and 
formed the tree. A Northern man won¬ 
ders why at least half of these sprouts 
were not cut off and let the roots de¬ 
velop the rest better. But there they 
are. often a dozen trunks making the one 
tree. 
Orlando, around which and the adjoin¬ 
ing towns these observations were chiefly 
made, is about 140 miles south of Jack¬ 
sonville; Miami is 311 miles further 
south. Orlando i« not quite half way 
down on a line from north to south of 
the State. It will surprise many people 
to learn that Florida is larger than all 
the New England States, including Maine. 
But when one goes in an auto, say to 
Daytona, on the Atlantic Coast, and sees 
ahead, as far as the eye can reach, a 
straight road, not a foot of which is two 
inches higher or lower than any other foot 
of the road, and when one has reached the 
end, finds an abrupt turn with another 
long stretch of the same level straight 
road, and after going 30 miles without 
seeing a house or any living thing except 
pine trees, one begins to realize that there 
is a good deal of laud in Florida. 
Notwithstanding the danger from frost, 
or excessive rain, which this year occa¬ 
sioned a loss of over $3,000,000 to the to¬ 
mato growers south of Orlando, thousands 
of acres being overflowed, there is big 
profit in truck growing. There is a 
growing business in raising plants for 
transplanting. The friend mentioned 
raises millions of tomato, pepper and 
sweet potato plants, which are shipped 
north by parcel post- in strong paper 
boxes. This year he had 150 bushels of 
sweet potatoes planted in long beds four 
feet wide and several hundred feet long, 
to raise plants for transplanting in States 
farther north. These beds are literally 
covered with the sweet potatoes touching 
each other all over the bed. When the 
sprouts are about six inches high they are 
pulled, tied in bunches of 100 and sent 
north. Another crop of sprouts will be 
ready to pull from the same potatoes in 
two weeks. My friend informed me that 
he expected to get about 100 sprouts from 
each potato. After the transplanting sea¬ 
son has passed the same potatoes are used 
to grow a crop. They throw out long 
vines, which are cut into pieces about 20 
inches ling and planted. From these 
vines a crop will mature about as soon as 
from the potatoes. 
If one does not dig his potatoes they 
will continue to grow in size during the 
next year. A potato was exhibited at the 
fair iu Orlando which weighed 20 lbs. 
GEO. A. COSGROVE. 
Lady Jane: “Have you given the 
goldfish fresh water. Janet?” Janet: 
“No, mum. They ain’t finished the water 
I give ’em t’other day yet.”—Edinburgh 
Scotsman. 
