1066 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
ni.il meat bill, besides their other expenses. 
WORKING FOR NOTHING.'—The day is gone 
when farmers can afford to work for nothing and 
tlirow the time of the entire family in to boot. The 
farmer is not selfish or narrow-minded or in as 
much of a rut as some city advisers seem to think, 
blit he has been forming an intimate acquaintance 
with a pencil and paper, and the figures have told 
some very interesting stories. They have told him 
how much he is making with his. present invest¬ 
ment and time expended, and they have told him 
how much he could make if ho works eight hours a 
day. Those figures have also told something about 
the cost of foodstuffs based on an eight-hour work¬ 
ing day, and the chances of success with a farming 
business under such a working schedule, and the 
confusion it would cause. , 
FARM DAYS VARY.—The owner of a farm can¬ 
not. punch the clock at a certain hour and always 
work exactly the same number of hours as the fac¬ 
tory worker in a city. The farm is a factory, but it 
cannot be covered with a roof or heated by steam. 
On good days the farmer wishes to take advantage 
of the weather and forget the clock. When it rains 
and snows it is often possible to take a little addi¬ 
tional rest to make up for the extra hard work on 
the fine days. Hired labor working by the hour on 
a fruit farm or engaged in special work on a gen¬ 
eral farm can work by the hour and leave when the 
time is up, but no good farmer can hear to leave his 
own work when the duties are pressing and the 
wind and weather are just exactly right for the fin¬ 
ishing of a certain job. Often farming is compared 
with the 10-hour day in a factory, and the statement 
made that farmers could certainly follow that sched¬ 
ule. Many men in a factory work 10 hours at their 
machines, and the hour at noon makes 11 hours. 
Then many of them spend nearly an hour going to 
work in the morning and another hour coming home 
at night, which makes practically a 13-hour day. 
In addition, these factory workers are sure of em¬ 
ployment throughout the year as far as the weather 
is concerned. Farming as a business is very inti¬ 
mately connected with weather conditions, and the 
length of a working day on the farm often depends 
upon the sun. rain or wet fields and such factors. 
THE WIFE’S PART—During the war, and now 
when conditions make it necessary, the farmer’s wife 
has frequently been his loyal companion in the field, 
and without her help the food production of this 
country would he greatly rev..iced, and the farmer’s 
labor troubles would 'be greatly increased. However, 
a time is coining when many farmers will object to 
their wives being forced to work in the fields, and 
some farmers will say, “When the banker’s wife 
helps him keep his bank, the blacksmith's wife helps 
shoe horses, the grocer’s wife helps deliver groceries 
and the factory worker’s wife toils beside him in 
the shop, then my wife will work in the fields and 
do a man’s work.” The point is right here. Farm¬ 
ing must, be made a sufficiently profitable business 
so that a farmer can afford to hire labor when it. is 
necessary at prices so that he can compete with 
city industry. In addition the farmer must no f be 
compelled to have his wife help him in the fields and 
he forced to have her labor ’brown in free in order 
to make enough profit from the crops to pay ex¬ 
penses ;md live in the right manner. Of course 
there are occasions when a farmer’s wife can help 
out and possibly work more than eight hours with¬ 
out harm to herself, but in general it is not good 
business. Farming must pay enough so that the 
farmci *an support his home without, his wife’s 
labor ^ (lie same manner as it is done by the city 
busiriest lan. 
EXPENSIVE LABOR.—When the outside labor is 
so expensive that farm products cannot pay for it. 
many farmers will he forced to cut down their pro¬ 
duct :mi. prices will he higher, and some day they 
will he high enough so that city workers will begin 
to appreciate jobs on the farm. Right now things 
are out of balance. Until conditions on the farm see 
a great change, and cows, hens and pigs change 
their habits, the eight-hour day will he a joke to 
farmers. The farming business is so different from 
other lines of endeavor that men have to live on a 
farm to understand it. and even farmers who read 
and think and visit other farmers, seldom discover 
any startlingly new ways of running a farm, and are 
forced to conduct their business along lines which 
some folks designate as “traveling in a rut.” 
Lansing. Mich. a. o. kiuby. 
Summer and Winter Milk Costs 
Tn a recent article on the cost of producing milk 
Mr. Edgar Rood.v gives the average cost of milk for 
the year at (it! cents a quart. Many of us are interested 
in the monthly cost of milk, since the price we are 
paid for it varies by the month or season. Can Mr. 
Hoi ('v give ns his cost for producing milk, say for the 
month of December? c. II, 
July 12, ini'.) 
t.uro. This is a ■: 1 ’o. however, and when well 
hanked and protected, it will keep the stock com¬ 
fort ahl.v. 
The lower picture shows a header at work in a 
Canadian wheat field. These ma'ehines are seldom 
seen on the Atlantic coast, but in the Far West, 
where the straw is of little value, these machines 
T 
Ills seems a fair enough question, and yet work rapidly, and are practical. Tn working the 
header t.h$ upper part of the straw and tin* head 
are cut off and sent over the carrier on to the 
wagon which runs alongside. Two or three wagons 
are used, and as fast as one receives its load it 
drives to the stack, another wagon taking its place 
under the carrier. Tn this way the work is rapidly 
done, as the machine cuts witli a wide swath and 
when 1 say that the actual cost per quart for 
that month was 6.13 cents compared with an average 
throughout (lie year of 6.6 cents, you will agree 
that the answer is entirely misleading. The ex¬ 
planation is that in December we produced IS,208 
quarts, as compared with a monthly average of only 
13.585: that is, in December we produced 34 per 
cent more than the monthly average. This cost of shoots the heads rapidly on to the load. This ma- 
0.13 cents per quafct for December further empha- chine saves the handling of from a half to two- 
sizes the main point of my prbvious article., namely, 
the cost per quart for any Winter month or any 
Summer month may show an astonishing variation 
from (lie average cost of the Winter months or 
Summer months, because the cost per quart depends 
more oh the production of the herd than on any 
possible variation of the four items making up the 
total cost of production, namely, feed, labor, inci¬ 
dentals .and overhead. After the cows have gone 
into the barn for the Winter, the various factors 
entering into the cost of production vary hut little 
from month to month until they go on pasture 
again. Consequently, the simplest, fairest and com¬ 
mon sense thing to do is to divide the year into two 
periods; first, the period the cows are on pasture 
(with us. about five months), and, second, the 
period the cows are in the barn. Taking the 
average cost of the Winter months and the average 
cost of the Summer months. T find the two compare 
per month approximately as follows for the herd of 
50 cows: 
thirds of the straw. This makes more rapid work 
in thrashing, and leaves more of the straw on tlie 
ground as stubble, to be burned or plowed under. 
WINTER MONTHS 
Feed . $704.58 
Labor .-.. 192(H) 
Incidentals .... 84.15 
Overhead . 168.44 
SUMMER MONTHS 
Pasture . 8100.00 
Labor 
Incidentals 
Overhead .. 
Total .$1,149.17 
Less calves. . . . . 32.56 
Net cSst.$ 1.116.61 
Cost per quart. 8.22c 
>£* I 
Total ...... 
I .ess calves:. . . 
Net cost. 
The High Cost of Wheat Raising . 
I F the farmers have an average crop in the Winter 
wheat belt this season, it. will cost them $1,522 
per bushel to produce, as against $1,205 before the 
war. These figures are based on careful estimates 
made by several hundred representative wheat 
raisers in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Okla¬ 
homa, and none of the farmers added the cost of 
delivering the wheat to market or for hail or storm 
insurance, which is now essential in many sections. 
The figures are from the men in the overalls on a 
crop thrashed and sacked. 
The actual cost of wheat production can he deter¬ 
mined only for each year after the harvest. But 
the fact remains that these men can be trusted; 
that they have been perfectly fair in their estimates, 
since their figures straight through, from plowing 
to thrashing, are lower than agricultural college 
168-41 exi>er ^ s supply. This was caused by t.lie latter 
adding in several items, such as interest on invest- 
$544.59 ruent in seed, crop risk covering seasonal failures, 
*»)( I 
storage on farm. (4c., which the average farmer 
K * 
192 (H) 
Cost per quart/ 3.7?e 
- ' /* V, * *• 
, r " r ^ * 
The cost per quart is. determined by dividing in 
v y. ■*.. < 
'each case the total cost per month by the average 
monthly production of the herd, namely, ,13,585 
quarts. ■ 
The reader misses the main point of my article 
if he docs not perceive that the profit in a cow 
consists' in what milk you get out. of’ her less what 
that milk cost. No doubt the average farmer would 
think that my co,st per cow per year ($215.34.) Is 
excessively high, and no doubt a cow on the average 
farm does not cost as much as that. But on the 
other hand, my average receipts per cow ($254.12 
for 3,260 quarts milk) are high, because the cows 
are far hotter than average producers, and it is 
that large production that makes the low cost, per 
quart. * edgar roody. 
$512.03, should, lint seldom figures in. The following table 
should make interesting reading, since it shows the 
average estimates made by the farmers themselves 
Yes, millet will make good in the silo if it is chopped 
fnp and well packed down. As with rye. there is too 
rmch air in the stems to make good silage unless well 
packed. 
The Story of the Pictures 
T HE series of pictures on page 1067 tell an inter¬ 
esting story. The little fellow in the upper pic¬ 
ture is very proud of tin' fact'that he is driving the 
farm team. Very likely father has stopped to one side, 
still keeping a keen eye on those horses, while moth¬ 
er is pointing the camera at this group. That boy 
is going to make a farmer some day, and his parents 
are training him properly for that work. This pic¬ 
ture shows the advantage of having a steady, intel¬ 
ligent team of farm horses. It would be a danger¬ 
ous experiment to let a hoy handle the loose reins 
on many a farm team that we know of. They might 
not mean to hurt him. hut they have not been 
trained to stand properly and wait for the word, and 
at some unusual sound or sight they would jump or 
move away, dragging that little fellow with them. 
It pays just as well to have the farm team trained 
and under instant control, as it does to have the gas¬ 
oline engine thoroughly oiled and ready at a turn to 
start or stop. 
The middle picture shows a makeshift stable for a 
pioneer farmer on the prairies of Western Canada. 
Men who go up into that country with limited cap¬ 
ital are obliged to endure and to exist with a make¬ 
shift outfit. Of course if a man has reasonable cap¬ 
ital he can start as comfortably there as he can 
anywhere else, hut lumber is usually high, and 
many who start in as pioneers must utilize anything 
they can find until they can get one or two crops. 
We have known of cases where the farmer and his 
family were obliged to live a number of years in a 
structure not as good as the one shown in the pie¬ 
upon the various items, making 
up total 
cost and 
the totals themselves, for the 
States of 
Kansas, 
Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri: 
Present 
Pre-war 
Items—acreage basis. Conditions Conditions 
1. Interest, on investment. 
2. Equipment—interest and <le- 
.$3.88 
$3.27 
predation . 
4.90 
2.97 
2. Seed . 
4. Plowing, harrowing, etc., and 
2.08 
.96 
seeding . 
3.82 
2.83 
5. Harvesting and thrashing.... 
5.23 
3.26 
6. Cost of maintaining soil fertility 
7. Apportionment of general over- 
1.54 
1.33 
head expense of farm. 
1.29 
.88 
Total. 
$22.74 
$15.49 
Less value of pasturage and 
straw . 
1.28 
LOT 
Net cost per acre. 
$21.46 
$14.45 
Yield per acre, 10-year aver¬ 
age, 14.1 bushel. 
Average bushel cost. 
1.522 
1.025 
The Kansas Agricultural College has done more 
work than any other institution in determining the 
exact; cost of wheat production, giving the farmer 
a perfectly fair basis of costs, since they added in 
all items the farmer should. Investigations were 
made on more than 300 wheat farms in a dozen 
counties throughout the State. These figures are 
for 1918 only, a, d indicate that the acre cost, in¬ 
cluding hauling to elevators, is $26.98. Dividing 
Ibis by the average acre production, 14.1 bushels, 
gives $1,913 as the average bushel cost. But using 
the actual production figures oil these farms for HID 
shows the cost to have been from $1.48 to $5.48 per 
bushel. 
Nebraska College makes the acre cost for 1918 
$25.85. This estimate is based on an average crop 
of 18 bushels, making the average bushel cost $1.44. 
to which is added 11 cents for hauling to elevator 
and storage on farm, or a total of $1.55. 
Oklahoma figures the acreage cost at $17.11. while 
Missouri figures the acre cost under present condi¬ 
tions at $26.99, and under average pre-war condi¬ 
tions at $12.29. All of which shows that a lot of 
this talk about the farmer getting wealthy from his 
guaranteed prices is town talk rather than facts. 
New York. earle w. gage. 
Sii.o juice and intoxication ! Now we have a .vituess 
who says he lias seen the two connected. We will try to 
sift his evidence, 
