The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
January 17, 1920 
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Ferry's 
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Plan your garden 
to succeed 
Y OU have but one chance 
each season: make the most 
of it. Determine that you will 
have crops of exceptional 
quality to show for your 
work. Begin by learning 
the vital difference between 
seeds that just grow and 
pure-bred seeds that pro¬ 
duce in abundance and true 
to type. 
Seeds of mongrel traits repro¬ 
duce their kind. This is heredity. 
Cultivate as carefully as you 
will, such seeds always disap¬ 
point. Pure-bred seeds sold 
under the Ferry Label are from 
seed families which for genera¬ 
tions have excelled in the quality 
and abundance of their progeny. 
Specimen plants are cultivated 
to maturity in our great trial 
gardens. These plants must live 
up to the Ferry standards of per¬ 
fection in size, flavor, color and 
productivity. Only seeds that 
meet these supreme tests are 
sold. This is one of the ways 
we employ to take the guess¬ 
work out of gardening. 
Dealers everywhere sell 
Ferry’s pure-bred Seeds 
D. M. FERRY & COMPANY 
Detroit, Mich. 
(and Windsor, Ontario) 
Send today for Ferry's Seed 
Annual. 11 fells In authori¬ 
tative detail what, when and 
how to plant; how to cook 
and can vegetables to retain 
thetr fresh flavor. This valu¬ 
able book Is free. 
TO 
. > 
ulie 
Things To Think About 
The object of this department is to give readers a chance to express themselves on farm 
matters. Not long articles can be used—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. 
A New Step in Agricultural Extension 
Educating the Consumer. —In Tiie 
R. N.-Y. for December 13, on page 1814, 
S. H. I*, concludes an article on "Educa¬ 
tion for a City Man” with this statement: 
‘‘There should be some way of conducting 
a campaign of education, and I feel that 
this will be about the biggest and best 
thing a national farm organization can 
do.” And to many it seems that this mat¬ 
ter of educating the consumer to a better 
realization of what it costs in time and 
labor and money to produce food is the 
next big thing for some farm organiza¬ 
tion to do. We all know that this great 
and good land of ours is passing through 
possibly the most critical period of its his¬ 
tory. a period of unrest, industrial strife, 
suspicion and jealousy unequaled in the 
past. The high cost, of living has drawn a 
front seat in the middle of the platlorm, 
and we who are interested in the drama 
of life are aware of its presence wherever 
we look, whether it is for food or clothing, 
fertilizer or machinery, coal or lumber, 
milk or rents; it is the same old story, oft 
repeated. 
Town and Country. —The dweller in 
the city and town, commonly regarded as 
the consumer, eyes the farmer, who is 
usually thought of as the producer, with 
mingled feelings of suspicion and distrust, 
and being in no position to draw correct 
conclusions, either envies him his lucra¬ 
tive pastime, or condemns him as a profit¬ 
eer. To quite a large extent we. the farm¬ 
ers of our country, may justly shoulder 
the blame for a portion of this lack of ap¬ 
preciation of the true status of agricul¬ 
ture as an occupation. Someone harvests 
an exceptionally large crop of potatoes, 
yielding at the rate of 400 or 500 bn. per 
acre (possibly not over an acre or two 
yielding at that rate however). Or some 
noted breeder has a cow that drops a 
$50,000 calf and gives 30.000 lbs. of milk 
in a year. Or a specialist in the fruit 
belt has an apple tree that bore 08 bn. of 
apples in a given season, with apples sell¬ 
ing at “three for a quarter on a limited 
train.” and another lias cabbages that 
yielded 20 or 25 tons per acre, with cab¬ 
bage retailing at 5c or better per lb. Very 
naturally and inevitably the story of that 
record not only gets into the agricultural 
papers, but, worse than that, into the 
daily press quite often, and without fur¬ 
ther explanation Mr. Consumer of course 
immediately draws the incorrect conclu¬ 
sion that this is the way potatoes, cows, 
apples and cabbage yield for the poor, 
down-trodden farmer, and be at once casts 
about for other fields wherein to sow bis 
seeds of sympathy. 
The General Average. —Now the av¬ 
erage yields of these and other commodi¬ 
ties never or rarely find tlieir way into 
these same columns, purely because they 
are so common. In fact, they are pub¬ 
lished only in the census reports, which, 
of course, no one ever reads, while the 
utter failures which we sometimes have 
in spite of the best methods owing to 
weather conditions, frosts, etc., over which 
we have no control, are hushed up and 
spoken of only in whispers, if at all. Con¬ 
sequently is it any wonder that there is 
an ever-widening chasm of misunderstand¬ 
ing between these two classes, the con¬ 
sumer and the producer? 
Bridging the Gulf. —Now, as S. II. 
P. in his article on “Education for a City 
Man” suggests, how can this gulf be 
bridged? Surely here is a field for 
thought. For a great many years our Gov¬ 
ernment, both State and Federal, has 
very wisely done all in its power to assist 
and educate the producer to the end that 
he grow larger and better crops of po¬ 
tatoes, better cows of greater production, 
choicer fruit more intelligently packed, 
and harder cabbage of the right size and 
type, and vast sums have been expended 
to accomplish this purpose. Only recently 
has much else been attempted. The mar¬ 
keting end is now receiving some atten¬ 
tion ; it needs more. But there is one 
more field which is deserving of the 
thought and skill of our best minds; the 
education of the rank and file of the 
population of our cities, the consumer, if 
you please, along the lines of what it 
costs to produce food. How can this he 
accomplished? Surely a big job for both 
our Government and a national farm or¬ 
ganization — the national Federation of 
Farm Bureaus, for instance. Our most 
able speakers might attempt to tell the 
dweller of the flat, and others, the story 
of farm life, its failures as well as its suc¬ 
cesses. Our most brilliant writers might 
contribute to the press, or edit bulletins 
and books. But the farmer would have 
pty seats before him, and the latter 
ild never produce a “best seller.” The 
hlie’s appetite has developed along other 
es; they devour far more eagerly mur- 
• trials, divorce cases, political wran- 
s and thrillers by land, sea and air, 
iile such pyosaic subjects as agriculture, 
fticulture and animal husbandry get not 
»n a passing attention. 
Phy the Movies.—How, then, can we 
icli them? At a safe estimate !*•> per 
it of the consuming class are more or 
s regular patrons of the most popular 
tort of the hour—the “movie. _ Why 
t use a portion of the appropriations 
for agricultural research, experimentation 
and extension in securing films from real 
life, from real farms, with real farmers 
doing real things? Show the process of 
producing food, the years required to pro¬ 
duce a barrel of apples, from the nursery 
tree on. including the planting, cultiva¬ 
tion. pruning, spraying, thinning, picking, 
packing, marketing, and eternal vigilance 
all the time. Show the time and skill re¬ 
quired to breed, grow and develop a pro¬ 
ductive. profitable dairy cow. the labor 
and waiting to grow a bushel of wheat, 
the pains taken to prepare both soil and 
seed, and then treat, plant, cultivate, 
spray and harvest a crop of potatoes, and 
then occasionally to fail in spite of all, 
from causes over which we have no con¬ 
trol. If some of these scenes from prac¬ 
tical farm life could be placed on the 
movie screen, between the acts, so to 
speak, the public would become interested, 
and before they knew it instructed in 
spite of themselves. The trouble is that 
our rural scenes of the past, as thrown 
upon the screen up to date, have repre¬ 
sented one of two extremes—either the 
millionaire city dweller whose farm is his 
diversion or toy, not his home, or the 
“hayseed” type which has nearly passed 
into oblivion. With his high leather hoots 
in which his sockless feet and trouser legs 
are both thrust, a broad-brimmed straw 
hat from which a long lock of unkempt 
hair is protruding, and with suspenders in 
evidence, he uses the vernacular of the 
past as he swaps yarns around the stove 
in the one rendezvous of the village—the 
general store and postoffice. The real rep¬ 
resentative farmer of the day, an alert, 
progressive, fairly well-educated man, is a 
minus quantity ou the movie screen, and 
in pictures of rural life in our current 
magazines and cartoons. The call is loud 
for a better realization, a closer under¬ 
standing, of what it means to supply our 
markets with a variety of good food in 
the raw state, at a price that covers cost 
of production plus a reasonable profit. 
1. C. H. COOK. 
The Law of Supply and Demand 
At a recent farmers’ meeting a speaker 
voiced the opinion that, regardless of co¬ 
operation. simplified marketing, distribu¬ 
tion, keeping cost, accounts, etc., the old 
immovable law of supply and demand will 
continue to rule. lie said that when 
crops are short prices will be high, and 
when there is a surplus the farmers will 
have to he satisfied with less than the cost 
of production. He said the old law of 
supply and demand is still on the job. and 
always will he, and nothing that we can 
do will change matters much from what 
they have been in the past. I think that 
deep down in their hearts a good many 
farmers believe the same thing. If some 
of these pessimistic individuals would 
wake up to the full posibilities of the co¬ 
operative movement, they would become 
enthusiastic pushers instead of studies in 
blue. 
Have you ever heard of an over-produc¬ 
tion of mowing machines, or shoes, or fur¬ 
niture. or any other manufactured arti¬ 
cle? If not, why not? Simply, because 
the manufacturers have got old supply 
and demand harnessed up and working for 
them. They advertise to increase the de¬ 
mand, and suit the supply to the de¬ 
mand. In other words, they whet their 
customers’ appetites by advertising, and 
then they feed out just enough to keep 
them begging for more. That is what the 
farmers will have to do to put their busi¬ 
ness on a stable basis, and that is what 
they are going to do. The first necessity, 
of course, is perfect co-operation, and then 
advertising and even and economical dis¬ 
tribution. That will keep us busy for a 
While ! HERBERT NAFZIGER. 
Michigan. 
A good many years ago, in a New Eng¬ 
land shoe town, there certainly was an 
over-production of shoes! The manufac¬ 
turer had made up large orders of shoes 
for sale in States like Kansas and Ne¬ 
braska—a heavy, solid, working shoe. A 
combination of drought and grasshoppers 
had ruined crops in these Western States, 
and there was no sale for the shoes. Peo¬ 
ple went barefooted through the Summer 
and merchants repudiated their orders. 
This threw the whole thing back on the 
shoe manufacturer. The factories shut 
down for the Summer, workmen were idle 
for weeks. The singular spectacle was 
presented of children going barefoot in a 
shoe town because their parents had no 
work because Western customers could 
not buy shoes. And the shoes in question 
were put in storage and kept there until 
a good Western crop made it possible for 
farmers to buy them. That could hardly 
happen now. Through co-operation man¬ 
ufacturers have learned not to over-pro¬ 
duce, and credit will enable both manu¬ 
facturer and merchant to handle and work 
off their stock without loss. 
“You do not speak as you did of the 
gentle dove of peace.” “No,” said Sena¬ 
tor Sorghum. “I no longer refer to it as 
‘gentle.’ After what the dove of peace 
has gone through I regard it as a pretty 
tough little bird.”—Washington Star. 
