The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Jl3 
A Review of the New York Dog, Law 
DIVIDED AUTHORITY.—The Agricultural De¬ 
partment officials think that, the administration of 
the dog law is one of their chief troubles. One 
trouble is that the Attorney General is charged with 
the prosecution of owners who do not take out a 
license for dogs. No appropriation has been made 
for the purpose, and consequently no one is being 
prosecuted. Dog owners wait until they know 
whether or not the law is to he generally enforced. 
The assessors send the lists of owners to the depart¬ 
ment. After checking up, the delinquents are sent 
to the Attorney General, and there they stay. Un¬ 
less this practice is changed the whole system is 
likely to break down. Farmers like a square deal. 
They will obey the law; but they want others to do 
so. too. 
FINANCIAL TROUBLES. — Another difficulty 
comes from the deposit of the tax with county treas¬ 
urers, and the payment of losses from the local treas¬ 
uries. Some counties have losses exceeding the dog 
tax of the county. The losses that come first are 
paid, but when the money is exhausted 
the later losses are held up. There is 
no money to pay them. At the same 
time other counties have a surplus. 
This is a State law and a State meas¬ 
ure, and a State revenue from the dog 
tax. This system of distribution by 
counties reduces it to a county proposi¬ 
tion to this extent. 
APPRAISING DAMAGES.—Another 
cause of trouble is in the system of ap¬ 
praising damages. This is done by the 
assessors of the townships in which the 
damage occurs. The owner of domestic 
animals which have been killed or at¬ 
tacked by dogs must notify an assessor 
within 30 days that he makes a claim 
to recover damages for the loss sus¬ 
tained. Within*three days the assessor 
must make inquiry and may take testi¬ 
mony ; but they are not obliged to visit, 
the place where the damage occurred, 
nor to review-the injured or dead ani¬ 
mals. The assessors then make out a 
certificate of the facts, the number 
killed or‘injured, the kind of such ani¬ 
mals or fowls, and the amount of dam¬ 
age. if any. They receive a $3 fee and 
five cents for each mile traveled on the 
service. The law reads that this cer¬ 
tificate shall be filed immediately with 
the department. There is no penalty 
for delay, and in practice the certifi¬ 
cates are not filed promptly. Sometimes 
they are not filed until some months 
after the damage occurred. This system gives rise 
to inequalities in assessments. A board of assessors 
of one township may assess the same grade of ani¬ 
mals more or less than the board of the next town¬ 
ship: and the owners may live in the same neigh¬ 
borhood or on adjacent farms. It has been suggest¬ 
ed that the State could he divided into five or six 
districts, and one trained State appraiser located in 
each district to make all the valuations. Ilis ad¬ 
dress would be filed with the town clerk and he 
could be easily located by the suffering owners. The 
department is authorized to approve, reject or mod¬ 
ify the determination of the assessors. It keeps 
three appraisers to check up and verify unusual 
claims. This requires heavy expenses in long distance 
errands. Their work duplicates the township asses¬ 
sors and increases the expenses. It would probably 
he cheaper to have the whole work done oy the State 
agents of the department and save the expense of 
the local assessors. This plan would also do away 
with the discrimination in assessments. 
VALUE OF ANIMALS.—The most serious prob¬ 
lem. however, arises from the appraisals of individ¬ 
ual animals or fowls. It is held that the local as¬ 
sessor is too willing to accept the appraisal of the 
owner; or at best, being a local man. and not infre¬ 
quently without information as to values, he is 
obliged to accept the owner’s appraisal. In any 
event he is unwilling to make an issue on behalf of 
the State with a neighbor whose vote he may need in 
the next election. Moreover, it is asserted that the 
assessors pass the responsibility on to the depart¬ 
ment with the expectation that the allowance will be 
cut. down, and the department officials, having a 
human side like the assessors, escape immediate 
trouble by passing the claim. 
A SPECIAL CASE.—The Karakul sheep claim is a 
case in point. An attempt has been made for some 
years to develop this sheep as a fur-bearing animal. 
Progress, to say the least, has been slow. The in¬ 
dustry is far from established, and the business is 
confined largely to a limited territory and to a few 
men. The value of the Karakul sheep is not well 
established. We have no information to justify a 
conclusion that the business is on a paying basis. 
The inference is rather that it is not. because no sat¬ 
isfactory evidence has been furnished to prove it a 
success. During the year a claim was made by an 
Otsego County owner for three Karakul sheep killed 
by dogs. The claim was for $250 each. It was 
allowed by the department and paid. Later a claim 
was filed for 16 sheep at $1,000 each, making a total 
claim of $16,000 in a single case. This was held up 
and is yet in dispute. The case is complicated by 
the fact that at least one employee of the department 
is interested in the claim and is using his influence 
to secure the payment. 
AN IMPORTANT CASE.—We shall have occasion 
to refer to this case again. It is enough now to say 
that the question is more important than the mere 
payment of a sum of money to one or more persons. 
The whole success of the dog law, and the protection 
of the sheep industry is involved. The average sheep 
breeder and poultryman will make an honest ap¬ 
praisal himself, lie will probably make it below 
rather than above a fair price. So long as the law 
is administered uniformly and fairly he will be satis¬ 
fied, but let it become the custom that unscrupulous 
men can sell dead animals to the State for more 
money than they would be worth alive or dressed, 
and somebody is going to hear from the farmer. 
Advertising the 35-Cent Dollar 
One of our readers, Mr. John D. Pearmain of 
Framingham, Mass., has started a new use of print¬ 
er's ink. lie recently sold a load of Hubbard squash 
in Brookline, Mass. lie received 2% cents a pound 
and the dealer at once proceeded to retail the squash 
at eight cents. The New England people are fond 
of squash—the liking comes down to them like the 
demand for baked beans and fishballs—and this load 
disappeared in due time. 
Mr. Pearmain had only one way to reach the peo¬ 
ple—through the local paper. So he put the follow- 
lowing advertisement in the Brookline Chronicle and 
paid for it himself. The Chronicle would not, nat¬ 
urally, print a letter showing up the methods of its 
advertisers, and, anyway, they refused to print the 
name of the dealer, even when Mr. Pearmain paid 
for it! The above is an exact reproduction of the 
advertisement. 
We regard that advertisement as a masterpiece. 
A few such and there will be a closer margin be¬ 
tween consumers’ and producers' prices. Here we 
have one more instance of the truth —we have got to 
do it ourselves. See what you make out of the last 
paragraph of this advertisement. 
Business Men Begin To Understand 
Mr. Ilarvey Murdock and Mr. J. R. Caldwell of the 
National Republican Club of New York City, with 
country homes on Long Island, are two big business 
city men who have no false notions of what the 
farmer is up against in the marketing problem. Dur¬ 
ing the war these gentlemen were patriotic, like the 
rest of us, and responded to the Washington cry to 
grow food for patriotic reasons, and take chances on 
the price, while every other business was on a cost 
plus profit basis. They responded. They made up 
a company with $20,500 paid in. Three hundred 
acres of Long Island land were donated without 
rent. The company proceeded to produce food. They 
had good crops. In time they had food 
products to sell. In the Wallabout Mar¬ 
ket in Brooklyn they found wholesale 
prices from 35 to 70 per cent less than 
in 1917. the year before. In the ciiy 
the people were paying more than the 
year previous. They appealed to the 
City Market Commissioner. Then to 
Arthur Williams of the local Federal 
Food Commission. Then they went to 
Washington and appealed to Mr. 
Hoover. All were pleasant, all treated 
them nicely, none of them gave them 
any information. No one of them 
helped sell the foods at the cost of pro¬ 
duction or, in fact, at any other pi*ice. 
Then they made a pei’sonal effort. They 
got a car and loaded it with the 
choicest and best of the land and sent 
it on to New York. At .that new 
troubles began. The details are not es¬ 
sential to the story. The short of it 
was that there was no return for the 
food: and it cost $187 to square things 
up with the railroad and'other charges. 
When the season closed the $20,500 cap¬ 
ital was gone, and- it took an extra 
$4,000 to settle for supplies and square 
up generally. Mr. Murdock is convinced 
that a real system of distribution must 
be provided for efficient handling of 
farm products. He saw Government 
work going on in Long Island on the 
cost plus profit basis, and he is con¬ 
vinced that the same system would en¬ 
courage food production on a substantial scale. 
Canning Crop Growers Organize 
A group of interested growers of canning factory 
crops met about the middle of December at Middleport, 
N. Y., together with some interested growers from Or¬ 
leans County, and decided that it was necessary to take 
some steps looking towards the securing of a uniform 
price for canning factory crops in Niagara County. 
Last year some of the canners in different sections of the 
county paid widely differing prices for the same goods. 
These prices on tomatoes varied from $15 to $20 per 
ton. Au adjourned meeting was later held at the Farm 
Bureau office, and as a result of this second conference 
the Niagara Co-operative Canning Crops Association 
was organized under Article 13-A of the Memberships 
Corporation Law. 
A contract was drawn up as between the individual 
grower and this association. By signing this contract a 
grower at the same time became a member of the asso¬ 
ciation and consigned his canning crops to the associa¬ 
tion for sale. A series of meetings was held throughout 
the county, and as a result inside of three weeks 500 
producers of canning crops had joined, and other coun¬ 
ties in Western New York, seeing the progress made in 
Niagara County, took steps looking toward the forma¬ 
tion of a similar organization in their counties. 
On January 7 the directors of these different county 
associations met in Rochester and formed the New York 
State Co-operative Canning Crops Association, under 
the same law. As soon as each county has secured its 
contracts a conference will be held with the canners to 
complete the sale of the crops. On January 9 represen¬ 
tatives of the different associations held another meeting 
in Rochester to consider cost figures related to the grow¬ 
ing of different crops. These figures will be used as a 
basis for discussion when representatives of the dif¬ 
ferent associations meet with the canners in the near 
future. N. n. PEET. 
Farm Bureau Ma i ger. 
*? 
LISTEN! 
2V2C.-SQUASH!!!-8c. 
TO FARMER (and at Retail ) TO YOU 
On Friday, December 26, 1919, the undersigned farmer delivered to 
one of the provision stores in Brookline a load of 1,360 lbs. of Blue 
Hubbard Squash, at 2%c per lb. 
That day and the next the retail price of squash in the Brookline 
store of this firm was 8c per lb. (as advertised on a card on their 
counter). 
The undersigned suggested to Mr. X. (who bought the squash) that 
the store ought to pay a little more than 2%c, since it was selling for Sc. 
Mr. X.’s answer was, “That makes no difference!” 
Allowing for some waste in the store, the farmer received about 
35 per cent of the retail dollar, and the store about 65 per cent. 
The farmer spends a year raising one crop, has one turnover a year, 
must stand a large waste in storing his crop until Winter, and— 
The retail store turns its stock over many times in a year, has rela¬ 
tively little waste, and runs no weather risks (as does the farmer). 
Yet this store seems to think it is none of the farmer’s business 
what his goods sell for at retail. WHAT DO YOU THINK?—or don’t 
you think? 
TO ME AS CONSUMER, IT IS H. C. L.—but TO ME AS PRO¬ 
DUCER. IT IS JUST PLAIN H—L. JOHN D. pearmain. 
Framingham. Mass. 
