The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
949 / 
Big, Farm Problems in New York 
Questions to the Candidates 
The following problems have been addressed to 
prospective candidates for Governor of New York 
State: 
As a possible candidate for Governor of New York 
State, you would please farmers by a full and frank 
expression of your position on State legislation and 
administration of law to promote the following pur¬ 
poses : 
1. To repeal the State daylight saving law. 
2. To revise the State agricultural law for the 
purpose of eliminating useless and contradictory pro¬ 
visions and jokers, and to bring legislation and ad¬ 
ministration of the law up to present needs of the 
farm. 
3. To provide for the election of the Commis¬ 
sioner of Agriculture and the Commissioner of Foods 
and Markets by direct vote, at general elections, as 
single heads of separate departments. 
4. To revise the game laws to make it unlawful 
for anyone to hunt or fish on farm lands without the 
written consent of the owner; and to authorize farm¬ 
ers to kill birds or wild animals when necessary to 
protect their property, and to sell and transport 
same in the same manner as domestic animals. 
5. To revise the school laws to give greater au¬ 
thority to local boards for the management of 
country schools, and to increase the proportion of 
State moneys for the support of country schools. 
G. To improve back country roads to a condition 
consistent with trunk lines before constructing more 
new trunk highways, and thereafter to improve the 
back country roads with the main thoroughfares. 
7. To protect farmers and other industrial groups 
in the right to collective bargaining conducted under 
the authority of co-operative law. 
8. To establish recognition of the principle that 
farming is a business, and that to keep people con¬ 
tented on the farm to produce food, the products 
must sell for enough to pay the cost of production 
and a reasonable profit. 
9. To develop through the Food and Markets De¬ 
partment an economic and efficient system for the 
distribution of food, to the end that prices may be 
regulated by the law of supply and demand in an 
open market, and that the producer may receive an 
accurate return, and a fair share of the consumer’s 
dollar. 
10. Through custom and law and public utilities, 
our present system for the distribution of farm pro¬ 
ducts has been developed to encourage speculation 
and manipulation of prices by dealers. The system 
is so entrenched that it defies correction or reform 
by individual or isolated groups of producers. No 
power short of the State is able to cope with it. 
Shall the State assume the responsibility of reform¬ 
ing this system, and devise a plan purely in the 
interest of producer and consumer? 
11. Prompt and safe transportation, terminal 
markets, cold storage and public abattoirs are essen¬ 
tial to prevent waste, and economically distribute 
food. The interests that control these utilities also 
control distribution. Farmers do not have direct 
access to them all, and have no means of providing 
such utilities for themselves. What should be the 
policies of the State with reference to them? 
12. The delivery of milk in New York City costs 
more than the production and freight to the city. 
Farmers get, as a rule, less than the cost of produc¬ 
tion; and consumers complain of the high cost to 
them. This condition has existed for forty-odd 
years. Do you consider it a proper and desirable 
thing for the State, through the Commissioner of 
Markets, to devise a more economic system of dis¬ 
tribution, and demonstrate the actual cost of the 
service by delivering enough milk to test out the 
economy of a new system? 
1 hese are the fundamental problems of the farm, 
^our views on the subjects will be presented to 
farmers just as you express them. We invite a full 
and frank expression. 
THE BUBAL NEW-YORKER. 
Who is the Man—For Governor ? 
WHAT is WANTED.—If any candidate dodges 
I'.ink replies to these problems he will hardly ap- 
1 i d to the farm sentiment. If any make promises 
witli the expectation of forgetting them after elec- 
<! ( >n. we warn him in advance that he will be eon- 
i on ted at the critical time with the pledges made 
now. 
SELECTING CANDIDATES.—Usually a half¬ 
dozen men in each county pick the men for office 
in each county of the State; and less than a dozen 
select the candidates for Governor and other State 
offices. They are selected largely for the connec¬ 
tions that make it possible for them to secure con¬ 
tributions to the campaign fund, and for the assur¬ 
ance that, if elected, they will make places for party 
workers. These candidates have the party backing 
iti the primaries, and when it comes to election day 
iarmers have no choice but to vote for one or the 
other of the political party candidates. If indi¬ 
vidually they are not committed to the interests 
opposed to agriculture, the real leaders of the par- 
lies are, and so we go on year after year playing 
into the hands of men who do not want the farm 
to pay a profit. 
COSTS OF LABOR.—The commodities they make 
•in the factory and in the shop by the labor of one 
day of eight hours cost the farmer as much as he 
gets for products that cost him three days of 14 
hours.each to produce. The real basis of value is 
the total amount of labor required from remote 
beginning to end to produce the commodity. The 
price is what we have to pay or take. If the price 
and the real value were the same, there would be 
no complaint; but through the middleman system 
prices are manipulated so that the speculator gets 
the lion’s share, and this system can be maintained 
ctily by government protection. It can be changed 
only by taking government support away from it. 
It is evident that the beneficiaries of this system 
will not change it to the farmers’ gain and their 
own loss. If it is changed it must be changed by 
farmers themselves. 
THE FARMERS’ CHOICE.—This paper is not 
in politics. No one connected with it is in politics, 
nor ever has been. We have no candidate for any 
office; but this is a farm paper, speaking as best 
we can for the interests of the farm, and we think 
the time has come when farmers should help select 
the candidates for office, who have power when 
elected to perpetuate the present system or to 
change it. We make no selections. We do not even 
suggest. We ask farmers to suggest their own choice. 
MAJORITY RULE.—We will support the candi¬ 
date who receives a majority of the farm vote. We 
have been ruled long enough by minority rule. If 
popular government is to endure, the will of the 
majority must prevail. We have faith in the intel¬ 
ligence and integrity of the people as a whole. The 
majority are honest and want a stable, equitable 
government. 
FARM CANDIDATES.—Nearly a dozen farm can¬ 
didates have been suggested. No one has yet ex¬ 
pressed a preference for any of the announced po¬ 
litical candidates. None of the announced political 
candidates has been mentioned. If they are later, 
we will put them in. We want this list to represent 
farm wishes, not only for Governor, but for any 
office or any measure that farmers think affects 
their welfare. This is not an appeal for an office 
for any favorites. It is rather a search for a man 
to serve an interest that has heretofore been 
neglected, not to say abused. 
When we have replies to the “farm problems” by 
candidates, we will print synopses of them, and then 
ask for a vote. If you have better candidates either 
on or off the farm, send their names along. 
The Hill Farmers and the Governor 
lour request as regards nomination for Governor 
looks like a fine suggestion to me. as we farmers are fed 
up on the city politician. In fact, most hill farmers 
have little use for politics, or rather partyism. The 
hill country is going to pieces in this State. People 
judge agriculture from the poop deck of a touring car 
along the State roads, and it looks good, but I tell you 
the hill country is in bad shape. For 20 years the rural 
people have been deserting, but for the past two they have 
stampeded. Our help and young men get $5 to $S for eight 
hours in the nearest city, instead of $3 for 14 hours on 
the farms, and they leave for the bright lights. Under 
our intolerable school system the children are not taught 
in the rural schools except the rudiments, and then they 
must leave for high school in town, and they never come 
back. The farmer himself tires of the abominable roads 
and the dead robbery of the buyers, and he sells out and 
leaves also,, and the countryside is being deserted. 
Nor is this confined to the back country now. A town 
man told me yesterday that he had a fine farm, worth 
$150 per acre, first-class buildings, within a mile of a 
station, deserted and unproductive. Here along and in 
the valley are 25 deserted homes and five big farms 
vacant that a few years back housed contented people. 
The towns and cities have drained the back country 
of fertility and money for years, and now the manhood 
is going the same road. Bitterly will they pay in the 
end. They hog the highway money and build fine road¬ 
ways for pleasure, while the rural roads go to pieces, 
many of them now being unfit for travel. They make a 
curse of our educational system and spring abuses like 
the sanitary closet steal and the township system on the 
district. They pay the farmer what they like for his 
produce, and if it. were not for the mail-order houses 
they would take his scalp. 
In this county a plain farmer got a 1.700 majority 
over a town man for the Assembly, and I think in the 
State a farmer would poll the farm vote. I am in no 
sense a politician, and have no choice particularly; have 
all I can do to manage my own business, and then it is 
not always done as I would like to have it. I have a 
large acreage here, well improved and fertilized, and 
two good men who run it on a share basis. 
I certainly think your recent farm referendum was a 
fine idea. There should be ways provided to give the 
farmers more chance to express their views. Most of the 
Farm Bureaus are operated for the benefit of the men on 
the good roads close to the county seat. Farmers are re¬ 
luctant to leave their work on the back farms in good 
weather, and in bad times the roads are not fit for a 
car, so it is seldom there is a representative meeting 
of the people far back, so a few men have the whole 
say. Our only outlet for the back people is through 
the agricultural papers, and I often think they are our 
best friends, and certainly our most faithful instructors. 
The men who speak at the institutes and farmers’ meet¬ 
ing generally give us stuff that the farm papers have 
worn threadbare with discussion. 
I don’t see any more about that Karakul sheep 
matter. Have they given it up? We run business on 
the old time and fortunately the milk trains do the 
same. Milk at $60 per ton and feed at $80 to $100 
sounds bad. and is worse. b. l. Hathaway. 
Schuyler Co., N. Y. 
R. N.-Y.—As for that Karakul sheep case we under¬ 
stand the courts have not decided whether the law ie 
“constitutional’’ or not. In the meantime the Karakul 
sheep man seems to be still on deck in the Department. 
New Jersey Dairymen Talk 
4 
A resolution adopted by our local branch of the 
Dairymen’s League cites the fact that the distributor 
has caused to be posted in our milk stations in Hunter¬ 
don County. New Jersey, a letter stating that the milk 
for April is to be purchased on a 3.6 per cent butterfat 
basis, with a deduction of four cents for each one-tenth 
of one per cent below 3.6 per cent, and an addition of 
four cent9 for each one-tenth of one per cent above 3.6 
per cent, with a base price figure on the Dairymen’s 
League scale of $2.55 at 200 miles on three per cent 
milk, with four cents for each one-tenth of one per cent 
in excess of three per cent. 
The preamble further asserts that a well-defined prop¬ 
aganda has been launched to prepare producers to ac¬ 
cept a change of standard from 3 to 3.5 per cent fat 
test; that butterfat is now and has been worth 7.3 cents 
ft point above the three per cent basis, and that the 
proposed changes would be at the expense of the pro¬ 
ducer; that the whole problem of fat content of milk 
has been carefully studied, and that milk of a low fat 
content approaches nearest to human milk, and is best 
suited to infant consumption and development of the 
human race, it was therefore resolved that the executive 
committee of the Dairymen’s League shall make no 
price or figure any scale in the sale of League milk on 
any other basis for butterfat than three per cent and 
premium added for each one-tenth of one per cent in 
excess of three per cent. 
We ask you to publish this view to give opportunity 
for wider discussion. martin smith. 
Some Milk Conditions in Pennsylvania 
At a recent meeting of the Lakewood, Pa., branch of 
the Dairymen’s League there was a thorough discussion 
of the local and general milk situation. Our cow-tester 
found an average income of 16c above the feed eost for 
the first 11 head tested in April, which netted farmers 
from 25c to 70c per day to cover their expenses and 
keep a family. A preamble and resolution was sent to 
the press. The preamble expressed : 
A recognition of our dependence on the Dairymen’s 
League as our hope in the dairy industry. 
Recognition of the fact that dealers and manufactur¬ 
ers of milk are actuated by a purpose to maintain a 
monopoly at the expense of both producer and con¬ 
sumer. 
Assertion that the price of milk for six months prior 
to April 1 and cost of production did not leave a living 
for the milk producer. 
A radical cut in the price of milk for April, coupled 
with the increasing cost of feed, leaves the dairyman 
with an actual cash loss, and a continuation of the 
present condition would bankrupt every man depending 
on the production of milk for a livelihood. 
Labor and supplies are increasing and likely to go 
higher; milk alone is the exception. Farm labor has 
practically vanished; farms are being abandoned and 
their owners seeking employment in the factories and 
railroads. 
Through the month of March, when much was being 
said about a surplus, our dealers were inspecting barns 
and soliciting milk from dairymen who had never 
before shipped milk, and closing the co-operative butter 
factory in our territory, and as soon as the April price 
was fixed an extra effort was made by the dealers to 
secure new patrons. 
We are informed that no surplus now exists in New 
York, and condensed milk has advanced one dollar per 
case; butter and eggs have also advanced in price, and 
we believe the March conditions were brought about 
to deceive our officers and affect contract prices. 
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that we advise 
our officers to insist on prices that will assure the milk 
producer a living, and that if this cannot be secured no 
contract be made. 
We believe also that the milk business will never 
be satisfactory until the large dealers are eliminated 
entirely. The aim of the Dairymen’s League should 
be to market the milk products themselves. 
The resolution also suggested the following: 
That the local managers and selling stations bo re¬ 
quired to furnish the secretary of the local branches 
with the amount of milk produced by each patron, and 
the one cent per hundred commission bo collected by 
him and forwarded to the secretary of the League. 
Also that all officers of the League be elected by writ¬ 
ten ballot at the meeting place of each local branch. 
We also recommend that all changes of contract 
changing the method of adjusting prices of market quo¬ 
tations be submitted to the membership of the League 
before going into effect. h. A. greenwood. 
