1550 
The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
October 2, 1920 
contest f 
AT least one of the 
j(~\ stores in your 
neighborhood will have 
a window display 
of Colgate’s Ribbon 
Dental Cream. These 
windows will be ready 
to photograph begin¬ 
ning October 1st. 
Anyone not over sev¬ 
enteen years of age may 
try for generous money 
prizes, which will be 
given for the best photo¬ 
graphs of a Colgate 
display. 
Growing up'with 
COLGATE’S 
$ 1005 .QO in Prizes 
Look for a store window with the Colgate 
pictures and packages in it. The dealer will 
gladly let you take a picture of his window. 
Look on the back covers of some of the 
October magazines where you will find all the 
rules of the contest. Or write to Colgate & Co., 
Dept. 42, 199 Fulton Street, New York, for 
particulars. 
Ask an older friend who takes pictures or the 
man from whom you buy films to advise ycu 
howto photograph windows. Taking pictures 
through plate glass is a tricky operation and 
one that you may never have tried before. 
And let parents remember, too, that by 
encouraging the boys and girls to enter this 
unique contest, there is not only added zest to 
Kodak-ing, but a fresh interest in the import¬ 
ance of brushing the teeth regularly, night and 
morning. The delicious flavor of Ribbon 
Dental Cream is an important help in forming 
that habit for health. 
Colgate’a—the safe dentifrice—is indorsed 
by more dentists than any other dentifrice. 
115 CASH PRIZES 
Enter your photographs 
In the contest, for which 
prizes will be awarded 
as follows: 
For the best photo¬ 
graph ... $100 
For the 3 next 
best . . $50 each 
For the 10 next 
best . . $25 each 
For the 101 next 
best . . $5 each 
Prizes will be awarded 
before January 1st, and 
winners will be announc¬ 
ed in an early 1921 issue 
of this magazine. Incase 
of a tie, each will receive 
the f u 11 value of the prize 
tied for. 
“STAMMERING! 
“TURKISH TOWELS” 
Mill Seconds that are Good Value 
Its Cause and (Sire ** 
You can be quickly cured. Send 10 ceuts for 288-pnse 
cloth bound book on Stammering and Stuttering. It 
tells how I cured mveelf after Stammering and Stut¬ 
tering for 20 years. BENJAMIN N. B0GUE (10) 
■ 4802 Bogue' Building Indianapolis. Indiana , 
We will send you POSTPAID FOR FOUR 
DOLLARS Our Special Bundle of Assorted 
Towels—Retail Value Five Dollars. 
Full Value Guaranteed 
Money Hack If Dissatisfied 
STERLING TEXTILE MILLS Clinton, Ma*s. 
This is the Only Salt for You 
Light, smooth, flaky—every grain white, pure and free- 
running. This is the salt that fills every farm purpose 
and makes the farmer’s work easier because it dissolves 
instantly, penetrates quickly and gives fine, full flavor. 
Farmers in every part of the country have learned to look for the bag 
with this signature on it— 
COLONIAL 
SPECIAL FARMER'S 
SALT 
They get all salt — no adulteration of any kind, no lumps, no grit, no 
moisture. Best for every farm purpose — butter making, meat curing, 
cooking, baking, etc. Packed only in 70 pound bags, which when empty 
make splendid toweling. Be sure to get the genuine. If your dealer 
does not have it, write us, giving his name. 
Manufactured by THE COLONIAL SALT CO., Akrou, Ohio 
Chicago, III. Buffalo, N. Y. Boston, Mass. Atlanta, Ga. 
The Thoughts of a Plain Farm Woman 
A Green Fall. —The first of Septem¬ 
ber finds this farm and its workers as 
busy as they can be, but, for that matter, 
I can’t think of any time during the year 
when the least excuse for a let-up or 
short vacation offers. The fields and hills 
never looked so green and fresh as they 
do this early Fall month. You would 
think we were in the midst of June in¬ 
stead of beginning the last season of the 
year. After-feed and pastures fairly 
gleam with greenness, and the cattle are 
living high, indeed. The heavy rains of 
August helped many crops a lot, but we 
cut about IS tons less of hay than usual 
owing to the prolonged drought at the 
critical time. We have a big field of 
fine early cabbage to dispose of this week, 
and are rather fearful that the price will 
he discouragingly low. as are all crops 
this Summer. Practically every farmer 
iu the county has raised some late cab¬ 
bage this year, and most of it looks very 
promising. Next Spring, if the crop is 
given away now. we can look for greatly 
o 
reduced acreage in not only cabbage, but 
about everything else one can grow. The 
big producers will continue along their 
usual linos, as they have the machinery 
and all paraphernalia to do with, and 
cannot well change: but the multitude of 
small farmers who have invaded the vari¬ 
ous fields this year will decide the end 
hardly justifies the means, and as a re¬ 
sult, I imagine, these money crops will 
uot. be so plentiful again for awhile. 
Tiie Potato Crop. —Our early potatoes 
did not turn out so profitably for us this 
August as last. We adopted our usual 
tactics of roadside selling, but consumers 
failed to take advantage of their oppor¬ 
tunities to save a few cents iu the num¬ 
bers of previ(fUs seasons, and at this writ¬ 
ing the main crop is still in the ground, 
and will be disposed of at the car later 
on for what they will bring. We started 
iu at ,$2.50 per bushel when grocers six 
miles away were retailing for well over 
$.°>; then came down as the market de¬ 
scended to $2, and now the sign is still 
reading $1.50. It kept us changing our 
sign and our “want ads” about every day, 
as the market in potatoes went all to 
pieces in a week, and the “high cost of 
potatoes” tumbled to the bottom. We 
never grew such nice ones—Early Rose 
and Puritan—and so far* none has shown 
signs of the widespread rot, as the 
sprayer, bought new this season for $175. 
was kept on the job as often as the rest 
of the work would allow. 
The Pleasurable Far. —I have never 
until this year really longed for a ear, 
hut. like all the other Toms, Dicks and 
ITarrys, the germ has finally caught me, 
and I catch myself looking enviously out 
of the window as the two-a-miuute auto¬ 
mobiles fly past the house. Probably if 
we were not located within eight minutes’ 
walking distance of two railroads, and on 
a State road upon which run a daily 
motor bus and express, I should have felt 
the urge far sooner. It is very doubtful 
if we have a car another year, even a 
flivver, but when one gets to the stage 
where he or she admits that the things 
are pretty nice—the obvious is likely to 
happen any time. T have always said 
that an automobile would get us if we 
didn’t watch out. and when the fever is 
once developed it takes a pretty sensible 
and steady person or family to resist the 
great temptation to ride instead of walk. 
For those who can really afford a car, 
there can be no nicer pleasure on earth, 
but in the hands of those who have to 
mortgage the very clothes on their backs 
to feed the beast, autos are curses, indeed. 
This does not promise to be flit* profitable 
farm year that last was, so I fear that 
our personal car dream will go a-glimmer- 
ing for 1921. And I hope we won’t own 
a car until the time comes when not a 
single thought will have to lie given to the 
cost of gasoline or tires, tubes and garage 
bills in general. I am positive that there 
would be mighty little enjoyment in a 
world where one was constantly worrying 
for the wherewithal to keep a car. 
Slump in Fabbage.— Since beginning 
this letter things have happened in our 
little farm world which bid to confirm my 
gloomy predictions about crop returns 
this Fall. We called up a big buyer of 
country produce and asked him what he 
would give for our carload of early cab¬ 
bages. “Not bothering about cabbage this 
year.” was his terse and surprising an¬ 
swer. But there was our crop ready and 
waiting to be cut—and it was decidedly 
up to us, the producers, to bother about 
it. So we called up another big dealer 
who does business on a larger scale thau 
number one, and inquired what he would 
give us for our nice field of early cab¬ 
bage. This man replied that lie' could 
buy all the cabbage he could possibly use 
in his immediate viciuity for $5 or‘$6 a 
ton. provided he could sell it in turn, and 
that meantime he was making no offers 
whatever (September 1) for the crop 
Rut next day this dealer looked up our 
farm, inspected the large, solid heads, and 
offered us $6 a ton for same, provided 
lie could find a buyer himself, or so he 
claimed. Wo told him that our cabbage 
should not he sacrificed for $0 a tou. and 
the cows should somehow consume every 
shred before we took less than $10. We 
were also further informed that late cab¬ 
bage will he probably no higher, as there 
is a mammoth crop everywhere, and the 
market is glutted now, and will likely 
remain so indefinitely. By the time these 
words are in print the unhappy and most 
discouraging situation may have mended 
some: T certainly pray so. for the col¬ 
lapse of their money crops to many fann¬ 
ers will mean bankruptcy, and near ruin 
in some instances, while the effect on the 
others will ho shown next year when the 
cabbage and potatoes and onions and so 
forth will be surely reduced—and, as 
usual, the consumer will pay. 
More Disappointment. — We were 
asked at what price our earlv potatoes 
were selling, and when told for $1.50 a 
bushel, this man said: “You will prob¬ 
ably not get more thari half that later ou 
at the car.” Encouraging, isn’t it? One 
car hardly blame the producer for feeling 
hitter and blue this Fall, when his crops, 
raised with so much personal toil, bring 
next to nothing, and even fail to pay for 
their seed and fertilizer. He will reason, 
if this keeps up, that he is indeed a fool 
to feed the world for nothing, while shell¬ 
ing out the top prices for others’ prod¬ 
ucts—and he will keep ou leaving the 
farm iu larger numbers. But the truth 
of the matter is that in one sense this 
would he wrong reasoning. Of late years 
farming has really become a lottery. - and 
if you have the gambling spirit, the farm 
certainly ought to appeal. As the Hope 
Farm man said in some recent notes, 
farmers gambled this Spring that staple 
crops would bring a good price this Fall 
because they were so high and scarce last 
IN inter and Spring, and so they went in 
head over heels to cash in while the cash¬ 
ing was good. And on this account, plus 
several others, food suddenly became too 
plentiful, with a resulting smash in prices 
—and the gambling farmers lost! 
Gambling in Drops. —Out in Califor¬ 
nia the lemon growers have been having 
troubles of their own on a similar plan, 
and the apple growers of Western New 
York are seeing their precious fruit rot 
on the ground and trees because the price 
is too insignificant to bother with. Rut 
another year, sick and tired of their work 
and crop ventures of this, farmers will let 
down several pegs, and we shall see fair 
prices and a good demand come back as a 
matter of course. It’s a gamble, and 
nothing more or less, and the lean years 
invariably follow the fat ones. Nineteen- 
nincteeu was an unusually fat year for 
the industrious, take it hv and large, and 
we might have known in the very nature 
of. things that nature doesn’t believe in 
being too easy with us for two seasons 
running. At least that is the way it 
looks to me at the eleventh hour, but sucb 
hindsight doesn’t sell our big potato crop 
at a profit, nor the early and late cab¬ 
bages. 
The Woman’s Share. — T was im¬ 
pressed by a letter in a recent R. N.-Y. 
from a farm woman who brought out fho 
truth that it is the woman who too often 
suffers when the crops fail to materialize 
or the price goes to rock bottom. This 
woman remarked that Fall harvests mean 
well-earned dresses and furniture and im¬ 
provements to nine farmers’ wives out of 
ten, and if anything comes up to deprive 
the farmer of his expected dollar, it is 
the patient and long-suffering woman who 
does the going without, and so feels, the 
shortage most acutely. I believe this is 
so to a greater degree than is generally 
appreciated, and there is nothing to he 
done about it. either, so far as T can see. 
One can only hope that in the fat years 
the farmers’ wives everywhere “get 
theirs.” w ith perhaps enough over to last 
them through the lean years. For .it is a 
notorious fact that a gambler and his wife 
live high one day and starve the next, 
and if that isn’t, the fate of the modern 
farmer I’ll eat my words. 
Falling Prices. —It begins to look as 
if the old TT. C. D. was gradually fading 
away, and if food brings an apology for a 
price, T hope shoes and clothes and neces¬ 
saries and luxuries of all descriptions will 
follow suit and stay there. Tf they don’t, 
just watch the world go almost hungry for 
a year or two until the farmers get over 
nursing their wrongs. But it is funny 
that this was the Winter that all non- 
farmers were going to starve to death 
because everyone had left the farm for 
tin* factory, and so on. From our obser¬ 
vations of today, it would look as if there 
were about nine farmers too many out of 
every ten, while the lone tenth would 
have been ample to raise the needed food 
at a decent profit. Yes. our job is a lot¬ 
tery. and we bet and lost. Rut who will 
be so rash ns to prophecy the winder I >l - 
next year? H. s. K. \v. 
