1634 
farmers are in a bad way. Now wo don't want to 
bo gloomy and pessimistic, but wo do want to faco 
the facts. To begin with, I doubt if the average 
general crops in this section, in addition to such 
charges as interest, use of land, horse and machine 
labor," taxes, fertilizer, seed, etc., could stand a man 
labor charge of 25 cents per. hour and come out with 
a profit. The average wage hereabout is 40 cents! 
If we are to run the farm as a business we must 
count all charges in. 
A CHANGING PERIOD.—It is certainly true that 
at present we are in a period of change. Rome of 
my dairymen friends get up at 3:30 a. m. to milk. 
They doubt if they are making money, considering 
the price of feed and labor. Poor cows are also a 
big factor in cutting down the profits, but as a rule 
their owners don't realize or won't admit it. Never¬ 
theless they certainly do not receive a satisfactory 
return for the hard work and long hours and con¬ 
stant attention that dairy farming demands. 
FARM AND CITY LABOR.—People are fond of 
drawing comparisons between the farmer and the 
city man. Unfortunately there is no class in the city 
to which the farmer can be directly compared. A 
farmer may do some kinds of hard manual labor that 
the lowest laborer working with pick and shovel is 
called upon to perform: at the same time he has 
.$10,000 or $20,000 invested in his farm, hires one or 
more men, and must have a vast fund of practical 
knowledge and a good deal of executive ability about 
him. He is factory owner, manager and factory 
hand all in one. 
FORMS OF PAYMENT.—It. seems to me accord¬ 
ingly that a farmer should be paid in the following 
three ways: First, a good return on his investment, 
rather high because of the risk involved: second, 
something for his management and technical knowl¬ 
edge: third, a good wage for his labor. This would 
be satisfactory to anyone; but in a good many cases 
the whole family is compelled to grind away merely 
to make ends meet. Of course there are good farmers 
who make money, and poor ones who don’t; but I 
am thinking of the great majority of us who are not 
exceptional in either direction. Would we better 
our lot by putting our farm capital in some sub¬ 
stantial security and working in town for good 
money, without the responsibility that a farm en¬ 
tails? There is a lot to be said on either side. 
FARM ADVANTAGES.—Personally, I believe that 
the man of average ability, who is not. ambitious to 
make a lot. of money, and who likes the country, is 
best off on the farm. His living conditions are much 
better there, if his advantages are not so many. And 
if moderately successful there is a great deal more 
satisfaction in the management and varied work of 
the farm than there is in most city jobs. It is true 
that farming is on an unsound business basis, that 
it is uncertain, that the work is hard, and that at 
present the farm cannot compete with the city for 
labor. Nevertheless, in many ways the farm offers 
the greater opportunity. 
PRODUCER AND CONSUMER,—But what makes 
my blood boil is to find a slow sale for farm produce, 
even at a low price, and then to read on the bill of 
fare of a very modest restaurant such items as these : 
Corn on the cob. loc 
(One ear) 
Tomato salad.. 3oc 
(Six slices of tomato and a leaf of lettuce!) 
What is there fair about it? n. n. s. 
New Jersey. 
“ The High Cost of Living ” 
A WRITER in the New Tori: Herald contributes 
the following to the high cost of living discus¬ 
sion : 
My wife and I last week went to an ordinary chop 
house in the Broadway district and ordered the follow¬ 
ing: _ _ 
Sirloin steak for two (about two pounds).$d.7.» 
Boiled potatoes (two)..5b 
Four rolls and two chunks of butter.50 
Two alligator pears at 65 cents each. 1.30 
1 'oil ee for two....... .*>0 
Two pieces of French pastry.50 
Total 
Tip for 
waiter. 
.$6.65 
. .75 
$7.40 
I do not think the restaurant.paid more than $1 for 
tiie steak. What potatoes, rolls and butter cost we all 
know, and alligator pears are sold at Washington Mar¬ 
ket at three for 25 cents. French pastry is sold to 
restaurants at six cents each. I do not believe that the* 
chop house proprietor paid more than $1.50 for the 
whole lot, and he charged me $6.65 for it. Besides, I 
had to pay his man who served the food the special 
wages of 75 cents. 
We estimate that the farmer who produced this 
food received a little less than 00 cents, or what we 
call a 0-cent dollar. This man, however, fiie.s high 
with sirloin steak and alligator pears. Most of us 
could hardly afford these delicacies, except uu some 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
holiday or rare occasion, with long preliminary fast¬ 
ing. Corned beef hash and apple pie would he nearer 
the limit with the majority of us. Suppose we 
feasted on these snbstantials at an average restau¬ 
rant in New York City—not. expensive nor yet. “com¬ 
mon." The bill would then he about as follows for 
two people: 
Corned beef hash.$1.00 
Bread and butter. .20 
I wo potatoes ..>0 
Apple pie .40 
t oil eo for two. .20 
$2.10 
’I qi foi m niter... ...o 
Both the dinner and the tip would stamp the. man 
and woman as “pikers” in most New York restau¬ 
rants of the “high class.” Yet a dairyman would he 
obliged to deliver over 50 quarts of milk or over two 
bushels of potatoes or nearly a barrel of apples in 
order to pay for it. And out of the $2.10 paid for 
this simple meal the farmers who shipped the food 
received not far from 18 cents! You must remember 
that in this big city nearly 2.000,000 eat at least one 
meal in a public restaurant each day! Yet the eat¬ 
ing-house keepers will probably say that owing to 
excessive “overhead charges” they are not making 
any money! Where does the money go to then? 
We are simply living to support and provide more or 
less easy jobs for an army of middlemen. The aver¬ 
age New York waiter probably gets more per hour 
in “tips” than the average fanner can earn in a 12- 
hour day of hard labor. What are you going to do 
.1 Fair specimen of Winter itudUsh. Fig. <122 
about Hi Well, for one thing we are going to stay 
by tiie question until a clear majority of the Ameri¬ 
can people understand that there is such a thing as 
a 35-cent dollar, and also what that debased dollar 
means in the life of this nation. It was not possible 
to bring about Prohibition or the abolition of slavery 
until a majority of the plain people understood the 
sin and economic waste involved. When they under¬ 
stand the sin and waste of our present system of 
distribution they will clean up tiie trouble. Tiie first 
thing, therefore, is to make them understand and 
separate it from party politics. 
Why Wheat Yields Fall Off 
I have just been reading Mr. Massey’s comments on 
page 1535 concerning tiie cause of lower yield of wheat 
in North Carolina. Here in Montgomery County (M<1.) 
we hear again and again the comment that “This land 
does not produce wheat like it did a few years ago.” 
Various'causes are blamed—the weather, Hessian fly, 
fertilizer, etc.—but if one checks up closely I think that 
lie will find that the main fault is the one Mr. Massey 
speaks of, namely, the dependence put in fertilizer and 
the fact that the common rotation is corn, wheat, wheat, 
clover and Timothy two years, with Timothy usually 
predominating. Heavy applications of lime are made 
at frequent intervals, and year after year the humus 
lias burned out till it is a wonder that any reasonable 
yield is obtained at. all. 
I came recently from the hilly section of a neighboring 
State, where such practices brand a man as an incom¬ 
petent and would soon put him in (tie pool-house and 
put his farm on the retired list. My own experiences 
go to prove that my theory is correct, but I would like 
very much to hear from other farmers on this subject. 
13. L. SCOTT. 
1 AM not as familiar with Montgomery County as 
with oilier parts of the western side of the Chesa¬ 
peake. The portion near Washington never seemed 
to me ever to have been fertile, and doubtless there 
are far better sections of tiie county. But: it is 
doubtless true of the wheat-growing sections of 
Montgomery County as of sections in the State which 
October 2:’,, 1020 
I have observed more closely wherever the farmer 
lias depended on tiie use -of complete fertilizer mix¬ 
tures to produce crops, and lias neglected to main¬ 
tain and increase the organic decay, or what we call 
humus, in his soil, the production has decreased. 
The nitrifying organisms which thrive in the 
organic decay are starved out, and the farmer has 
loft the dead mixture of sand and clay, which he 
annually strives to galvanize into a sort of life ) n . 
gambling on the chances with the commercial fer¬ 
tilizers. And yet I have noticed that the best 
farmers, the men who apply brains to their work 
use fertilizing material more largely than the farmers 
who buy by brand names. They use the materials 
that they need to buy and cannot get through a good 
rotation of crops with the legumes for feed and 
luimus maintenance. 
The wheat crop especially demands plentiful sup¬ 
plies of phosphorus and in a natural wheat soil sel¬ 
dom demands artificial applications of potash if the 
supply in the soil is made available as needed In¬ 
judicious liming and the organic acids from the 
humus-making crops and manure. Then, since the 
farmer can get all the nitrogen needed from grain 
crops through the legume crops and thoir use either 
as manure direct or through feeding and returning 
tiie manure to the soil which grew them, the only 
plant food that needs to ho bought by the real wheat 
farmer is a carrier of phosphorus, of which the dis¬ 
solved phosphate rock or add phosphate is usually 
the cheapest and most readily available. I did not 
mean that all the wheat farmers in the best wheat 
lands of the Eastern Shore make 40 bushels of wheat 
an acre, for the majority of them do not, and in 
every section the majority of the men cultivating tiie 
soil are not the best farmers. But I know men who 
habitually make 40 bushels and sometimes more of 
wheat an acre. Not. In the section where I live, for 
in the sandy soil hero the best fanner in the country 
.could never make a paying crop of wheat, though 
some keep sowing wheat where soil conditions forbid 
good crops of that, grain. Talbot County for genera¬ 
tions has held the record for wheat—64% lmshels 
an acre. 
Too early sowing invites the Hessian fly, and too 
late risks winter-killing. Dependence on fertilizers 
and failing to maintain humus conditions in the soil 
is a very common cause of decreased crops of wheat. 
The soil dries out hard, and the fertilizer used floes 
not have its full effect, because of the lack of mois¬ 
ture to dissolve it. The clover sown on tin* wheat 
fails for the same reason after harvest. You say 
frequent and heavy applications of lime are used. 
This reminds me of wlmt I heard tiie witty institute 
lecturer, Boh Reeds, of Pennsylvania, tell tiie farmers. 
He said that many years ago the farmers of Penn¬ 
sylvania were so enthused by the results they got 
from their first use of lime that they came to the 
conclusion that lime was all they needed to make 
profitable crops. The old farmer and his son leaned 
against the fence and wondered what they were to 
do with all the wheat the lime was making. Years 
after the old man was laid to rest the son was lean¬ 
ing against the fence and wondering what the mis¬ 
chief ailed the land, for the wheat would not grow 
as it did. I have found (lmt light applications of 
lime once in six years will keep tiie soil in condition 
to make heavy crops of c-lovcr. And our best farmers 
have found that a short three-year rotation with 
cow peas, Roy beans and the annual Crimson clover 
will bring tin* most rapid improvement. Then, too, 
I feel sure that half a ton an acre of freshly water- 
slaked burnt lime is better than the tons and tons 
of ground limestone that the enthusiasts on natural 
carbonate advise. Farmers in many sections where 
lime was formerly used heavily have lessened the 
amount applied. T remember well that the rivers 
of the Eastern Shore of Maryland were lined with 
canal boats bringing lime from the Rchuylkill region 
of Pennsylvania, delivering lime to the shore farmers 
and others. Now ill the same sections you will not 
see a lime barge once a year. When I was a college 
student in tiie Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania 
the farmers were using as much as 200 bushels to an 
acre of lime. Today they would hardly use 2.» 
bushels. When a farmer who fails to study cause 
and effect applies lime for the first time to his soil 
which needed it, and notes the great effect produced, 
he is apt to jump to tiie conclusion that lime is a 
fine fertilizer and that if the one application does so 
much good that more will increase the benefit, '•lien 
by failing to maintain the lmmus conditions he finds 
that the lime has helped him impoverish his soil, 
while a judicious use of lime and plenty of legume 
crops would have added productiveness. Lime and 
fertilizing materials are important in good farming, 
hut brains are needed back of them to plan system¬ 
atically and to avoid waste, w. if. massev. 
