190 
The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
I had a letter the other day from a 
farmer which is not unlike others coming 
at this season. It runs about as follows. 
“I have always been a Democrat. Never 
voted any other ticket until last year. _ I 
got disgusted with the present Admime- 
tration and voted the Republican ticket. 
Now I am sorry for it, because I have 
waited more than two months and find 
little improvement in business. I rices 
are still low and times are hard. 
Now this man evidently believes in 
miracles, or he would not expect that our 
business situation could be completely 
changed in 75 days. The new Administra¬ 
tion will not be in power for 60 days yet. 
How can our friend expect it to bring 
‘good times” even before it gets control 
of things? Even then no thoughtful man 
will expect any miracle or quick change. 
No one promised any such thing, for 
everyone knows that a chronic disease ol 
either the human body or the nations 
business cannot be cured by any quick 
remedy. Sometimes the disease gets too 
far and can only be partly helped by a 
great operation. That was the case ot 
France just before the French Revolution. 
In a republic, like ours, it becomes a case 
of “We have got to do it ourselves. Ao 
party nor set of men can do it for us 
except as we make them do it. 
This man is like too many of us. W e vote 
in a “change” and then lack the patience 
to wait until the change can be counted 
OTt - ***** 
Very likelv the following incident will 
illustrate what I mean. In a certain 
western town there were two retired 
farmers. They were a_ little over 50 
years old, but they got tired of farming, 
rented their farms and moved to town. 
They had no business to quit active work, 
but they did it, came to town and rented 
little houses where they just about halt 
existed. Their wives kept busy with 
housework, and there were church and 
social organizations which interested 
them. Their daughters taught school, and 
thus kept body and mind active. 1 he 
men found nothing to do. The girls weie 
a little ambitious for social favors, and 
thev objected when father proposed doing 
manual labor. These retired farmers did 
not have capital enough to go into busi¬ 
ness, and they had not been trained for 
clerical work. So they had nothing to 
do They became mere loafers, and as 
you know such characters produce ( noth¬ 
ing in this world except a grouch. the 
rented farm had to support two families 
and. as usually happens, the income grew 
smaller as the farm lost its character as 
a home and became only a piece of over¬ 
worked land. ***** 
4nd as these men became more and 
more shabby and cynical and slouching, 
thev lost more and more of their health. 
On'the farm they worked hard and were 
hearty eaters. Mother was a good cook, 
and as she had more time in town she took 
great pride in presenting a fine table. i he 
result was that father ate more than he 
did on the farm, while about all the exer¬ 
cise he took was to walk down town and 
sit on a bench with his cronies, where 
thev discussed men and women and af¬ 
fairs with great freedom. If you think 
the conditions of this town were abnor¬ 
mal. look about in any country place and 
see if you can find any such characters . 
There was a section of this town called 
“Widowville.” It was largely Pf°P locl ”- v 
retired farmers and their families. 1 he 
women, kept busy with their household 
duties, took exercise enough to keep m 
good health. The men kept on eating as 
heartily as they did on the farm, while 
they took little or no exercise. Thus the 
women lived on, while the men bit and 
chewed themselves to death, as a local 
paper once put it. Some of you may 
think I am a little disrespectful and hard 
in saying this, but I know it to lie true, 
and most likely you can find just such char 
acters in your country town. The gieat 
majority of men who get past oO years 
eat too much and eat the wrong kind ol 
food, and the effect of this overfeeding 
is seen in their mind, their body, their 
family life and their influence upon other 
human beings. These two retired farmers 
that I speak of both followed _ the line 
of least resistance” with their 
which runs straight into the mouth. _ As 
a result, they developed rheumatism, 
‘colds.” headache and a disposition about 
as considerate as a cross-cut saw. F oi 
too many vitamines may undermine vital¬ 
ity if you do not work them off. 
***** 
Now the wives of these men loved their 
husbands and did not wish to be charter 
residents of “Widowville,” so they per¬ 
suaded their good men to “go and see a 
doctor.” There were two doctors m town. 
One was an old resident who had grown 
ip with the country. He knew every 
family for miles around; in fact, he knew 
too much about their habits and failings. 
Ofttimes his comments about, their private 
habits were even more bitter than his 
doses of medicine. Possibly you could 
carry his equipment of science in a thim¬ 
ble, "but it would require a barrel to con¬ 
tain his homely sense. The other doctor 
was a voung man—just come to town. 
He boasted of the wonderful cures he had 
performed. To hear him tell it the age 
of miracles had come again. The town 
lawyer had looked up his record else¬ 
where, and it ran back to strange places, 
but what can you do when a man is a 
good ‘mixer,” attends church regularly, 
sings louder than anyone else and is 
always on deck at “sociables” and fairs? 
And did it not happen that frequently, 
right in church or at an entertainment, 
some one would come and whisper to the 
doctor, and off he would rush on some 
“errand of mercy” out into the country? 
Most of these trips led nowhere—per¬ 
haps out to some lonely country place 
and back again, but it was great practice 
in pretending that he had a practice ! It 
was easier for Dr. Quick to do this, be¬ 
cause Dr. Slow was not a “mixer” except 
of drugs and pills, and he knew just how 
much sincerity there lay beneath the skin 
of his people. 
***** 
When at last Farmer Brown decided it 
was time to “see a doctor” Mrs. Brown 
took charge of him. So she piloted him 
to Dr. Quick, the celebrated “specialist,” 
who was such a pblite and agreeable man. 
And Mrs. Brown had a daughter who had 
grown tired of teaching. As Dr. Quick 
had no wife—at least in sight—who 
knows? And Dr. Quick bowed and 
smiled his appraising smile. He thumped 
Farmer Brown on the chest, listened 
gravely at his heart, looked at his tongue 
and took down one of his great books and 
read a page or two, and then delivered 
his verdict: . 
“Yon have a combination of cardialgia 
and cardiac hypertrophy. You have come 
to me just in time. I have made a spe¬ 
cial study of these diseases and have in¬ 
vented a secret remedy for them. It con¬ 
tains rare drugs, which are very costly. 
I can let you have a bottle at half price 
because I want to study your case, but 
you must solemnly promise not to let 
even a spoonful get into the hands of any 
other doctor. It will cost you^ $10 a bot¬ 
tle and make you a new man.” _ 
It went hard, but Brown paid it. He 
took one big dose that night, and felt so 
good that he went to a temperance meet¬ 
ing with his wife and made a good speech. 
The doctor persuaded him to buy 10 bot¬ 
tles ahead, so as to be stocked up. Then 
one day Dr. Quick happened to see a 
quiet man getting off the train. If was 
a secret service man. They found Dr. 
Quick’s horse tied in a shed at a railroad 
station 10 miles away where the doctor 
ha,! boarded a train. Farmer Brow’n was 
left with 10 bottles of strong brandy col¬ 
ored with prune juice and flavored with 
calomel and sulphur. 
***** 
Happily Farmer Green w T as blessed 
with a wife of sterner stuff. She was a 
relative of Dr. Slow, and she dragged her 
unwilling husband before that medical 
despot. The doctor did not need to punch 
and knead him, or even look _ at his 
tongue. He just sat back in his chair 
and chuckled : 
“Henry, I don’t know the Latin for 
your disease, but in plain English it is 
packed-belly and stuffed paunch. You eat 
mince pie three times a day. buckwheat 
cakes and sausages, fried meat and pota¬ 
toes, doughnuts and all the rest, when 
your teeth are gone and you don’t exer¬ 
cise enough to sweat a hair. You pack 
yourself in woolen cloth like a mummy 
and think of nothing but your troubles. 
I can give you a dose of calomel, but if 
you want to get well you have got to do 
it yourself. Pull off those thick under¬ 
clothes. Get out and saw wood. You and 
your kind have been talking about the 
widows of this town—worthy women, all 
of them. Now go out and gain back your 
health by making reparation by sawing 
their wood and spading their gardens. 
And, Mary, don’t you let this man have 
any more mince pie for breakfast. Take 
an' ax and smash in that barrel of hard 
cider. Make him eat cereals and fruit 
and milk and eggs. Give that sausage to 
your poor neighbors, and make this man 
of yours work off his rheumatism. Six 
months more and he couldn’t do it. If 
you don’t want to be mayor of Widow¬ 
ville make this man eat less and work 
more. My charge is $2, and Henry must 
pay it in splitting wood out in my shed. 
Come, Henry, I’ll show you where the 
ax is!” 
February 5, 1921 
And Henry went. His wife held hinS 
up to it, and he got back his health. 
Next year the tenant quit, and Henry 
came home one night and said: 
“Mary, let’s go back to the farm and 
try it again. I feel good. I’ll bet we 
can be happy out there.” 
And they went—while “sacred to the 
memory” is what is printed over Brown. 
***** 
Now perhaps the farmer who wrote me 
that letter heard some campaign orator 
who promised about what Dr. Quick did. 
He cannot make good on it. The political 
disease which afflicts this country cannot 
be talked away. It has been coming on 
for years, and it will take years more to 
remove it. We need patience rather than 
politics. The advice of Dr. Slow is worth 
far more than the quack remedies of Dr. 
Quick. Only about one-third of the peo¬ 
ple of this country are farmers. Two- 
thirds are consumers. When you come 
to think of it that is not so bad, as it 
gives us less competition than would be 
found if there were more farmers. We 
shall, in time, make a readjustment of 
farms and farm labor, and worl out of 
the depression through which we are now 
going. We have got to learn to make 
our demands so fair and just and so 
nearly right, that the town and city peo¬ 
ple must recognize them. When the Farm 
Bureau Federation . offers 15.000,000 
bushels of corn for starving Europe it 
does far more for agriculture than if it 
sold that corn at an advanced price. When 
the Dairymen’s League voluntarily re¬ 
duces the price of milk it lays the founda¬ 
tion for an understanding with the con¬ 
sumers which will be of wonderful value. 
We have all got to be big and broad in 
our views of public service, and “we have 
got to do it ourselves .” That means be¬ 
gin right at home. The strength of a 
piece of cloth lies not in the entire sheet, 
but in each tiny square where the strands 
meet. You and I are the squares. Un¬ 
less we can get together with our families 
and friends how can the cloth have any 
strength? Let’s all quit thinking disaster 
and begin to think hope. H. w. C. 
Why Cut Crop 
W: 
Let Us Carry Your Risk 
THAT will 1921 bring forth ? Bumper yields or crop failure ? Profit or loss? 
No one knows. But here’s a word of encouragement from a great insti* 
. . tution with total assets of more than $62,000,000. 
The Home Insurance Company, New York, will guarantee you against loss of 
your investment in your 1921 crops should your yield, in consequence of insects, 
disease, drought, excessive moisture, flood, frost or winter kill, fall below the 
actual costs of growing and harvesting. 
These causes which are beyond your control may ruin the entire crop after 
you have invested in plowing, fitting, fertilizing and seeding. But you can pro¬ 
tect yourself against such loss through a Crop Investment Policy in the Home 
Insurance Company, New York. 
This Company, established in 1853, has protected farmers from loss through fire, 
lightning, windstorms and hail. It has paid policy holders more than $200,000,000. 
Its record of fair dealing for nearly seventy years assures you of prompt and 
satisfactory adjustment. 
The rates upon this Crop Investment Policy are based upon your crop yields 
and failures over a series of years. They are fair and reasonable. Safeguard, your 
labor; protect your investment; save worry; eliminate risk of failure. Investigate! 
Write for literature and name of nearest agent. 
THE HOME Company NEW YORK 
Farm Department, Crop Investment Division F 
HOME INSURANCE BUILDING 312 UNIVERSITY BLOCK 
137 South La Salle Street Syracuse, New York 
Chicago, Illinois 
Established 1853 
JpifW 
n IlilW 
