Hides and Shoe Leather 
Can you or any reader of The R. N.-Y. tell me what 
part of the consumer’s dollar I got ou a hide? The 
hide weighed over 45 lbs. On account of it being a 
first-class hide I got $2.20 for it. About four squares 
from this slaughter-house is a stoe store, which I have 
dealt with for years. In this store window are shoes 
marked $16 a pair. 1 do not think the shoes would 
weigh over 2 lbs. How many pairs could be made out 
of the hide? Did I get a. 35-cent dollar? a. n. h. 
Pennsylvania. 
Wo give it up! We are told that about 1 lb. of 
raw hide will make one square foot of leather. Per- 
haps 10 > qua re feet are required for making a pair 
of shoes. As a side light on this the papers veporf a 
recent meeting of the National Root and Shoe Man¬ 
ufacturers’ Association. They adopted a resolution 
condemning the proposed duty of 15 per cent on 
hides. Here is part of that resolution: 
Cattle arc raised for beef, and a tax on offal is in no 
sense protection. The price paid the producer for cattle, 
for slaughter, is based upon the value of the creature 
for href, and not on the value of the hide®, which must, 
he salted, cured and disposed of some weeks or months 
later. We object to being made the medium through 
which a fresh burden is laid on the whole people. 
That's good! When hides bring 5e per lb. and 
shoes cost $8 per lb. one would think this trade had 
laid burdens enough upon the people. 
A Consumer on the Food Situation 
Following is an extract from a letter written by 
a man in a New Jersey city to his father on a Penn¬ 
sylvania farm. Many consumers are being sys¬ 
tematically robbed by food dealers. Many high sal¬ 
aries paid in city industries are made necessary by 
the fearful cost of living—and the farmer pays for 
it. all in 35-cent dollars: 
I sometimes wnoder if your views on the necessary 
cost of I viug wouldn’t be materially altered if you had 
to depend on a city retail market for awhile for every¬ 
thing you used on the table. For example, turnips 
which you regard as of practically no value, sell here 
at 25c a quarter peck. < >ne medium-sized head of cab¬ 
bage purchased last week was 25c. Apples can be 
bought in the cash stores for from 5c per lb. to 5c apiece, 
and so on. 
Of course, shipping, handling, packing, selling, etc., 
all cost a lot of money these days, and is what one has 
to buy rather than the actual article itself. At the 
producing end there is a big difference in value between 
a bushel of potatoes, a bushel of onions, and a bushel 
of turnips, but so many other things than the value 
of the article itself have entered in, that by the time 
they reach the city consumer the difference in cost is 
negligible. If we ever get a car. I’m going to beat the 
game by getting stuff in the wholesale markets, but now 
with present costs of handling, etc., one simply has to 
band over his pocketbook to the retailer and grin. Just 
what chance the farmer has under present conditions 
of high freight and labor I can’t see, unless they com¬ 
bine and strike just like all the rest. An increase of 
200% in price paid the producer today would probably 
mean an actual increase in cost to the city consumer 
on vegetables and similar products of only a few per 
cent. * It is, of course, all wrong—but what is the an¬ 
swer going to be in the next few years? Labor and 
freight will, of course, come down—but slowly, and 
never to the pre-war level I can’t see bow the farm¬ 
er-; raising things on a relatively small scale, as most 
of them do in the Last, have much to look forward to 
in the next five years, unless they organize and get 
themselves in a position t<> meet the other big organi¬ 
zations, and force an expense plus profit wholesale 
price. This is, of course, what the big California fruit 
men have done. But how the Eastern farmer of the 
type most common in our section of Pennsyvania is 
going to get his share. I can’t see. F. 
Peanut Growers Use Parcel Post 
Last Summer the writer went to North Carolina 
to talk before the meeting of the Farmers' Union. 
Among other tilings he took along a package of pea¬ 
nuts. a boiled potato, and samples of tobacco, and 
other goods, just as they were bought in the regular 
markets here. We figured out the exact price paid 
for these goods and found what they cost per pound, 
bushel or yard. Then we inquired in North Caro¬ 
lina just what the farmers obtained for these same 
goods. The showing was remarkable. A yard of 
ordinary cotton cloth bought in our market town 
cost $2.45 per lb., while the growers in the South 
were obtaining less than 20c. Various kinds of to¬ 
bacco sold in this city brought $1.65 and’more per 
lb., while 14c was considered a good price in the 
South. The peanuts we took along sold here at the 
rate of 40c per lb., while the peanut growers in that 
territory were getting 6 and 7c. The difference was 
very striking, and we have long thought that some 
such statement should be made as a part of every 
farm gathering. Those peanut growers, however, are 
not going to stand for such a wide spread between 
their farms and the consumer. We now have cir¬ 
culars from the Virginia-Carolina Co-operative Pea¬ 
nut Excliaifge. with headquarters at Suffolk. Va. 
They say that the peanut growers of that territory 
are working on the principle that “the gods help 
those whp help themselves.” There is no question 
about that, although our slogan is a little different, 
and we would put it in another way. TFc have got 
to do it ourselves. At any rate, these peanut grow¬ 
ers are tired of seeing the.middlemen take such a 
large slice of the consumer’s dollar. They propose 
to overcome it by working the parcel post proposi- 
Tbe RURAL N ZL W -YORKER 
tion. They have worked out a plan by means of 
which they can send peanuts direct by mail. They 
have a full schedule of prices, full directions for 
using the peanuts, and they send a good article 
They are in a condition to handle peanuts, peanut 
butter, salted peanuts, and peanut oil, as required. 
They have a combination by moans of which the 
grower can obtain the peanuts at about 12c per lb. 
They propose to send out good quality nuts, and bv 
dealing direct with consumers get more out of it. 
themselves and save money to buyers. This plan is 
an excellent one. It is along the lines of self help 
in solving this big problem of the consumer's dollar, 
and there are no reasons why peanut growers and 
peanut eaters should not come together on such a 
plan. 
The Hearing on Daylight Saving 
There was a lively battle at Albany on Feb. 2 over 
daylight saving. The combined Agricultural Com¬ 
mittees of Senate and Assembly gave a hearing and 
both sides turned out strong. The daylight savers 
introduced a new argument—that of health. Dr. 
Copeland of this city argued that the daylight sav¬ 
ing is nece-sary in order to preserve the health of 
the people. lie pictured life in the crowded tene¬ 
ments. and stated that such diseases as typhus, 
cholera, bubonic plague-and tuberculosis are increas¬ 
ing. particularly in the cities. Therefore, he claimed, 
the extra hour for recreation in the sunlight is nec¬ 
essary if the city’s health is to he preserved. These 
statements were elaborated and were the chief ar¬ 
guments advanced by the daylight savers, who seem 
to have abandoned most of their claims that the 
law has brought greater efficiency or induced 
greater production. The truth is that it has done 
nothing <>f the sort—the chief argument for it is 
that < f increased playtime which, as l>r. Cope¬ 
land claims means public health. Arguments in 
favor of repealing the law were made by Commis¬ 
sioner Hogue and many other farmers or their 
representatives. I, was made clear that farmers 
are solidly in favor of repeal. In most parts of the 
rural districts the clocks never were changed at all. 
Mr. Hogue made it clear that the country also had 
its problems of poverty, which arc made more acute 
by just such legislation as this daylight saving. 
This interferes with production and with comfort, 
reduces farm income and thus discourages farmers 
who. now of all times, need the fullest encourage¬ 
ment. It was made so clear that there can he no 
contradiction that the daylight saving law has inter¬ 
fered with farm work, driven workmen away and 
made farm life harder and decreased production on 
many farms at the very time when food is most 
needed. 
In sound, industrial argument the farmers had 
the better of it. As regards the Copeland health 
plea he did not prove that that the daylight saving 
law is a necessity. That law adds nothing to the 
sunlight or its power to heal. There is no reason 
why men. women or children should not get up an 
hour earlier and get out into the air instead of being 
compelled by law tu. do so. As for health, we are 
convinced that the change of time deprives our chil¬ 
dren of needed sleep, evidently to the injury of their 
health. If I>r. Copeland and Oilier daylight savers 
believe that. New York and other cities are over¬ 
crowded. why <fo they not encourage the people to 
ijaove out into the country, occupy some of the va¬ 
cant houses and do needed work out in the sun¬ 
shine. That would he a far more sensible relief for 
the housing and health problem. There is certainly 
a need of sunshine and with the length of Summer 
days and the parks and piers, any person, not too 
lazy, can get out into it without the aid of a law. 
which admittedly injures farmers. Most city ehil 
dron suffer most for lack of milk and other food. 
Sunshine cannot take the place of it. By insisting 
upon “daylight saving” the city men act to diminish 
the production of food just as surely as the sum rises 
We think the agricultural committee will report 
favorably the Dill to repeal the present law. The 
vote in the Legislature will he close, and no time 
should lie lost in making your representatives under¬ 
stand what you want. 
The Ever-Widening Chasm 
For the first time in the history of America, the 
urban population exceeds the rural by two per cent, 
making the urban 51 tier cent, the rural 46 per cent 
The United States census classes as rural all villages 
having a population of 2.500 or less. It is estimated 
by competent authority that 25 per cent of the so-called 
rural population are living in thq villages, doing no 
farm work whatsoever, thus leaving only 24 per cent, 
counting men. women, children, the aged, the crippled 
and the sick actually living on farms. < >f this per¬ 
centage it is safe to say that only one out of four 
actually tills the soil; or six per cent of our total pop¬ 
ulation product tlv 1 'iuv material to feed and clothe 
not only our 110.000.000 people, but also many in 
Europe. , 
241 
In spite of all the advice to stay on the farm by 
Government officials, from the President ol' the United 
States down to a village president; in spite of all the 
articles in books and magazines written by people liv¬ 
ing in comfortable < in homes, telling the rural young 
people what a wonderfully good place - the farm is for 
them ; in spite of all the teachings of all the agricul¬ 
tural schools and colleges that their pupils when grad 
tutted should dedicate their lives to educate the farmers’ 
children to stay where they are; in spite of the Hellish, 
vicious propaganda launched by city people to increase 
the rural population that they (the city people) may 
be more cheaply fed and clothed and make still greater 
profits; in spite of all that has been said and done in 
the last 100 years, the population of these United States 
has been ever increasingly drifting cityward. 
A short time ago 1 was at Ellis Island watching that 
heter< geneotis crowd of foreigners pouring into this 
country at the rate of over tea thousand a day. Com¬ 
missioner of Immjgration F. A. Wallis informs me 
that ho is now preparing to pass upon the applications 
‘or entrance to our country of over a million Poles and 
260 000 Jews. Four and a half million Italians are 
clamoring for transportation to our shores. When the 
barriers around Russia and Austria are removed the 
commissioner expects five million Slavs to seek admis¬ 
sion. What was once a mere rivulet of a million a 
.year will soon become a river of ten million. What 
impressed me most as 1 watched this pathetic war¬ 
worn. weary throng coming under the Stars and Stripes 
was that, about nine out of ten were hound for the great, 
cities, thus making still greater this disproportion be¬ 
tween rural and city populations, helping to widen still 
more that seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the 
interests of producer and city consumer. It makes no 
difference, apparently, how little the farmer receives, 
the city people pay for all their food as though a tei- 
rib'e famine lmd blighted all the land. 
The other day the writer saw ordinary apples selling 
on Broadway. New York, for 26 cents each. The cheap¬ 
est apples he con'd find in Hartford and New Haven, 
rnnn., were in the grocery stores, where they were sell¬ 
ing for $2 a peach basket, or at the rate of about $18 
a barrel this when thousands of harr Is of apples in 
New York St at' - were never locked simply because the 
growers could not get enough for them to pay for the 
picking. -One farmer in lli'iiiwp County. Now York, 
showed me a pile of a thousand bushels of fine apnlrs, 
for which he could got no offer, (he picking of which 
cost him $200. some of the pickers having received as 
high as $18 a day with board. 
Sixty-nine carloads of cattle at from 2c to 7c per lb. 
were sold in Bull’aio. One of my neighbors ust sold 
live cows at tin - same place for 2c. Not long since I 
sold a fat two-year-old beef for 6c per lb., and sheen 
for l<\ 'Pile other day I dined in a restaurant in Al¬ 
bany where a porterhouse steak for one, with mush¬ 
rooms, was only $6. Upon my inquiry if that price 
included anything else. I was emphatically answered, 
"No, sir.” "How much for the salt 1 might need for 
the steak if 1 take it?” 1 asked. ‘Oh, nothing,” the 
waiter replied. 1 did not take the steak, but 1 gave 
him fair warning that if that establishment continued 
to give away food for nothing (?) it would soon go 
out of business. It would be a good thing if every 
farmer would take his family to the city at least once 
a year, dine at the average a la carte hotel, and let 
them see for themselves just what the food that they 
nearly gave away at the farm—food that they produced 
by thi' sweat of their brows, with aching hacks and 
weary limbs sslL for to the consumer. The greatest 
enemies of humanity are those heartless, avaricious 
profiteers who are mulcting producers and consumers 
alike. 
The world is looking, like Diogenes of old. with 
lantern in broad daylight for a leader great enough 
to show us the way to bridge this ever-widening chasm. 
None of the political platforms nor their candidates 
gave more than a perfunctory notice to this greatest 
of issues— an issue which far transcends the League of 
Nations. 
As Till’, R. N.-Y’.’s editor has so often said, if any 
reforms beneficial to producers are ever made ter must 
tin it ourselves. 'Pile only solution in sight is that all 
the farmers of the nation own and absolutely control 
all their warehouses and cold-storage plants, their Inn¬ 
ing and selling organizations. Then they could hold 
their crops till there was a decent market—till they 
could get at least, the cost of production. These organi¬ 
zations could easily he made financially strong enough 
to earrv th» farmer in need of cash until his produce 
was sold. When this is done, and not till then. v : U 
this chasm, which is dreaded more and more by both 
producer and consumer, ever be bridged. Not till then 
will the tide of population flow towards tlm country. 
W. s. DROMAN. 
A Hudson Valley Farm Bureau 
Our county Farm Bureau is quite alive at this time, 
having just oomph ted a successful membership cam¬ 
paign It has already started some very definite work. 
Two farm crons and poultry schools have already been 
held. A five-day school was held January 24 at Grange 
l all. Stoneridge; another at Ulintondale, January 25. 
in the Grange hall. 
L. M. Hurd, one of the instructors, is a very success¬ 
ful worker on the extension staff of the poultry depart¬ 
ment of the State College, The other instructor in the 
school was 11. G Wiggins, who can qualify as a real 
farmer, and is a member of the extension staff at Cor¬ 
nell. The Ulintondale school was fortunate in Prof. 
M. F. Banns, who is considered the b<*st in New York 
State on fruit diseases, and G. W. Peek, one of the 
best in the State on the packing and selecting of fruit. 
The hoard of so nor visors, instead of appropriating 
a set amount for the Farm and Home Bureau Associa¬ 
tion. have voted to make an appropriation on March 1, 
1621. equal in amount to the moneys received by the 
Farm and Home Bureau in membership fees up to 
that date. '1’his is a business-like proposition; it puts 
the responsibility directly up to the farmers of the 
county. The supervisors will appropriate money m 
direct nropovtiou to the interest of the farmers iii the 
as.>a • ‘on. 
The Farm Bureau is also making arrangements with 
the Chamber of Commerce of Kingston City, in which 
these two organizations will unite in an effort to interest 
city people in the Farm and Home Bureau. A smoker 
is to ho arranged in the near future by the Chamber 
of Commerce, in which tile officials of the Farm Bureau 
will be present. Chester Young, a former president 
of the Farm Bureau, will be the principal speaker. He 
will give the farmer’s side of the economic and financial 
situation, with special relations between the business 
men of Kingston and the farmers of Ulster County, in 
connection with the effort to fie made by the Chamber 
of Commerce to increase support of the Farm Bureau 
by eitv people. g. V- 
