f>33 
The Southern States and Dairying 
Why have the people of the Southern States 
always favored “oleo” interests in Congress? We 
are led to ask that question every time we visit the 
South. The climate and soil of that section are 
admirably adapted to growing legumes, like clover, 
vetch, Soy beans and cow peas. Nowhere else in 
the country can the roughage for a dairy ration be 
produced more easily or cheaply. The mild climate 
and the short Winters suit the dairy cow—the ex¬ 
pense of housing both cattle and their Winter feed 
is less than at the North. The demand for daily 
products is enormous. Much of the soil has been 
degraded hy long-continued cotton growing, and 
dairying is the one thing needed to restore it. In 
fact, there is no section of the country where there 
is greater need of an extended breeding of the dairy 
cow. Why. then, has the South always lined up 
with the “oleo” manufacturers? It would seem as 
if her industrial future was more closely tied up to 
the dairymen of other sections. We think the an¬ 
swer lies in the fact that most Southern farmers 
have not been able to realize what dairying may do 
for a section or for a farm. They are coining to it. 
The Wiregrass Former, published at Ashburn, (3a.. 
prints an account of a trip through Alabama. Here 
is a sample of what was seen: 
“About 10 milt's out from Selma the glint of the 
morning sun on some milk cans on the porch of a 
country store attracted the attention of one of the 
party, lie stopped to question the proprietor, who 
happened to be a lady, and her replies set. down ‘ad 
verbatim’ would make a story of absorbing human in¬ 
terest, but it is sufficient here to give a brief outline of 
her statements. She and her husband did all the dairy 
work and sent 20 gallons of milk into Selma every 
morning by a route truck. Besides this work, she did 
the family cooking and sewing, looked after the store, 
and reserved one hour after the noon meal for rest. 
Af the high school at Selma her three girls were re¬ 
ceiving an education from the returns of the milk sales. 
There are other romances tucked away in the hills 
around Selma where the boys and girls are being edu¬ 
cated by the herds that rest under the trees.” 
That is the most forcible kind of education, and 
we feel sure that as such cases spread through the 
South the people will come to realize that dairying 
must be fostered and defended even more than 
cotton growing ever was. 
Making Beet Syrup at Home 
Some of our people find it hard to believe that 
they will not make satisfactory sugar and syrup 
from sugar beets with home contrivances. Making 
beet sugar Is a business for large enterprises, where 
a complete outfit of machinery can be used. It Is 
not likely to pay unless you can be sure of making 
several hundred tons of sugar per day. Some of out- 
readers think it can be run in a small way like a 
cider rain, but they will be disappointed. You cau 
make a so-called syrup by slicing the beets, soaking 
them in hot water and boiling down this liquid, but 
it is doubtful if one in 25 would care to eat the 
second mouthful. If you want a homemade substi¬ 
tute for sugar It will pay better to plant a patch of 
eorghnm or Early Amber cane, crush out the juice 
when the stalks are ready, and boil it down into 
molasses. That is good and quite easily made. Some 
of our people say they will try the suggestion in 
gplte of what we say. flood ! The beets are excel¬ 
lent for stock feeding, and there is a joy about ex¬ 
perimenting and having your own way—moro Joy 
than there will be over the syrup! 
Wool and Clothing Prospects 
Wool lias been too low most of the time for a long 
while, aucl three years ago the growers began to 
organize, but the more they organized the lower it 
dropped. When they started to learn why they found 
that while the sheep in the whole world could not grow 
one pound of scoured wool, yearly, for each person in 
civilization the stocks of unused wool were piling up 
and becoming a burden everywhere. This took them 
further. They had known that substitutes for wool 
had been used for 50 years, and now found that during 
the few past outrageous profiteering years nearly the 
whole output of woolens was made from rags, and the 
depraved product was put on the public under the 
forgery of the sheepmen’s good term—wool. 
Two years ago we started publicity bureaus to in¬ 
form the public of this fact. Also that wool to the 
amount of two annual clips was unused, and an incubus 
everywhere, and it was an easy contract under the 
condition of high cost worthless textiles to enlighten 
the people on the cause of the trouble. We had no 
market for wool, and the principal part of their cloth¬ 
ing was worn, worked-over rags, and last week there 
were delegates or petitions from more than 5,000.000 
people before the Senate committee of the interstate 
commerce committee. The reform started with the 
sheepmen, and now they are but a small minority de¬ 
manding that the French-Capper bill be made a Federal 
law. 
Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
A fumy thing happened while the witnesses for the 
bill were testifying. Two telegrams came and were 
read in that “This was a sheepmen's propaganda.” The 
sheepmen can drop out and not be missed. “Large 
bodies move slowly,” and it is sometimes hard for the 
common people to get. what they should have suddenly, 
and this Mai may fail. If so. we all know the way 
back to Washington and also know the motive power 
of the public for this bill will double- shortly. We 
would bo greedy to ask for more interest after two 
years’ effort. Sheepmen are no longer a set of mendi¬ 
cants. This law must come, and the public must have 
all this surplus wool which has become an incubus. 
W. W. REYNOLDS. 
A Great Potato Meeting on Long Island 
FOLLOWING THE PROCESSION—On the road 
leading east and south from .Riverhead, Long Island, 
the Suffolk county seat, at about one o’clock (standard 
time) on Wednesday afternoon, June 29, a great pro¬ 
cession moved. One -who stood and watched saw a 
string of autos approach, and as the first whirled past 
noticed that it carried a sign which read “Follow this 
car.” And truly it had a following! Car after ear 
sped by. and unconsciously the watcher counted— 
forty, fifty, sixty—would they never end?—seventy, 
eighty, ninety, and at last there were no more. What 
was it all about? Who were these people? Where 
were they going? Every man in that string of cars 
knew the answers to these questions. It was about 
potatoes. The men were farmers and potato experts. 
They were going to visit potato fields to study and to 
learn moro about their business. 
THE FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING.—Such an 
event would have been unthought-of 10 years ago, even 
five years ago. for this was the fourth annual pot.ito 
inspection trip under the guidance of the Suffolk Coun¬ 
ty Farm Bureau. No clearer statement of the pur¬ 
pose of the tour can be given than that printed on the 
cover of the program, which read : “To bring about a 
better understanding between the farmer who produces 
seed potatoes, the dealer who handles them, and the 
farmer who grows market stock from them.” 
HOW ARRANGED.—For weeks a committee of 11 
farmers had been carefully arranging every detail of 
this two-day potato tour—the program, the route, the 
entertainment, the transportation. Three hundred invi¬ 
tations were sent to seed potato growers, county agents 
and other agricultural workers in the New England 
States. New York, N'ew Jersey, Canada and other 
sections of the Northeastern United States, and there 
were more than 100 acceptances. Visitors began to 
arrive Wednesday morning, and at noon the local 
farmers came in their ears to provide transoprtatiou 
for themselves and guests. Each person registered at 
the Farm Bureau office and received a lapel tag bearing 
the words “Suffolk County Farm Bureau Field Tour,” 
and allowing space to write in a name and address. 
These helped in acquainting the men with each other 
Printed programmes were also supplied and mimeo¬ 
graph sheets giving reports on some of the tests to be 
inspected. Then they started. 
THE FIRST STOP.—This was made at the farm 
of C. C. Dimon & Son at Southampton. There the real 
program began with an address of welcome by E. It. 
Lupton, president of the Suffolk County Farm Bureau 
Association, and himself a leading farmer. The men 
next turned their attention to a practical demonstra¬ 
tion of potato dusting machines in charge of O. C. 
Boyd from the State College of Agriculture, who has a 
field laboratory in the south side potato -section of the 
island. There were four machines, three traction and 
one power. The demonstration was very thorough, and 
every man had an opportunity to decide for himself as 
to the effectiveness of the method and the relative merits 
of the machines. Questions that seemed most, open to 
discussion were the expense of dusting, and the fact 
that the powder blows in such clouds as to make it 
objectionable where fields are near buildings or high¬ 
ways. Few Long Island farmers are dusting as yet, but 
there are some who are going to try it. 
SEED TESTS.—Into the autos again, and a run to 
B’-idgehampton. where the stop was made at the farm 
of H. Morgan Topping to see a Green Mountain seed 
source test. IToie were some 70 rows, each planted to 
Green Mountain seed from a different grower in Ver¬ 
mont,, or Maine, or Northern New York or Canada. 
Experts from the College of Agriculture had previously 
been over the tost rows, carefully examining each for 
(he percentage of weak hills, mosaic disease, leaf-roll 
and other troubles. Their report was supplied in mime¬ 
ograph form to each visitor, and after tin* general pur¬ 
pose and plan of (he test had been explained by Prof. 
•T. II. Barron of the Department of Farm Crops, Cor¬ 
nell University, the men inspected the rows and drew 
their own conclusions as to the best seed sources. At 
this stop also a “Get Acquainted Meeting” was conduct¬ 
ed, with various brief talks and general discussion. The 
remainder of the afternoon was spent in traveling 
through the south side potato section, stopping here 
and there informally to view fine fields or specially in¬ 
teresting conditions. Riverhead was reached in time 
for dinner, abd the gathering broke lip until the next 
morning. 
A STORMY DAY.—Thursday turned out to be one 
of the stormiest days of the whole season and put the 
resources of the committee and the endurance of the 
tourists to a severe test. It began to rain at daylight, 
with a thunderstorm, which slackened just at starting 
time. 7:45 (standard time), so it was decided to go 
ahead. This was to be an all-day trip along the north 
fluke of eastern Long Island through one of the greatest 
potato sections of the State. When the string of autos 
(about 90 of them this time) reached the first stop R 
was raining hard again. This was at the farm of II. It. 
Talmage, a few miles north of Riverhead, where some 
very interesting fertilizer experiments had been laid 
out in charge of B. E. Brown of the Bureau of Plant 
Industry, United States Department of Agriculture. It 
was quite impossible to examine the field, so the meeting 
was held in a large fertilizer shed. Mr. Brown ex¬ 
plained the experiments as well as he could without the 
potatoes before him with which to illustrate, and then 
Prof. A. W. Blair of the New Jersey Experiment Sta¬ 
tion gave a talk on fertilizers which proved very in¬ 
structive, and called out considerable discussion. Long 
Island farmers fertilize potatoes very heavily, and one 
of the great problems is to know how much and what 
materials to use for best results. Prof. Blair pointed 
out the difficulties in solving this question, due to varia¬ 
tions in seasons and the constant changes in soils from 
year to year, as a result of the addition of the fer¬ 
tilizer itseif. Sheets were distributed, showing the 
results of tests carried on in New Jersey for 10 years 
or more, and one striking feature of these was the 
apparent superiority of nitrate of soda to other sources 
of nitrogen. It was also indicated that continued use 
of sulphate of ammonia tended to unfit the soil for any 
crop, even for potatoes, in time. The question of home¬ 
mixing of fertilizers was discussed, and it was evident 
that many farmers who had tried the plan for the first 
time ibis year were well pleased with the results. 
FURTHER PROGRESS.—It was still raining when 
the Rime came to start out again, but practically every¬ 
one wanted to see the tour through, having started it, 
so a scurry was made to waiting cars, and once more 
die long line splashed its way east toward Greenport. 
Two stops were scheduled along this route, and at both 
brief halts were made, but it was too wet to see much 
or to attempt speeches. The first of these was a seed 
source test at the. farm of E. A. Fanning & Son, and 
t.he second was a Green Mountain seed source tost at the 
farm of II. J. Reeve. Mattituek, similar to the one seen 
Wednesday at the Topping Farm on the south side. 
The question of securing seed potatoes that are reason¬ 
ably free from destructive diseases, such as mosaic and 
leaf-roll, is perhaps the most serious one that the potato 
grower faces today. This is evident from the great 
effort that is made to locate and to test out the best 
seed sources. Many of the northern seed growers were 
present on this tour with the Long Island consumers of 
their seed, and it is easy to see how important and how 
valuable such a cooperative get-together may be. 
AFTER-DINNER SPEECHES.—At Greenport nr 
rangements !)£;] been made by the committee for a regu¬ 
lar shore dinner, which fully justified all that had been 
said of it in advance. Coming from the tables, every¬ 
one asked, “Is it still raining?” And it still was. Never 
mind. Behind the hotel was a garage, and here a hun¬ 
dred or more men gathered, damp, but cheerfu’. and 
stood listening to brief talks by Prof. M. F. Barrus and 
Prof. E. V. Ilardenburg from the College of Agricul¬ 
ture. Mr. E. P. Smith of Chenango County, member of 
the board of directors of the newly organized Empire 
State Potato Growers’ Co-operative Association, and 
Mr, C. E. Dimon, the Long Island member of the same 
board. All had vital messages, and as one stood among 
the men it was not hard to think of the great signifi¬ 
cance of such a gathering. There in a bare garage, in a 
Long Island village, on a day of pouring rain, stood men 
from the farms and markets and men of science, dis 
cussing together how best to solve their problems. No 
longer is each farmer trying to make his individual way 
against insuperable odds. He is learning how much 
more quickly and well results come from united co¬ 
operative action. But there is much to learn. The 
needs of the moment are twofold; first, that leaders 
shall be found and developed who have the vision and 
the courage and the practical experience ably to guide 
and represent their fallow farmers; and second, that 
there shall grow up in the groat body of farmers more 
and more the willingness and the ability to follow their 
leaders. 
THE LOCAL FOUNDATION.—The writer’s 
thought is that the biggest task now does not rest 
on county, State or national organizations, important 
though their work is, but rather that the great need is 
for strong, quiet building in the local communities, 
•where small groups of farmers shall come together and 
learn really to counsel and to co-operate and to stand 
fast by their groups. When this comes about in any 
community it is a simple and natural process to reach 
out to any larger movement and to profit hy it, but 
much of the work of wider scope goes begging and goes 
amiss because there is no preparation for using it at the 
foundation of the whole matter—the small local group 
of individual farmers. Edward M. TUTTLE. 
The Bean Crop Coming Back 
In a recent drive around a section of Monroe and 
Livingston counties, N. Y., where 25 years ago the bean 
crop held a prominent place in the Crop rotation, an in¬ 
creased acreage was noticeable as compared with the 
past few years. Many fields on the Genesee flats or 
bottoms, where the crop has been attempted of late 
with poor results or absolute failure, are showing an 
even and unusually thrifty appearance at this date, 
June 25. There are always reasons for these changes 
in crop growing. In this instance, this section has been 
running to beans pretty strong for many years, and 
conditions had thereby developed that allowed dis¬ 
eases and insect enemies of the plant to gain a foot¬ 
hold that proved disastrous to the crop as a profitable 
venture. Again, these conditions occurred just as we 
were having cold, backward seasons, and the bean crop 
will not thrive under sucli a handicap. Consequently 
the growing of this crop, that for so many years had 
been looked upon as a sort of insurance as regards the 
farm income, was dropped almost entirely. A low 
tariff and heavy importations of foreign beans aided 
materially in bringing this about. 
As there were reasons for neglecting the crop, there 
were also reasons foe its coming hack. Those who 
were brave enough to plant beans in 1920 found that 
good crops could be again raised, and were rewarded by 
old-time yields. The diseases appeared to have sub¬ 
sided in great measure, and again growers had learned 
that earlier planting proved advantageous. For many 
years planting was delayed until the last week in June, 
while three or four weeks earlier proves to be a better 
date. Again, in those sections where potatoes held the 
center of the stage, growers began to find it safer to 
diversify when they found themselves loaded up with a 
big crop that had been grown at great expense, and 
must be marketed, if at all. for a mere pittance. The 
old, old lesson of putting all one’s eggs in one basket 
had to be learned over again. Beans do not thrive hi 
cold, wet weather, and the seasons of 1920 and 1921 
have been favorable for this crop, that must show above 
the surface in from foul to six days. Another feature 
of this coming back of the bean growing is that the old 
grain drill method of planting has been generally re¬ 
placed with the planter that drops and covers the seed 
evenly, pressing the soil around the seed that was so 
carelessly planted by the drill method. This allows of 
cultivation much sooner than formerly, and this crop 
responds promptly to early and frequent cultivation. 
As to varieties being grown at present, a safe guess 
is that the crop this year will run mostly to the kid¬ 
neys, reds being first, although there are a good many 
Robust being planted. Although they have been at a 
low price level of late, as compared with the reds, they 
are a muab surer crop as to yield and quick maturity. 
The Michigan Seed Improvement Association gave them 
the right name, for they are a robust growing plant and 
disease resistant. I am quite sure that the growing of 
this crop in our regular rotation, and not to excess as 
to acreage, will prove to be profitable, as it formerly 
was, anil when we consider the value of pods as cattle 
or sheep feed, and also the condition that the crop 
leaves the land for wheat and clover seeding, we have 
another and strong argument for the bean crop. 
New York. H. E. cox. 
