lht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
931 
Another View of That Farm Sale 
DISSENTING VIEW.—Referring to that story 
of the sale of a farm, page 805, the fact that 
the sale of the Chester County farm for so small a 
sum serves as an example of the growing discrepancy 
between rural and urban property which in turn 
signifies a social change of far-reaching significance 
to the nation, I cannot but agree with. And it is of 
course the truth that farming is the oldest and most 
basic of all industries. But that this discrepancy of 
land values is startling, and that our industrial de¬ 
velopment has proceeded so far as to destroy the 
economic balance and threaten grave danger to the 
social structure, I think is a very far-fetched and 
hysterical idea, showing little or no deep thought on 
the subject, in spite of the fact that the editor in 
his last sentence says: “To anyone who studies the 
circumstances with understanding it is a danger sig¬ 
nal as ominous as would be the shadow of oncoming 
war or pestilence.” 
ARBITRARY STATEMENTS. — The editor of 
Worth American makes four very arbitrary state¬ 
ments, apparently expecting his readers to take them 
as facts without any proof. I will not ask so much 
of the readers of this article, but will simply present 
my arguments and let them judge for themselves. 
He first says that “With the army of food consumers 
constantly growing and the number of food pro¬ 
ducers steadily decreasing, it is obvious that within 
the next generation or two the nation will face the 
approach of a food shortage presenting a problem 
more serious than any imaginable 
threat of armed invasion.” As a mat¬ 
ter of fact, the ratio between the num¬ 
ber of producers and consumers of food 
is of no importance whatever, and 
never has been. What is of real im¬ 
portance is the number of people one 
man can feed. Ages ago, in the early 
life of man, each family was kept busy 
keeping itself supplied with food and 
clothing. By and by, when these orig¬ 
inal savages became more and more 
civilized, they were able to produce 
more food with the same amount of 
labor, leaving an ever-increasing per¬ 
centage of their number available to 
produce what were then luxuries and 
are now necessities; viz., all the acces¬ 
sories of life except food and clothing. 
INCREASING EFFICIENCY.—This 
increase in efficiency went on through 
the ages very slowly, and almost 
stopped, in fact, during the mediaeval 
period until the fifteenth century. At 
the time of the Renaissance, intellectu¬ 
al life reawakened, and with it agricul¬ 
tural knowledge, though no very impor¬ 
tant advances were made in that line till the nine¬ 
teenth and twentieth centuries, when with tremen¬ 
dous impetus agriculture made an advance greater 
by far than it had made in all the preceding cen¬ 
turies. A list of labor-saving agricultural machines 
invented, of the improvements in production by 
breeding plants and animals, and the discoveries of 
means to keep and renew the soil fertility, in the last 
one hundred years would fill several columns in The 
It. N.-Y. Thus we see that the constant decrease of 
food producers is a perfectly normal and correct re¬ 
sult of our increasing efficiency. If it were not so, 
then we would have genuine cause for alarm, be¬ 
cause it would indicate that agricultural progress 
had halted. 
OVER-PRODUCTION.—The editor goes on to 
say: “That it may appear to some readers that the 
trouble with agriculture is over-production rather 
than under-production,” and “That such an assump¬ 
tion is unsound.” In saying this he directly contra¬ 
dicts Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, who said in 
his report to the President in the annual report of 
the Department of Agriculture for 1922, that one of 
the greatest troubles with agriculture was over-pro¬ 
duction, but that the steady influx of country boys 
to the city was very encouraging. The farmers of 
this country present a very peculiar and unfortunate 
psychological problem. They are the only business 
men who insist upon producing more and more, with 
almost no conception of how it is to be disposed of. 
or whether it is even needed, trusting in the Lord, 
apparently, for a profit. Business cannot be run 
this way, and the farmers are learning it to then- 
great discomfort. Happily, in the last few years, 
crop marketing organizations have sprung up in 
almost every important agricultural section, which 
seem bound in the next generation to cure the evil. 
However, the individual farmer has got to co-operate 
further by reducing his product until there is a mar¬ 
ket for it; or sometimes, if he is very inefficient, re¬ 
tiring from the field altogether. 
COST OF LABOR.—The editor says further that 
the excessive cost of labor is the main cause of agri¬ 
cultural depression. That is really a direct insult 
to the farming business, for it implies that it cannot 
compete with other businesses for labor. It is the 
truth, however, in a great many cases. Nor will the 
farmer ever be able to compete with the other busi¬ 
nesses for labor till he reduces his production to fit 
the wants of the consumer, and markets his product 
to the consumer without paying the profit due him 
to several middlemen who are now a millstone on his 
neck. Thus we see the sacrificing of the Chester 
County farm, accompanied by thousands of others, 
is not a sign of agricultural depletion, but rather is 
it a sign that the farmer’s business is getting down 
to a normal level. Finally the editor says that “If 
the farmers were to pay the industrial scale of 
wages, the cost of food would be so high that revolu¬ 
tion would be in the air.” Already some of the more 
efficient farmers are paying as much as $100 a 
month, which with board and lodging, is quite as 
good as any industrial concern pays its labor, if not 
better. More and more farmers will pay these high 
wages and make a profit thereby as soon as they 
learn the much-needed lesson of how to dispose of 
their goods at a maximum price and a minimum mar¬ 
keting expense. 
By the time we are a nation of three hundred mil¬ 
lion people I venture to prophesy that if we continue 
to improve our agriculture in any degree as we have 
in the past, that we will need less farmers than we 
have today to feed us. observer. 
The Summer Sheep and Her Care 
ARE BEFORE TURNING OUT.—Before turn¬ 
ing the sheep out on pasture the lambs should 
have their tails cut off and the males should be cas¬ 
trated. There is no danger in either operation. Any 
veterinarian or experienced shepherd will gladly 
show the beginner how to do it. The toes of the 
ewes may be grown out so as to require trimming. 
We trim off what we can with a pair of grape- 
pruning shears, and finish up with a stout, shui-p 
knife, taking care not to cut into the quick of the 
foot, nor to leave the sole too thin for traveling over 
the stones and gravel. The pastures must be looked 
over and all burrs collected and burned, as they 
would surely show up in the next clip, and every 
“burry” fleece will be docked in price. 
STOMACH WORMS.—'With the sheep on grass, 
troubles are pretty much over for the year. They 
should be housed during the cold Spring storms, and 
afterwards a watch kept for stomach worms. The 
stomach worm is perhaps the worst enemy the shep¬ 
herd* has. A change of pasture should be provided, 
and a mixture of one part powdered bluestone (sul¬ 
phate of copper) to 10 parts of salt, with a little 
tobacco dust added, kept before them. This must 
bo kept dry. A little hopper with a roof may be 
built for it, or it can be put in a trough, on the side 
of a building, with a board slanting over it to shed 
water. I think it acts as a preventive rather than a 
cure. Once pastures become infested with worms 
there is no end of trouble, and resort must be had 
to drenching the sheep with gasoline or blue vitriol. 
THE MURDEROUS DOG.—The second great en¬ 
emy of the shepherd is the sheep-killing dog. My 
cure for him puts up a strong argument. The best 
load for it is 2S buckshot 22 hundredths of an inch 
in diameter, “chambered” in four layers of seven 
each, with a thin wad between each layer. Before 
shooting chambered buckshot in a choke-bored gun, 
push a wad up to the muzzle and see that the layer 
of shot will pass without jamming. No one can 
realize how serious the dog menace is until lie has 
had experience with it. I have known a pair of 
dogs to kill 41 lambs in one night. At that time it 
was necessary to collect damages from the owner of 
the dog. Under those circumstances my father 
thought it better to maim the dogs and follow them 
home with witnesses. That is not required under 
our present law. 
HILLSIDE PASTURE.—Sheep will thrive on hill¬ 
side pasture that looks pretty scanty, but of course 
they must have enough to eat. Nothing can be done 
with them on low, wet and swampy land. Foot-rot 
and parasites will des-troy the flock. A hillside or¬ 
chard is fine if it has a brook through it. Ours has 
a seeding of Orchard grass. It is a great grower, 
and the sheep keep it down so it does not form rank 
clumps. I should judge that a good seeding would 
support three sheep to the acre in continuous pas¬ 
ture. But it is better, if one can, to turn in on the 
mowing field sometimes. In that way you can eat 
your cake and have it too. It does 
not take many lambs to pick up a 
hundred dollars’ worth of pasture 
on the stubble and the new seedings. 
RESULTING FERTILITY. — Noth¬ 
ing puts ammonia into the soil like the 
sheep’s foot. The fertility of the swales 
is distributed evenly over the knolls 
and after a few years of pasture even 
the shingly x-idges support a sod. Fur¬ 
thermore the fertility so distributed 
and acquired has a certain permananee. 
Some 30 years ago the upper corner of 
one of our hill fields, which had been 
the night bedding ground of a flock of 
sheep for a long time, was fenced off 
and set to Concord gi’apes. Three 
yeai-s ago we had what I esti¬ 
mated as a crop of five tons to the 
acre in that coniei’, at least twice 
as much as on the land just out¬ 
side the old bedding ground. 1 
do not mean to imply that sheep 
will quickly double the fertility of 
the soil,, but to emphasize the fact 
that there is an inci’ease, and that 
its effects are noticeable long after 
the golden hoof has departed. h. r. s. 
The Farmer’s Hire 
N page 867 H. C. Near credits farm hands wLlx 
$2 for their short day, and thinks farmers 
should have $2.80 for their longer hours. He is 
modest. What about interest on investment of land, 
live stock and tools? Where does the risk from loss, 
insurance, decay of buildings and fences, fertility, 
paint and replacement, come in? Then there is a 
wife somewhere about the cook stove, poultry yard 
or dairy, and children on the move. Is their work 
pro bono publico? 
Further, the man who gets that $2 a day may 
think he knows as much as his employer, but he is 
mistaken. He may also believe he does as much, and 
does it as well, but he makes another. The writer 
was a hired man when the class averaged much bet¬ 
ter than now, but later, when working for self, 
wondei’ed how obtuse he had been to neglect, better 
plans and adopt short cuts. This is no tirade against 
hands. They cannot have the concern of the owner, 
and the lower pay, compai-ed with town wages, de¬ 
moralizes them. It is but natural. 
Let me tell you how much a farmer knows and 
what wages he should have. He knows more than 
anybody not a farmer. Count the tools and imple¬ 
ments about his place, all of which he must handle 
expertly; more in number than handled by anyone 
else. Then look at the different animals he breeds, 
feeds and markets. That alone calls for a liberal 
education. Then he must doctor and nurse them. 
On some places, if a “vet” was hired for it all, it 
would annually take the fax™ to pay him. 
Then take the matter of weather. It rained 23 
days during May here. Put the knowledge of how 
to improve the time against that of a business man 
Cherry Trees at Rostoky, near Prague. Fig. 353 
