1he RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
1093 
Things To Think About 
Work of the Auto Hog 
The article in The It. N.-Y. as regards 
the lilacs, and the story of Mr. Hilker is 
typical of what the average person in 
the country is open to by very many, 
not all, of the auto hogs that roam the 
country at large. It is queer, yes very 
queer what small holes some of these 
creatures can and do crawl out of. Living 
in a section which is only about an hour 
and a half ride from the great metropolis, 
I have had a fine chance for many years 
to see the workings and doing of this, 
to me, cheap specimen of humanity. 
A few weeks ago on Sunday a party 
in a car had stopped to lunch, built a 
fire. The wind caught it and in five 
minutes* was beyond control. These peo¬ 
ple jumped into the auto and sped away. 
Result; about 3,000 acres were burned 
over, several buildings caught fire, and 
one party alone lost $10,000 in fine trees 
destroyed to say nothing of the expense 
to the State for it took a large number 
of men to get the fire under control. Now 
that the warm weather is on Saturdays 
and Sundays are no longer days of rest 
or pleasure. 
True not all of these autoists are of 
the swine class. Some are people it is 
a pleasure to have call. But they go 
away without leaving a bushel of paper, 
boxes, remnants of the lunch, empty bot¬ 
tles' and such things that you see in many 
places. No fires are built but the garbage 
carefully cleaned away. To such, a wel¬ 
come is always given, but not to the other 
class, for the garden is not safe, fruit 
disappears, flowers are taken by the 
roots, shrubs carted away. One cannot 
be everywhere to watch when there are 
so many out on a pilfering tour. The 
writer fully believes that there are very 
many suffering like Mr. Hilker. 
Long Island. f. e. nichols. 
Remarks on College 
Teaching 
The following represents part of a 
conversation with a teacher in an agri¬ 
cultural school, a practical man of wide 
experience. It is not presented with any 
idea of destructive criticism of college 
education, but simply to give a point of 
view which is coming to be quite com¬ 
mon. 
“I agree with your view that much of 
the college teaching, especially to farm¬ 
ers, is comparable with the froth of milk, 
or that it is in a sense hot air.” 
How do you account for it? 
“Is not the reason for this that col¬ 
leges have, in a measure, lost sight of 
what education is, and have substituted 
the aim of merely imparting information 
for the aim of developing character, the 
power and habit of independent thinking, 
and a real interest in farming as a life?” 
You think then that much of this 
teaching is on a wrong key? 
“Is not the information which the 
college seek to import largely informa¬ 
tion about money making, or material 
gain, only? And again, is this informa¬ 
tion always such that it will help in at¬ 
taining the end aimed at, i.e., money¬ 
making? In other words, is it not often 
merely hot air which would not work out 
in practice?” 
What is your suggested remedy? 
“If it is a matter of giving information 
about the art of farming, can this work 
for adult farmers not be better and more 
cheaply done by the agricultural press 
than by college teachers or extension lec¬ 
tures? I have urged upon the authori¬ 
ties here that it would be wiser to put 
the money spent on extension work into 
subscriptions to some good farm paper. 
The farmer could then get all that is any 
good of the information he now gets from 
lectures and also get the benefit of a dis¬ 
cussion, or even take part in the discus¬ 
sion himself.” 
Of course the answer to that is easy. 
“The answer, in part, to this is that 
farmers will not read the papers. My 
own opinion is that public meetings do 
not now attract farmers, and that ex¬ 
tension workers in many instances, have 
not much influence.” 
Would not this be like giving special 
privileges to the farm papers? 
“I do not think that I am suggesting a 
place for the farm paper, as an educa¬ 
tional agency, at all inferior to the proper 
place of a college, or of a college teacher. 
The farm paper was here before the agri¬ 
cultural college. Every profession and 
occupation in the country has its paper 
devoted to the interests of its members. 
Is there any more reason for sending col¬ 
lege men, or government officials, around 
to show farmers how to farm than there 
is to send men around to show merchants 
how to keep store, or blacksmiths how to 
do blacksmithing?” 
Two Views of Economics 
of Prohibition 
IT MEANS NATIONAL RUIN 
I claim that prohibition is a failure. 
It has increased taxes and crime, and 
accomplished no good whatever. If per¬ 
sisted in the law will bring about financial 
ruin and thus bankrupt the country worse 
than any of the European nations. 
j. s. w. 
WHO ARE PROFITING BY IT? 
While the press teems with articles 
about prohibition, some of our fellow- 
citizens are reaping big financial bene¬ 
fits due to the Eighteenth Amendment. 
They laugh at the stupid anti-prohibition 
propaganda, for well they know that the 
women-folk, the wives and mothers 
of New York, now benefiting by the 
transfer of the weekly earnings from the 
ginmill keeper to the mother, will never 
permit the former conditions to again 
obtain. 
Throughout what we are accustomed 
to call the slums of the city (a vicious, 
uncalled-for appellation coined by the 
uplifters) there is not a vacant store, 
and the store rents have risen from 
200 per cent to 400 per cent above for¬ 
mer levels, due to the enormously in¬ 
creased buying capacity of the populace 
which has quit the saloon for the grocer, 
butcher and clothier. The $700,000,000 
formerly sunk in useless, harmful liquor 
is flowing into other coffers. Tales are 
told of the bootlegger’s profits, but tales 
of the financial benefits of prohibition 
are as scarce as hen’s teeth. This is one. 
WM. DOUGLASS KILPATRICK. 
Why Do We Work On? 
In the Hope Farm story of the lilacs 
the apparent failure in the lives of most 
men is set forth and the joy of children 
contrasted with the feelings of those who 
have reached middle age and have com¬ 
paratively nothing to show for a life of 
toil. This is one of the undeniable facts 
of life, and yet when any member of the 
human family, upon whom life rests too 
heavily, commits suicide or destroys his 
children, the world rightly judges him in¬ 
sane. 
^ Why do we keep on? I think it is 
Chesterton who has said somewhere that 
nothing matters save the fate of the soul. 
And I think this fact, may be unconscious¬ 
ly, so thoroughly is a part of ourselves, 
that we realize without putting into 
speech, or even giving it much thought 
that when: 
“The chimney’s falling down, the roof is 
caving in 
I aint got long roun’ heah to remain, 
But the angels they watch over me when 
I lay down to rest 
In the little old log cabin in the lane.” 
And so in the pursuit of the farmers’ 
35-cent dollar we contend with drought 
and floods, frost and heat, blight and 
canker, battle, murder and sudden death, 
knowing that nothing matters save the 
fate of the soul! and God rules the uni¬ 
verse. P. B. CROSBY. 
California. 
Roaming Hens 
M hat can be done when a neighbor 
owning property along the public highway 
farms this land within 8 ft. of the mid¬ 
dle of the road, and plants crops thereon 
and then deliberately shoots a neighbor’s 
hens for going on this land? He request¬ 
ed the neighbor owning the hens to shut 
up their rooster, and they have done so, 
and promised to pay all damage the hens 
did, but refused to shut them up. These 
hens are fed well and feed put out after 
they have gone to roost, ready for morn¬ 
ing, to keep them off the crops. There 
are no fences aloneg the road, and the 
buildings of the neighbor owning th-e hens 
are within 50 ft. of the highwaj’. l. d. p. 
Pennsylvania. 
While your neighbor has no right to 
shoot your hens, it would be very hard 
for you to convince a jury that vou had 
been damaged by his shooting them if 
they were injuring his crop« at the time. 
Many neighborhood quarrels arise because 
one neighbor allows his hens to roam on 
the lands of others. It is easier to keep 
the hens confined than to have difficulty 
with the neighbors all the time. n. t. 
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