1298 
1b* RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 11, 1924 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER’S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes 
Established 1850 
Published weekly by the Haraf Pnbltahlnr Company, 333 West 80tli Street, New York 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. P. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royle, Associate Editor. 
L. H. Murphy, Circulation Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION : ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.01. Remit in money 
order, express order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates, $1.00 per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“ A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible person. We use every possible precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. But to make doubly sure, we will make good any loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertisements in our columns, and any 
such swindler will be publicly exposed. We are also often called upon 
to adjust differences or mistakes between our subseribei-s and honest, 
responsible houses, whether advertisers or not. We willingly use our good 
offices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we will not be 
responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts sanctioned by the courts. 
Notice of the complaint must be sent to us within one month of the time of 
the transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
T HAT is a good discussion of the fodder and feed¬ 
ing problems on the first page. The best plan 
seems to be about as follows: Pull off the corn ears 
and cut the stalks in a silo. It will be necessary to 
wet these stalks down as they are used—and we 
think in a case of this sort, some of the silo bacteria 
will pay. Dairy cows can make more profitable use 
of the silage than beef steers. Frost has held off 
well in the West, and this has helped the corn 
crop. Still there will be much soft corn, and west¬ 
ern farmers will feed this up early. May corn prom¬ 
ises to be very much higher. 
* 
I N one village of rural New York recently an ap¬ 
propriation of $50 was voted. This was for the 
purpose of “enlightening the village residents” re¬ 
specting the benefits of the rural school bill of last 
Winter. We suspect this means a form of propa¬ 
ganda for the bill. Quite likely the effort will be 
made in the next Legislature to array the village 
vote against the rural vote—the villages to be told 
that the farmers “will help build a new school- 
house.” At Syracuse the Rural School Improvement 
Society decided to conduct a campaign of education 
in town and city. We may therefore expect some 
lively discussions. After the raking which the Com¬ 
mittee of Twenty-one received at Syracuse it hardly 
seems possible that they will come back with the old 
bill—yet you never can tell what will happen in 
politics or school matters. All this will emphasize 
the wisdom of our advice to make every effort to 
control the members of the Legislature. Therein 
lies our power. 
* 
N the next page is an account of that case in 
Madison Co., N. Y., where, through an accident 
to a child in the school conveyance a district with 
rather limited resources must settle a claim for $15,- 
000. This article speaks for itself. Mr. Parsons, 
who tells the story, says: 
They are driving consolidation upon us this year by 
refusing to give one-year permits to young teachers, 
thus making teachers very scarce. I had to get a teacher 
200 miles away for our school, and know another dis¬ 
trict (rural) that is paying $40 a week for a teacher; 
never before above $25. 
Next year no one will be allowed to teach in rural 
schools unless he be a college graduate, a normal grad¬ 
uate, or graduate from a teachers’ training class. There 
will not be teachers enough to go around under that 
ruling, and rural schools must consolidate or shut up. 
This matter came up at the Syracuse meeting, 
and was hotly discussed. The result was a bill 
which will be introduced and pushed in the next 
Legislature. We shall print this bill next week, 
and urge full support of it. The plan is, first, to 
make sure that consolidation will not be forced upon 
rural school districts and, having made that sure, 
take up the taxation question next. 
* 
You are still opposing the so-called child labor 
amendment. Both of the great political parties in New 
York have endorsed this amendment, hence it is sure 
to be ratified. Why not then come down gracefully 
and admit you were wrong and support the amendment? 
New York. c - °- s - 
HAT is about the way some folks feel about 
public matters. If the political parties “re¬ 
solve” in favor of a proposition, forget your convic¬ 
tions, swallow your ideals, as the safest way of hold¬ 
ing them, and agree with the crowd! We never pre¬ 
tended to be graceful, but we do hope that we pos¬ 
sess a few grains of grit. We believe that this 
amendment as it stands should not be ratified by the 
Legislature. We think it wrong in principle to give 
Congress any such direct power over the heads of 
parents and guardians. We can easily see how Con¬ 
gress might legislate in such a way that for every 
overworked child that would be benefited, four 
children would be injured by laziness and idleness 
before character was formed. It is true that both 
the Republican and Democratic politicians in New 
York have “resolved” in favor of this ridiculous 
amendment. Neither party is sincere about it— 
neither cares a rap. They are just bidding against 
each other for the support of the noisy little group 
which is demanding this legislation. The R. N.-Y. 
does not care if all the politicians this side of the 
river Styx pass meaningless “resolutions” favoring 
this legislation. We think it is wrong, and we shall 
continue to appeal to the plain common sense of our 
readers. We ask them to control their members of 
the Legislature just as they did over the school bill. 
They can, if they will, in this way, prevent ratifica¬ 
tion in spite of the political parties. That would be 
the greatest thing they have ever done—greater than 
moving the State House as they did when they 
forced repeal of the old school bill. With such a 
demonstration of power any reasonable thing they 
called for would be theirs. What an opportunity is 
thus given to show their power! 
* 
Why harp on taking “liberties with your pocket- 
book” in Florida? One can live and enjoy himself in 
Florida for a month on what your own city extracts 
from him in a day. We have no “cover charge” at 
our restaurants. We have no three-way price on thea¬ 
ter tickets. We, at least, do not shoot people in cold 
blood or rob them in broad daylight. Why this holier- 
than-thou art? Better come down and taste of Florida 
hospitality. Meet some of the delegates to the national 
convention who paid 50c for a stale sandwich and 25c 
a bottle for pop, and had their clothes locked up be¬ 
cause they ran out of money and were waiting for a 
wire from home to meet the demands made upon New 
York as hosts to a national convention. 
Back up—when New York plays fair with its guests 
we will give our guests free board and rooms, and to 
everyone a brass band to welcome them to our city. 
w. B. POWEL. 
R. POWEL feels grieved at our recent remarks 
about Florida. It is evident that some of the 
incidents connected with the recent national conven¬ 
tion in this city still rankle, but we wish Florida 
well. The writer owns a little land down there and 
has made several visits. The Winter climate, as 
we found it, is delightful, and we wish that thous¬ 
ands of our elderly friends could enjoy it every 
Winter. But the Florida real estate men and board¬ 
ing-house keepers are not in business for their 
health. In that fact they resemble most of us who 
are able to keep our business running. All we de¬ 
sire to do is to tell the plain truth about Florida 
the same as about everything else. Of course Mr. 
Powel knows that few if any of our readers are 
paying 50 cents for “stale sandwiches.” They are 
not that kind of people. From his own statement it 
seems to be Florida folks who do that. A trip to 
Florida would be like a visit to Paradise to many 
of our people. We wish they could all take it, but 
if they went thinking all the Florida folks are 
angels they would be disappointed. Nobody wants 
to be met by a brass band or get free board and 
rooms, for experience has taught us that whenever 
we get that sort of reception we pay for it and more 
in other charges. 
Your editorial, on pgae 1216, in questioning the benefit 
of reclaiming any more land at this time, is well taken, 
and I think that, should our Presidential candidates 
who are “votefishing” by this means, take a trip through 
the eastern section of our country it would open their 
eyes. In the oil refinery, where I am employed, we 
had something like five million barrels of finished gaso¬ 
line on hand and increasing daily, even though it was 
the height of the season. Did we increase production? 
Well, hardly. The company shut down stills, cut the 
force by more than half, threw several hundred men 
out of work and allowed the market gradually to ab¬ 
sorb the surplus. Did the price of gas drop? J. t. b. 
HAT is the point exactly. We already have in 
this country too much land wholly or partly 
prepared for the plow. Millions of acres of cleared 
land now stand idle because prices of food prod¬ 
ucts at the farm are too low. They are too low 
chiefly because production has outstepped economi¬ 
cal distribution. We do not need increased produc¬ 
tion of crops until the present supply can be han¬ 
dled economically. One can buy thousands of farms 
for less than the buildings on them cost originally. 
It is an economic crime to spend government money 
for putting new land into cultivation when these 
thousands of farms are now lying idle. And this 
is not a sectional argument. Our readers in the 
Far West are fighting these projects for increasing 
the area of cultivated land because they quickly see 
that increased crops will only make competition 
harder in their restricted markets. When gasoline 
was piling up in the yards of that oil refinery, there 
was no talk of opening up new supplies so as to 
benefit humanity. They quietly shut down and got 
rid of their surplus without lowering the price . 
Years ago we knew the case of a man who worked 
in a shoe factory. The company made too many 
shoes for the market There was a panic in the 
West, and farmers could not buy. Did the shoe com¬ 
pany cut prices and rush the goods on the market? 
It did not. Shops were shut down and the shoes 
were stored for a rise in price. One man, thrown 
out of his job, could not raise the money to buy 
shoes for his family. His children went barefooted 
because he could not buy shoes, because the western 
farmers could not pay for the shoes stored in the 
warehouse, because the company would not sell with¬ 
out a profit and were able to hold the goods off the 
market. Thus right in the same town were shoes 
held off the market—and barefooted children! 
W- 
EMARKABLE, the number of people who say 
they want a “driving goat” for their children. 
We have such calls every day. The poor goat seems 
to be paying the penalty for some of this extra puff¬ 
ing which goat enthusiasts have indulged in. Some 
of these people understand that a trained goat will 
haul the children about and if a savage dog should 
appear William Goat will act as a policeman and 
drive off the dog. Just how the goat gets out of his 
harness to do this is not clear, but the story evi¬ 
dently comes from the claim that a few goats kept 
with a flock of sheep will drive away the dogs. We 
know a man who had a pair of goats on a small 
suburban place. The male goat actually pulled a 
small or toy plow and fitted the garden soil. He 
could pull a garden cultivator for an hour or so. 
The female goat gave from one to five pints of milk 
—enough for a small family. You will have to travel 
far before you find such a useful goat couple, and we 
advise our friends not to expect too much from these 
little animals. At the same time we are convinced 
that they are coming, and within a few years they 
will prove quite a serious problem in the retail dairy 
business. 
* 
ANY cases come to us where children are in¬ 
jured by careless car drivers. In one such 
case recently a boy was run over by a car and quite 
seriously injured. Beyond question the driver was 
very careless. He offered to pay the doctor or hos¬ 
pital bills and, as advised by his lawyer, asked the 
father of the boy to sign a release of all further 
claim for damages. We advise this father not to 
do that. He should wait and see whether the in¬ 
juries were likely to be permanent. The boy may 
be disabled for life. If the father accepted the pay¬ 
ment of expenses and gave a release to the car own¬ 
er now he could have no further action for dam¬ 
ages in case the boy is permanently injured. In case 
of a railroad accident the victims are quickly sur¬ 
rounded by a croivd of agents who urge them to 
sign papers which release the company from any 
tiling except the smallest payment of damages. 
Often in their nervous or shattered condition the 
victim will sign such documents and thus lose the 
right to obtain justice later on. 
* 
N some sections of New York the most unpopu¬ 
lar legislation of recent years is the change 
in the automobile laws refusing a license to young 
people less than 18 years of age. This will prove 
a genuine hardship in many cases where the chil¬ 
dren must travel some distance to school. There 
is usually some trustworthy boy 16 years and over 
and large for his age, fully competent to drive a 
car and take children to school. Under the new 
law he will be barred out as a driver, and it will 
not be possible to transport these school children ex¬ 
cept at a great inconvenience. This section of the 
law ought to be changed. There should be a severe 
road test and a license granted to good-sized boys 
who can pass it. It is a mistake to force these 
arbitrary and autocratic laws upon the people when 
they are based on age entirely without regard to 
character or responsibility. 
Brevities 
Jack Frost has been very good to us thus far. 
Some men will only fidget when they ought to fight. 
A white collar does not of necessity make a -white 
man. 
There will be plenty of soft corn in the West this 
year. 
Dried grasshoppers are largely sold in South Africa 
as chicken food. 
The proper enforcement of a law is usually more im¬ 
portant than the law itself. 
Something of a man—he who can eat humble pie 
and make people think he prefers it to mince! 
When the city workman gets $2 an hour for his 
work and the farmer worker get $2 a day, what is 
sure to happen? 
A trade arrangement has been made between Canada 
and Australia under which dried fruit will be admit¬ 
ted duty free Into Canada while imports from other 
countries will be taxed. 
