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American Agriculturist, April 14,1923 
Editorial Page of the American 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr .Publisher 
E. R. Eastman ........ Editor 
Fred W. Ohm .Associate Editor 
Gabrielle Elliot .... Household Editor 
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Entered as Second-Class Matter, December 15, 1922, at the 
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VOL. Ill April 14, 1923 NO. 15 
Sapiro versus Carver 
WO men of much training, ability and ex¬ 
perience are attracting national attention 
by their emphatic and wide-spread views 
upon the economics of agriculture, and es¬ 
pecially by their radically different opinions 
as to the value of cooperation to the farmer. 
Mr. Aaron Sapiro is America’s most en¬ 
thusiastic believer in cooperation. He travels 
up and down the land and by his great ability 
as a speaker and with an unlimited en¬ 
thusiasm, he has started many sections and 
hundreds of communities in immense coop¬ 
erative projects. He is a sincere apostle of 
a great cause, but because of his enthusiasm, 
too often, farmers are led to start their co¬ 
operative enterprises with too much hope 
that cooperation is immediately going to rev¬ 
olutionize their business and bring them 
prosperity. 
If Mr. Sapiro could stay and continue to 
inject his wonderful personality and leader¬ 
ship into the organization, many of the 
things that he promises through cooperative 
effort would probably come true; but un¬ 
fortunately, leaders with Sapiro’s enthusiasm 
and ability are rare and after a time when 
the cooperative finds trouble along its way 
and fails to make good on the too great 
hopes upon which it was founded, its mem¬ 
bers become discouraged and critical. They 
forget the smaller and conservative results 
which it is really accomplishing and too 
often it goes the way of those hundreds of 
other enterprises, built too much on hope 
and not enough on sound business principle. 
On the other hand, Professor Thomas N. 
Carver the Economist of Harvard is prob¬ 
ably too conservative in his views of what 
can be done by cooperation. Mr. Sapiro and 
Professor Carver spoke recently from the 
same platform during Farmers’ Week in 
Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer said that 
Professor Carver “threw buckets and buck¬ 
ets of cold wateir” on the glowing enthusiasms 
aroused by Sapiro’s remarkable address 
earlier in the week. 
Carver said that cooperation will help 
clear special crops from regions that go 
strong on them, but will never touch nor 
alter the immense established markets for 
such staples as wheat and cotton. “Coop¬ 
eration like everything else needs a self- 
renewing motive. Enthusiasm dies out, but 
the desire for money never dies out. If an 
organization can make money, that perpetu¬ 
ates itself. If there is any money in coop¬ 
eration, I am for it; if not, I don’t take much 
interest in it.” 
Somewhere between the too enthusiastic 
Sapiro view and the too conservative Carver 
view on coop,eration lies the “middle of the 
road.” Organization of farmers will never 
bring any panacea. No farmer will get rich 
by it. But if it is founded upon good busi¬ 
ness methods and led by capable and honest 
men, farmers can hope to get by cooperation 
their just share of the true market returns 
for their products. 
Lord Robert Cecil and the League 
of Nations 
ORD ROBERT CECIL, England’s chief 
exponent of the League of Nations, is 
visiting America to tell our people why he 
believes in the League, and to secure from 
them in return suggestions and criticisms 
which will help to perfect a great world or¬ 
ganization, formed for the purpose of pre¬ 
venting war. 
A dinner and reception were given to 
Lord Robert in New York City, where he 
made his opening speech in explanation of 
the League of Nations and answered ques¬ 
tions in regard to it. This dinner was at¬ 
tended by bankers, lawyers, business men, 
clergymen, journalists and leaders of all sorts 
who gave the great English apostle of world 
peace the very closest of attention. Lord 
Robert was introduced by James G. 
McDonald who recently wrote the feature 
article in American Agriculturist, describ¬ 
ing better than we have seen it anywhere 
else, the situation that exists in the Ruhr 
Valley in the present conflict between Ger¬ 
many and France. Because Lord Robert 
Cecil’s speech is the clearest and best presen¬ 
tation of the principles upon which the 
League of Nations is founded, and because 
we believe our farm people are intensely in¬ 
terested in the great problem of preventing 
war, we expect to print as a feature article 
in our next issue much of what Lord Robert 
said. 
More and more is it being brought home to 
all of us, as we struggle so hard to rectify 
what the war did, that some way or other 
we must do something to prevent war. There 
is no use to struggle forward for a century 
to make a little advance in civilization to 
have it all swept away by unnecessary con¬ 
flicts between the nations. Maybe the League 
of Nations is not the way, but so far no one 
has come forward with a better plan. Per¬ 
haps if we cannot agree with all of the de¬ 
tails of the League as explained by Lord 
Robert, we can, because of the great need, 
unite on the fundamental principles if they 
will prevent other catastrophes such as that 
started by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914. 
Farmers’ Hours 
N an article entitled, “The Farmer and the 
Factory Hand” in the February issue of 
the “Atlantic Monthly,” Arthur Pound has 
some interesting remarks on the hours that 
farmers work. 
He says that farmers think because they 
start the day early and finish it late that 
they work more hours than any other class 
of workers. In their calculations, accord¬ 
ing to Mr. Pound, they fail to allow for the 
time between spells during the day that they 
don’t work. To prove his point, Mr. Pound 
asked a farmer about farmers’ hours, who 
answered him as follows: 
“It depends upon how much land the man 
Agriculturist 
has and what kind of a wife, and how much 
stock, etc. You can’t lay down a rule that 
holds for all alike. But mine’s about an 
average layout, and I put in—just figure it 
up for yourself—say two weeks at fourteen 
hours a day, and two more at twelve. Then 
two months at ten hours a day. That ac¬ 
counts for the three busy seasons, planting, 
haying and harvesting, and some over. Al¬ 
low two months at eight hours and two more 
at six. There’s more than seven months 
gone and winter left. Gosh, a fellow don’t 
really put in more than four hours a day 
in winter choring around, if he really works 
at it. Of course, with nothing much to do, 
and plenty of time to do it in, he lays arouncl 
and lingers on the job a good deal. Sundays 
the year around would rate about the same, 
four hours each. Then to play safe, better 
allow 100 hours for chopping winter fire¬ 
wood and 100 for repairing tools and build¬ 
ings and odds and ends.” 
Mr. Pound goes on to say, “that averages 
just a little over seven hours a day the year 
around. The city man who works eight 
hours a day the year around, all but Sundays, 
comes close to matching the farmer.” 
The article as a whole speaks very kindly 
of farmers and perhaps the remarks about 
the actual hours that the farmer works is 
not far from right, although in these short 
help times, the farmer with a large dairy 
puts in a pretty full day in winter as well 
as in summer. 
But what Mr. Pound fails to take into 
consideration is the fact that when the city 
man gets through with his job, he can for¬ 
get it, while the farmer actually has re¬ 
sponsibility for his work from the time he 
gets up in the morning until he goes to bed. 
Even when he has a holiday off, he must cut 
it short to “hurry home to milk the cows.” 
This whole question of the farmer’s hours 
is a very interesting one and worth some 
discussion. How many hours do you actually 
work in the course of a year? How do your 
hours vary during the year? What kind of 
farming do you do*? Have you ever con¬ 
sidered methods for better regulation of 
your work to give you the same or better re¬ 
sults and more freedom? 
Getting Rid of a Load of Hay 
Y esterday,” said a farmer recently 
to a friend, “I took a load of hay to 
town and got rid of it.” 
In that expression, the farmer uncon¬ 
sciously showed one big reason why farmers 
get so little for their products. His whole 
psychology toward that load of hay and its 
sale was entirely wrong. With him the hay 
was something of little value to get rid of, 
instead of a possession much to be desired, 
to be parted from only when properly sold. 
The idea is general on the part of both 
farmers and dealers that the dealer confers 
a great favor on the farmer for taking the 
farmer’s products off his hands at any old 
price, but you can bet the farmer is not made 
to feel that he is conferring any favor on the 
dealer when he buys his farm equipment and 
supplies. It is an absurd situation that the 
farmer takes for most of his products the 
prices that the other fellow is willing to give, 
and pays for his supplies the price that the 
other fellow names, but for this situation, 
farmers themselves are chiefly to blame. 
How can we expect others to value what we 
hold of little account? 
Products which the farmer raise are the 
most desirable and most necessary in the 
world. If it were not for these products, 
the world would starve. The first step in 
marketing is to recognize the value of and 
have some confidence in what we have for 
sale. _ 
‘*A11 great nations fail when their agricul¬ 
ture fails.”—T heodore Roosevelt. 
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