American Agriculturist, April 14,1923 
S47 
Give a 
iooldvertisti^ 
There’s more to advertising 
than advertisements. Wliat you , 
see in the newspapers and maga¬ 
zines is only part of the business. 
A very important part, but by 
no means all of it. For it does 
no good to create a desire for 
any product with the buying 
public if they can’t get that 
product when they go to their 
store- The dealer, the storekeeper 
must also be convinced of the 
merit of the product and also 
that there will be a demand from 
the buying public for it. So ad¬ 
vertising falls into two main 
branches. The first is to persuade 
the dealer to stock the product 
and the second is to tell the 
public about the product’s ad¬ 
vantages so that they will go to 
the store and buy it.. 
Every week in the American 
Agriculturist you see advertise¬ 
ments of different products—lots 
of them. You see many things 
that you would like to have and 
decide to get the next time you 
stop at your store. The fact 
that the advertisement appears 
in the American Agriculturist is 
proof that the product’s all right 
and this factor plays no small 
part in making your decision. 
But how would you feel if you 
went to your dealer determined 
to get this or that product and 
he informs you that he never 
heard of it, and doesn’t stock it? 
Naturally you would be disap¬ 
pointed; you would feel in a way 
cheated. Probably you could 
send directly to the manufac¬ 
turer and oi'der the product, but 
that is more or less trouble. 
The manufacturers who ad¬ 
vertise in the American Agricul¬ 
turist also are making efforts to 
sell their products to the dealers 
of New York State, both by ad¬ 
vertising and with salesmen. 
But they don’t reach them all. 
And that’s where we decided to 
do our bit. For the aim of the 
American Agriculturist is to 
serve the farmers of New York 
State in every possible way. And 
if our readers see an advertise¬ 
ment in our columns of some 
product that they would like to 
get, we want them to be able to 
stop at their store and find it 
there. 
So we decided to establish a 
new service. Sort of a handy 
man to help the Magazine itself. 
So every now and then we get 
out a little booklet which we 
appropriately call “The Hired 
Man.” Its work is to do some of 
the chores that the American 
Agriculturist can’t do itself. 
“The Hired Man” goes directly, 
to the dealers in the State. It 
tells them which manufacturers 
are advertising in the American 
Agriculturist and the advan¬ 
tages of their products. In this 
way every dealer is advised be¬ 
fore-hand of products that there 
is certain to be a demand for, 
because of advertisements ap¬ 
pearing in the American Agri¬ 
culturist. Then when a reader 
wishes to buy any of the things 
he has seen advertised, he will 
be more likely to find them at 
his dealer’s. So, though “The 
Hired Man” doesn’t go directly 
to our readers, still it is working 
for them all the time and is an¬ 
other evidence of the desire of 
the American Agrculturist to be 
of assistance to the farmers of 
New York. 
jidvertising /Manager 
The Passing of a Great Farm Industry 
{Continued from page 331) 
the young, women and children, the 
respectable and the riff-raff reported 
for the picking. Special trains brought 
in hundreds from the city. On the Pa¬ 
cific Coast the Indians, the Japanese 
and the Chinese did most of the work. 
Some growers would hire only decent 
folks, and the harvest would be safe 
and sane. In other cases, most scan¬ 
dalous abuses occurred because of the 
social freedom of the “yard” and 
“house.” When the day’s work was 
over, the devil got his inning. The “hop 
digs,” or dances, sometimes lasted until 
morning. Drinking was common. And 
at its worst, the hop-picking season 
brought brutal fights and murder. Men 
lost their sense of manhood and women 
lost their virtue. 
At their best, hop pickings offered 
advantages. I personally know two 
couples, now long since married, who 
met in the hop yard and who have been 
happy and contented ever since. I 
know one woman who worked faith¬ 
fully through the season in order to 
buy a set of false teeth that cost ten 
dollars. It was a source of cash in¬ 
come for many poor families. 
The Material Side 
A pile of money was spent on the 
crop. Setting the yard, buying the 
poles, the wire and string; grubbing, 
tying and cultivating; sulphuring, 
picking and curing; pressing and mar¬ 
keting demanded more expenditure 
than most any field field crop you can 
think of. One grower said that his 
twine alone cost $1,000. Often a grow¬ 
er would have invested several thou¬ 
sands in kilns, boxes, presses, etc., and 
more thousands in the new crop in the 
form of fertilizer and labor, and didn’t 
know whether the price would be six 
or sixty cents per pound. In one case 
he stood a chance to lose a small for¬ 
tune and in the other case to make one. 
One grower sent his sons to college on 
hop proceeds, and the checks they got 
from Dad depended on the market price 
of the season’s crop. 
The main reliance of the hop grower 
was the brewers’ demand. It has been 
said that the Volstead Act caused a 
material loss of two billion dollars to 
brewers, distillers and saloon-keepers. 
No one has apparently thought of the 
millions lost to hop growers, who have 
sacrificed expensive yards, spray rigs, 
kilns and all that went with the indus¬ 
try. Often they themselves haven’t 
thought of it in that way. 
As a reliable source of farm income, 
hops have always been an unreliable 
crop. I have before me a list of 43 
men who were intimately connected 
with hops. Here are some of their 
comments: “Just ^bout come out 
even,” “Millionaires one day and pau¬ 
pers the next because the money came 
all at once,” “Took all the cows pro¬ 
duced to pay the pickers,” “Man that 
never raised hops came out ahead.” 
A writer has said in regard to fer¬ 
tilizing the crop: “The amount of ma¬ 
nure should be all one can possibly af¬ 
ford, and then a little more.” And 
that is just what they did; invested 
heavily in material and labor, spent a 
little more than they had and trusted 
to luck to come out ahead of the game. 
A few made money, but the great mass 
of growers lost. 
The Moral Issue 
How about the good church men, the 
elders, the deacons and the prohibition¬ 
ists who raised hops to make beer? 
There was a moral issue apparent, and 
there were a few men who calmly re¬ 
fused to have anything to do with this 
crop, the acknowledged purpose of 
which was to give the deliciously bitter 
flavor to an intoxicating drink that was 
steadily growing in consumption. On 
the other side, there were apparently 
good Christian men who liked their 
bottle and who refused to let the left 
hand know what the right hand did. 
^Many hop growers, I think, failed to 
'consider the final use of hops. They 
recognized the crop as having possibili¬ 
ties for profit. They did not try to 
reconcile their feelings toward their in¬ 
dustry and toward temperance. There 
were many who wouldn’t drink and who 
wouldn’t desire their children to do so. 
No state in our country ever had so 
many hops as New York, and no coun¬ 
ty stuck to their raising with more 
stubbomess than Schoharie. Now those 
glorious days are gone. Hop houses 
are going to ruin, the cowls idly yield 
to the wind, the duster is rusting and 
the picking boxes falling to pieces. 
From a material standpoint, we can 
rightly say that the loss of hops was 
not a real loss. In their place have 
grown up such parts of the farm busi¬ 
ness as dairying, potato growing, al¬ 
falfa culture, which are much more 
substantial and much less speculative. 
The hop industry was built on the 
sands and the irresistible flood-tide of 
pubic opinion washed it away. 
Any industry of the world will sooner 
or later be measured by its contribu¬ 
tion to the welfare ' or happiness of 
humanity. Weighed in this scale, hops 
were found wanting. It i^ sad to con¬ 
template the fact that men gave their 
lives and fortunes to a thing that had 
no real usefulness in the world. The 
hop industry has fallen forever from 
its high estate, and few there are to 
mourn its fall. 
Within a few years we shall almost 
have forgotten that hops once grew so 
thick that a man might travel for 40 
miles and never be out of sight of a 
“field like a forest.” There will be a 
few old folks to tell us stories of “hop- 
loops,” and record yields and prices of 
a dollar a pound. There will be found 
a few stray vines in neglected corners 
near the woodlot. A vine or two may 
be trained at the rear of the farm 
house, and the product used for “hop 
tea.” In its own language, the industry 
“hopped out” with great promise until 
the auctioneer of time and conditions 
struck it off with the words, “going, 
going off, gone.” 
The Valley of the Giants 
{Continued from page 346) 
“Stand back. Colonel, if you please. 
You’re in the way of the shovellers,” 
Buck Ogilvy warned him soothingly. 
Bryce came over, and Pennington 
choked with fury. “You—you-” 
he sputtered, unable to say more. • 
“I’m the N. C. 0.,” Bryce replied. 
“Nice little fiction about the switch- 
engine being laid up and the Laurel 
Creek bridge unsafe for this big mo¬ 
gul.” 
“You’ve stolen my engine,” Penning¬ 
ton almost screamed. “I’ll have the 
law on you for grand larceny.” 
“Not to-night, at least,” Bryce re¬ 
torted gently. “Having gone this far, 
I would be a poor general to permit 
you to escape now. You’d be down 
here in an hour with a couple of hun¬ 
dred members of your mill-crew. You 
will oblige me. Colonel Pennington, by 
remaining exactly where you are!” 
To Bryce’s infinite surprise the Colo¬ 
nel smiled. “Oh, very well!” he re¬ 
plied. “I guess you’ve got the bulge 
on me, young man. Do you mind if I 
sit in the warm cab of my own engine? 
I came away in such a hurry I quite 
forgot my overcoat.” 
“Not at all. I’ll sit up there and 
keep you company.” 
Half an hour passed. An automobile 
came slowly up Water Street and 
paused half a block away, evidently 
reconnoitering. Instantly the Colonel 
thrust his head out the cab window. 
“Sexton!” he shouted. “Cardigan’s 
cutting in a crossing. Get the mill- 
crew together and phone for Rondeau 
and his crew. Send the switch-engine 
and a couple of flats up for them. 
Phone Poundstone. Tell him to have 
the chief of police-” 
Bryce Cardigan’s great hand closed 
over the Colonel’s neck, while down 
Water Street a dark streak that was 
Buck Ogilvy sped toward the automo¬ 
bile, intending to climb in and make 
Pennington’s manager a prisoner also. 
He was too late, however. Sexton 
swung his car and departed at full 
speed down Water Street, leaving the 
disappointed Buck to return panting. 
Bryce Cardigan released his hold on 
Pennington’s neck. “You win. Colo¬ 
nel,” he announced. “No good can come 
of holding you here any longer. Into 
you car and on your way.” 
“Thank you, young man,” the Colo¬ 
nel answered, and there was a metallic 
ring in his voice. He looked at his 
watch in the glare of a torch. “Plenty 
of time,” he murmured. “Curfew shall 
not ring to-night.” 
{Continued next week) 
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State ... 
My age is . 
(You must be over 16 and under 70) 
