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American Agriculturist, April 21,1923 
Editorial Page of the American Agriculturist 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr. . . . Publisher 
E. R. Eastman. Editor 
Fred .W. Ohm. Associate Editor 
Gabrielle Elliot . . . . Household Editor 
BiRGE Kinne. Advertising Manager 
H. L. VONDERLIETH . . . Circulation Manager 
CONTRIBUTING STAFF 
H. E. Cook, Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., H. H. Jones, 
Paul Work, G. T. Hughes, H. E. Babcock 
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ing which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
We positively guarantee to our readers fair and 
honest treatment in dealing with our advertisers. 
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Published Weekly by 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, INC. 
Address all correspondence for editorial, advertising, or 
subscription departments to 
461 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, December 15, 1922, at the 
Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3,1879. 
Subscription price, payable in advance, $1 a year. 
Canadian and foreign, $2 a year. 
VOL. Ill April 21, 1923 No. 16 
A Good Suggestion 
S ENATOR STRAUS, Chairman of the 
Senate Committee on Agriculture, has 
introduced a resolution into the New York 
State Legislature calling for a joint legis¬ 
lative committee to study marketing condi¬ 
tions. In the language of the resolution, this 
committee would determine whether our 
present laws designated to promote and en¬ 
courage cooperative marketing are adequate 
for the purpose, and investigate to what ex¬ 
tent government cooperation may be desir¬ 
able for the erection of warehouses, the es¬ 
tablishment of markets, and the dissemina¬ 
tion of accurate information among people 
in the cities as to conditions on the farm. 
The committee would also be authorized “to 
investigate whether the great barge canal, on 
which the State pf New York has spent over 
$150,000,000 may be utilized for bringing 
foodstuffs from the farming districts to the 
cities.” If appointed, the committee would 
consist of three members of the Senate and 
three members from the Assembly. The 
resolution calls for an appropriation of $15,- 
000 to be used in the investigation. 
We believe that such a study would be 
well worth while. To be sure, there have 
been so many investigations of farm condi¬ 
tions that farmers are rather skeptical as to 
any good that can come from any new one, 
but there is large opportunity for a com¬ 
mittee to make a real study of present mar- 
keling conditions which could result in much 
good to both producers and consumers. 
Dairymen will remember the Wickes Legis¬ 
lative Committee which made a thorough 
study of the milk marketing situation in 
1916. The facts found and published by 
the impartial Wicks Committee did much to 
secure the support of public opinion for the 
dairymen in their fight for better prices for 
their milk. 
We heartily agree with Senator Straus in 
a statement he made in regard to the market 
situation in connection with his resolution 
asking for a legislative committee to study 
farm marketing. Senator Straus said: “It 
is an absurd situation when one comes to 
consider it, that Oregon apples, produced 
over two thousand miles away, are able-to 
compete right here in our own city markets 
with New York State apples, produced fifty 
or one hundred miles away, nay, more; that 
while Oregon apples are selling in the mar¬ 
kets of New York State, at that very time. 
New York apples are rotting on the farms 
in the neighborhood of the city, because it 
does not pay the farmer to pick them. Scien¬ 
tific agriculture is solving the problem of an 
adequate production of foodstuffs. It is time 
some consideration was seriously given to 
solving those problems of marketing without 
which even the finest crop results in neither 
increased profits to farmers nor cheaper 
foodstuffs in the city.” 
Getting the Farm News 
W E call your particular attention to the 
real farm news in this issue of American 
Agriculturist. As we have stated many 
times, we believe it a fundamental purpose of 
any farm paper to get to its people the news 
of farm and other affairs in which farm 
people are interested, writtten and inter¬ 
preted from the standpoint of what bearing 
such news has upon farm conditions. 
Illustrating how we are carrying out this 
thought, notice in this issue the account of 
the legislative hearing held in Albany on the 
Downing-Hutchinson Rural School Bill. We 
sent a representative purposely to Albany to 
attend this hearing. We also have a special 
Albany correspondent who furnishes us for 
your benefit up-to-date legislative news. The 
same is true of Pennsylvania and New Jer¬ 
sey. In this issue there is an extremely im¬ 
portant account of a big meeting at Rochester, 
of the potato growers who were addressed 
by Aaron Sapiro, the great farm cooperative 
enthusiast. Mr. Ohm, our associate editor, 
made a special trip to Rochester to report 
for you what took place at this meeting and 
Mr. Sapiro’s leading remarks. This issue 
carries an account of the most recent meet¬ 
ing of the Maple Sap Producers’ Association. 
We had a representative present at Syracuse 
who gives you on another page the market 
situation of maple syrup and sugar as re¬ 
ported at this meeting. Another representa¬ 
tive of American Agriculturist reports this 
time the last meeting of the Cooperative 
Council, representing all the commodity co¬ 
operatives in New York State. 
All of this is special news material in ad¬ 
dition to that which is furnished by our regu¬ 
lar correspondents scattered all over our 
'‘ great territory. It is, of course, costing us 
a lot of money in salaries and traveling ex¬ 
penses to obtain this news service, but we 
think it is what you want. If there is any 
way in which we can improve this service, 
won’t you tell us how? 
The Servant is Worthy of His Hire 
M rs. ROBERTS’ article on the country 
doctor in our March 17 issue, attracted 
considerable attention. Some of the good 
letters that we received from our readers 
giving suggestions for keeping physicians in 
the rural sections are printed on the opposite 
page. We particularly noticed that most of 
these letters called attention to the need of 
paying the doctors well for their services. 
With this thought we heartily agree. We 
know from our own experience how hard 
money comes to most country people, but 
it is no more than human nature that if 
doctors can get much more money in the city 
and can collect that money more promptly, 
the city will be where they will go. 
Along this same line, we have before us 
a letter from a member of our great Ameri¬ 
can Agriculturist family which says, “I have 
been secretary of our church pulpit com¬ 
mittee for some months and we are finding it 
hard to get a minister to come to the country 
to preach. I have corresponded with over 
thirty-five ministers and one would not ex¬ 
pect from men of their profession the ques¬ 
tions they ask such as, electric lights, State 
roads, hard-wood floors, baths, distance to 
railroad, etc.” 
We do not agree with this sentiment. We 
'think that men who have spent years and a 
good deal of money to properly train them¬ 
selves professionally have a right to demand 
and expect reasonable modern conveniences 
in their homes. Even if they are willing to 
make great sacrifices themselves, they must 
consider whether or not they should put 
themselves into a position where their chil¬ 
dren must sacrifice, too, in advantages which 
they otherwise would have. It is strange how 
all of these country problems go back to a 
question of dollars and cents. We have often 
said that if farmers could get better prices 
foh their products, they would take care of 
all of their other problems. They could 
then pay for teachers, ministers and doctors r 
so fhat they would feel that they were 
servants worthy of their hire, and have no 
desire to leave for other fields. 
Support the Fruit Exposition 
P LANS are developed for the Eastern 
Fruit Exposition to be held in New York 
City next November, which bid fair to make 
this the largest and best fruit show ever 
held in the State. All of the New England 
States with New York and Maryland have 
definitely decided to participate in the show. 
Other Eastern States are expected to take 
part. 
It is time eastern growers awoke to the 
necessity of advertising eastern grown fruit 
in our big cities and this proposed apple ex¬ 
position, featuring eastern fruit, will be a 
real step in bringing our fruit to the atten¬ 
tion of city consumers. An appropriation of 
$30,000 has been asked from the New York 
State Legislature to enable the State to take 
an adequate and worth while part in showing 
its fruit at this exposition. This appropria¬ 
tion should be granted. 
A Word for the Country Town 
EVERAL books have appeared in recent 
years which libel and misrepresent people 
and conditions in our small country towns. 
To such books we take considerable excep¬ 
tion. To be sure, small town people gossip, 
and gossip at any time and any place is 
an evil thing, but we do not know that it is 
any worse to talk about one’s neighbor over 
the backyard fence than it is to read avidly 
the last sensational word of the latest murder 
or divorce tale that fills the front pages of the 
city daily newspapers. 
To be sure, there are those in the country 
towns who have more than their share of 
narrowness, selfishness and prejudices, but 
human nature is the same everywhere and 
there is about so much devil in all of us, no 
matter where we live. If evil does not show 
up in city folks in the forms that it does 
among rural residents, it is likely to make 
some other and equally bad manifestation. 
Small town folks and those who live on 
the farms have, of course, their faults, most 
of which are the results of a life-time of 
contending with small, but irritating and 
narrowing affairs. Nevertheless, all of the 
modern novels to the contrary, when i|: comes 
to the final showdown, we hope our chances 
will be as good as the majority of those who 
live on Main Street. 
We have often thought of the people who 
live in the rural neighborhoods and small 
towns as like one great family, knowing one 
another’s faults, perhaps talking about them 
too much at times, but always standing 
shoulder to shoulder with one another in 
times of sickness and trouble. 
