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American Agriculturist, May 5,1923 
Editorial Pa^e 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 
OUR ADVERTISEMENTS GUARANTEED 
The American Agriculturist accepts only advertis¬ 
ing which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
We positively guarantee to our readers fair and 
honest treatment in dealing with our advertisers. 
We guarantee to refund the price of goods pur¬ 
chased by our subscribers from any advertiser who 
fails to make good when the article purchased is 
found not to be as advertised. 
To benefit by this guarantee subscribers must say; 
“I saw your ad in the American Agriculturist” when 
ordering from our advertisers. 
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 May 5, 1923 ^ No. 18 
A Good Word For the Guernseys 
W E take pleasure in this issue of calling 
your special attention to the Guernsey 
cow. We are playing no favorites and ex¬ 
pect to talk about the other breeds later, but, 
whether or not the Guernsey is your favor¬ 
ite, we know you will enjoy Mr. Babcock’s 
article, which we are featuring this tim'e, 
and also the other articles, pictures, and ad¬ 
vertisements of a most wonderful dairy breed. 
The question of which is the best breed is 
old and, in our opinion, too much argued, 
for, after all, it is not so much the question 
of the breed as it is of the man behind the 
COW. Every breed has its peculiar character¬ 
istics; every dairyman knows what those 
characteristics are, and can, therefore, de¬ 
termine which appeals to him the most. If 
he gets the breed that pleases him, that is 
the one he should have, whether it is Guern¬ 
sey, Jersey, Holstein, or Ayrshire. 
Do Not Hoard Sugar 
W E have tried to keep sensational and 
radical writing out of American Agri¬ 
culturist, but every once in a while some¬ 
thing happens that makes it difficult to keep 
from breaking forth into strong language 
and from calling a spade a spade. For in¬ 
stance, last winter we started two or three 
times to express some rather emphatic opin¬ 
ions about so much coal going to Canada 
when our own folks were suffering so on this 
side, but we finally did not say anything 
because, after all, it was more of a city prob¬ 
lem than a country one, and because we were 
not sure of all the facts. Now there comes 
another situation that does affect farmers, 
and this time we are not going to keep quiet. 
The present situation in the sugar market 
is one of the most abominable steals that has 
been made in this country in years. In spite 
of the fact that we are supposed to have laws 
that keep scoundrels within bounds, and in 
spite of the fact that all the authorities agree 
that there is no real shortage of sugar, the 
operators and speculators have succeeded in 
forcing the price of this necessity of life to 
twice what it should be, stealing the pennies 
from the tables of a hundred million people. 
The farmers who produced the sugar have 
not profited at all by the increased price. 
Inasmuch as the authorities do not seem 
to be able to cope with the situation, the 
people themselves will have to handle it by 
a judicious use of the great law of supply 
and demand. This means that all of us 
should buy as little sugar as we possibly can 
until the price gets back to where it should 
be, and that under no circumstances should 
we at the present time buy any large quan¬ 
tity for future use. 
Marketing High-Testing Milk 
C ALLING special attention in this issue to 
the Guernsey cow brings to mind again 
the old argument whether there is more 
profit in a breed that produces a large vol¬ 
ume of milk low in butterfat or one giving 
a smaller volume of milk but with a higher 
test. 
Many are the heated arguments we have 
listened to in attending the meetings of the 
Dairymen’s League Board of Directors be¬ 
tween the advocates of the Jersey and Guern¬ 
sey on one side and the Holstein and Ayr¬ 
shire directors on the other. It was the 
claim of the Guernsey and Jersey men, and 
without doubt they were right, that the but¬ 
terfat in high-testing milk sold under the 
league plan for a too low price. Those on 
the other side usually agreed, but pointed 
out the difficulty of raising the butterfat price 
to the dealer until the consumer was edu¬ 
cated to pay more for this high-quality milk. 
Shortly after the milk strike of 1916, the 
league did raise the price of butterfat from 
three to four cents a point, but even at four 
cents a point there is little profit in the pro¬ 
duction of high-testing milk. 
Mr. Babcock, in the feature article this 
time, shows how he has solved the problem 
for himself, by educating the consumer to 
the advantages of milk containing plenty of 
butterfat, so that the consumer is willing to 
pay an extra price for it. 
Laws to Protect Women and Children 
W E were sorry to hear the decision of 
the United States Supreme Court that 
the Minimum Wage Law is unconstitutional. 
Such a law exists in the District of Columbia 
and in several States, and was being given 
consideration for passage in several more. 
It establishes a minimum wage rate' for 
women and children, and represents one more 
step in the progress which labor unions and 
welfare workers have made in the long fight 
to protect women and children in industry. 
All that one needs to prove that a bitter 
fight has been necessary to improve working 
conditions for women and children is to read 
about conditions in industry that existed even 
in this civilized country less than one hun¬ 
dred years ago. Speaking of this period. Dr. 
Richard T. Ely says: “Windows were nailed 
down and the operatives deprived of fresh 
air. . . . Women and children were urged 
on by the use of a cowhide, and an instance 
is given of a little girl eleven years of age 
whose leg was broken by a billet of wood. 
The wages were small; a woman’s earnings 
in this period were estimated at less than 
sixty dollars a year. The working day in 
winter varied from twelve to fifteen hours.” 
The Supreme Court, in handing down its 
decision, said that the Minimum Wage Law 
discriminates in favor of women, and that 
discrimination is unconstitutional; and that, 
furthermore, women are now on an equal 
political basis with men and do not need spe¬ 
cial legislation. 
There is, of course, no danger that condi¬ 
tions in America will become again as bad 
as Dr. Ely describes, but women are the 
mothers of the race, and the whole future of 
civilization depends upon their physical, men¬ 
tal, and moral welfare, and upon the wel¬ 
fare of their children. Therefore, they do 
need special protection, and no reasonable 
legislation giving that protection to both 
farm and city women and children is out 
of place. 
Another act that is before the New York 
State Legislature of special interest to women 
is the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Bill. The 
Sheppard-Towner Act is a Federal law which 
provides for Federal funds to those States 
which raise duplicate funds to help reduce 
the deaths of mothers in childbirth and their 
babies. Twenty-two States have already 
passed an enabling act to raise funds in co¬ 
operation with the Federal Government for 
this purpose. 
The United States stands seventeenth in 
the list of civilized countries in its maternity 
death rate and sixth in infancy mortality. 
Two-thirds of the women who lose their lives 
through childbirth, and one-half of the babies 
who now die in the first year of life, could 
be saved, physicians estimate, if women had 
proper advice and care. Under the proposed 
legislation, the service to mothers would be 
furnished through the State Department of 
Health and the local health authorities. 
Unfortunately, the bill has been defeated 
in the New York State Senate. It can be 
passed next year if the women insist on it. 
A Curious Idea 
W E have often wondered why the great 
majority of people seem to think that 
the editor’s biggest job is to fill up space. As 
a matter of fact, each inch of space in any 
good magazine is worth many dollars, and it 
takes considerable thought to get material 
in that space which will justify the high cost 
of printing it. We have to laugh sometimes 
when some one thinks he is conferring a real 
favor upon us by handing us something “to 
fill up space.” For instance, the editorial 
office of American Agriculturist receives each 
month one hundred or more well-written 
articles, most of them of considerable length, 
for which pay is expected. These articles 
are all carefully read, and a very few of the 
best, probably less than 5 per cent, are bought 
for publication. The mere task of reading 
them takes a greai deal of time. 
Most first-class' publications also have a 
regular list of contributors who are paid by 
the month, or issue rather, than for each 
article. When the material from these writers 
comes in, it is all carefully read and often 
cut down to fit space requirements. Then, 
in addition to the material for which pay 
is expected, we receive several hundred arti¬ 
cles every week, propaganda and publicity 
for one cause or another, that the writers 
hope we will publish to further the cause 
they are advocating. Very little of such ma¬ 
terial is printed in American Agriculturist, 
and none of it except that which is rewrit¬ 
ten and reedited to make it more interest¬ 
ing and valuable to our own particular class 
of readers. 
The difference between a good publication 
and a poor one is largely due to the care 
taken in the editorial offices to weed out the 
great mass of poor stuff and select from it 
a little material of high quality which is par¬ 
ticularly adapted to the needs and the inter¬ 
est of the people of that particular magazine. 
We are always glad to give consideration to 
articles and to new ideas, but we have often 
wished, when some of our friends handed us 
something, that they could be in our office 
in the morning and watch the armfuls ot 
mail coming from hundreds of writers, all 
iiaviiig the same idea of helping “to fill up 
space.” 
