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American Agriculturist, May 26,1923 
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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found not to be as advertised. 
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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 May 26, 1923 No. 21 
In Memory of ’61 
T he famous scythe tree, a picture of which 
is on our cover page, is the finest monu¬ 
ment we know to all those country boys who 
left plows in the furrow and scythes in the 
trees to answer Lincoln’s call for volun¬ 
teers. 
In 1861, James Johnson of Waterloo, New 
York, came in from the hay field, hung his 
scythe in this tree, then a sapling, and told 
his parents to leave it there until he returned. 
He then enftsted; and was killed in 1864. 
At the present time, only about six inches 
of the scythe blade protrudes from the side 
of the tree. You can see it in the picture on 
the right side of the tree, near the eaves of 
the barn. 
No Memorial Day address or editorial 
speaks more eloquently of the spirit of the 
American farmer in times of crisis than 
does this silent old tool of the hayfield which 
has waited for sixty-two years for the return 
of the farmer soldier boy who put it there. 
Organization and the Dairy Show 
VEN ten years ago it would have been 
impossible to have held as large and as 
successful a farm meeting as the one at Syra¬ 
cuse, May 14, to make plans and pledge sup¬ 
port to the World’s Dairy Congress and 
National Dairy Show which is to be held on 
the State Fair Grounds next October. The 
enthusiasm of the large representative at¬ 
tendance, which came frorn eleven States 
and from nearly every agricultural county 
in New York, assures the success of the 
Dairy Show; and the success of the Dairy 
Show will mean much to the future welfare 
of eastern dairymen. 
The Dairy Show plans got off to a big 
start because agriculture is so well organized 
that it was possible to bring all the ma¬ 
chinery of organization to bear to make this 
preliminary meeting a success. Fifteen 
State-wide organizations from New York 
State alone were represented. As usual 
when anything worth while is to be done in 
New York State, the county farm bureau 
agents had a hand in it. Mr. M. C. Burritt, 
vice extension director of the New York 
State College of Agriculture, put all of the 
vast organized extension machinery of the 
college at work, chiefly through the county 
agents, to bring this meeting to the attention 
of leading farmers in every county. The 
county agents got busy and many of them 
came to Syracuse on the 14th with delega¬ 
tions of farmers, all prepared to pledge their 
support and do their part to boost the dairy 
cow through the coming Dairy Show. 
As we looked over the audience of 450 
men, so representative of eastern agriculture, 
we were again impressed with the fact that 
if you give farmers time, they will work out 
most of their own problems and bring 
about a new day in agriculture through 
cooperation. 
Governor Smith’s Crisis 
OVERNOR SMITH is facing one of the 
most .important decisions in his, career. 
Shall he approve or veto the bill repealing 
the Mullan-Gage Law? Political ‘‘wiseacres” 
are prophesying on the one hand that he will 
listen to the wets and sign the bill. Others 
are saying that if he has national political 
ambitions, he will veto the bill. 
Those of us who have watched Governor 
Smith’s political career feel confident that he 
will follow the dictates of his conscience in 
this most important crisis, and do the right 
thing—namely—veto the bill repealing the 
Mullan-Gage Law. 
Standardizing Farm Machinery 
OW many, many times farmers have 
complained bitterly about the apparently 
devilish ingenuity of farm-implement manu¬ 
facturers in putting a nut on a bolt where 
it was practically impossible to get at it with 
a wrench, or in making every bolt and part 
of any particular make of machine entirely 
different from the corresponding parts of 
all other makes. So many were the ma¬ 
chines, and so different were all parts of 
them, that repairs at home have usually been 
impossible. The local dealer, too, has not 
often been able to help out unless he hap¬ 
pened to have the same make of machine and 
a duplicate of the broken part. The first cost 
of any machine is by no means the whole 
story. The repairs that the farmer can make 
himself quickly and easily to the machine, 
and the service and the quick duplication of 
parts by the manufacturer and local dealer, 
are of almost as much importance as the 
original purchase price. 
During the war the Government urged 
simplification and standardization of farm 
machinery. Following this suggestion, many 
of the manufacturers made a start, saw that 
it was a much-needed service, and have con¬ 
tinued the movement to cut out unnecessary 
styles and sizes and to standardize material 
and parts. This standardization has begun 
to show already in the new machines, and 
we predict that the manufacturers who do 
the most along this line without injuring 
the efficiency of their product will get the 
farmer’s business. 
The Market Page 
AY we call your special attention to 
our market page. Few can realize the 
large amount of work necessary to get in¬ 
formation of this kind together, which is of 
practical use to farmers and which is ab¬ 
solutely reliable. It would be a compara¬ 
tively easy matter to copy miscellaneous 
market reports out of government bulletins 
and press releases. It is an entirely different 
matter to get the information direct, as our 
Mr. Jones does, from the markets them¬ 
selves and to interpret this information in 
the terms that farmers can understand and 
use. 
Mr. Herschel Jones, our market expert, 
who prepares the market page each week, 
was formerly in charge of the New York 
City office of the Department of Farms and 
Markets and we know of no one who is bet¬ 
ter fitted by training, experience and ability 
to go into these greatest markets in the world 
and get from them the information which 
will be of most value to the farmers who 
have produce for sale. 
Too Valuable To Waste 
E have received a number of letters 
from readers who were particularly in¬ 
terested in recent articles by H. E. Cook and 
Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., on handling farm 
manure. Mr. Van Wagenen’s humorous com¬ 
ment about the interesting time he had when 
a boy in “playing barnyard golf,” by peck¬ 
ing the frozen manure loose from the barn¬ 
yard, shows the extreme care that farmers 
of a former generation took in saving every 
bit of manure for the land. But it seems 
to us that they failed then, and that farmers 
are still failing^ in most cases, to do the one 
thing that is more important than anything 
else in conserving this important fertilizer. 
How many, many times we have noted great 
piles of manure that have had much of its 
real value as a fertilizer drained away and 
lost. We see little point to the many hours 
of hard labor that we ourselves used to put 
in in hauling manure in the spring or sum¬ 
mer after most of it had stood all winter and 
spring exposed to weather and drainage con¬ 
ditions so that at least half of its fertilizing 
elements were lost. 
Without question, farm manure, when 
properly handled, is the best fertilizer there 
is. In some countries in Europe a man’s 
worth is judged by the size of his manure 
pile. Considering the high cost of commer¬ 
cial fertilizers, farm manure is especially 
valuable and worth saving. This means 
methods will pay big dividends that will get 
it on the land in its original form. Where 
it is hauled in a water-tight conveyance from 
stable to field, this end is accomplished. If 
this is not practical, and there are always 
times of the year when direct hauling can¬ 
not be done, then some kind of a manure shed 
with concrete bottom is absolutely necessary. 
Concrete is comparatively cheap and easy 
to construct. It is not used half as much 
on most farms as it should be, and the first 
place to begin is with some kind of a pro¬ 
tecting shed to save the best part of the 
manure. There is not much use in talking 
about the importance of manure or how to 
handle it in the field until the fundamental 
step is taken to save its original essentials. 
What is the Ku Klux Klan? 
CORRESPONDENT writes, “Just what 
is the Ku Klux Klan?” It is impossible 
to properly answer this without going into 
great detail. 
Briefly, Ku Klux Klan is a secret organi¬ 
zation claiming to admit no one to member¬ 
ship except native born Americans, and hav¬ 
ing for its alleged purpose the maintenance 
of law and order. 
Although claiming to be American in 
membership, the Ku Klux certainly falls far 
short of Americanism in principles. One 
of the fundamental principles of America is 
freedom of worship, but the Ku Klux is bit¬ 
terly opposed to certain religious sects. It 
would seem also that those who are so strong 
for American principles would recognize the 
un-Americanism of attempting to correct 
wrong under cover of night, and a robe and 
independent of the governmental agencies 
that the people have established for main¬ 
taining justice. 
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