468 
American Agriculturist, June 2,1923 
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 
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 June 2, 1923 No. 22 
The Agricultural Outlook 
HE United States Department of Agri¬ 
culture says that the general agricultural ■ 
outlook now is probably the best it has been 
in three years. “The domestic market for 
farm products is reported to have been im¬ 
proved immeasurably as a result of the in¬ 
creased prosperity in urban communities. 
When labor is fully employed and wages 
high, farm products find a readier sale and 
better prices. This is what has helped sus¬ 
tain the prices of hogs this spring; likewise, 
lambs, cattle, dairy products, eggs and many 
vegetables. The outlook for next fall and 
winter is considered to depend upon a con¬ 
tinuation of the present industrial boom in 
the city.” 
Professor G. F. Warren, the well-known 
farm economist, says that farm prices follow 
about fifteen months behind those that pre¬ 
vail in other business; that is, if city prices 
go up, farm prices will presumably follow 
abopt fifteen months later. This is evidently 
what is happening now. High wages and 
high prices prevailed for some time in the 
cities before the farmer could begin to feel 
the effect. He is, therefore, just beginning 
to get some small results from the present 
urban prosperity. This is evidenced in one 
way 'in the milk prices which prevail in 
eastern territory. For instance, the League 
net pool price for April of this year is $2.07 i4 
per hundred, which is $.74 higher than the 
corresponding price for last year. 
'fhe labor shortage will be a factor in 
farm prices, but while there is a large short¬ 
age its effect will be comparatively small be¬ 
cause farmers and their families will work 
harder themselves. 
Dr. Warren qualifies all of his statements 
about future production and prices by the 
word “presumably,” for he saj^s that it is 
possible for weather conditions to upset en¬ 
tirely all forecasts of future production. All 
other factors affecting production are insig¬ 
nificant in their effect compared with 
weather. For instance, even a very great 
labor shortage would only make a difference 
in production or prices of four or five per 
cent; while a large rainfall or a small rain¬ 
fall might increase or decrease production 
as much as twenty per cent. 
We have been very careful in anything 
we have said in regard to the future, to be 
conservative in not painting too rosy a pic¬ 
ture, but there are some indications now 
that if the weather does not interfere and if 
the farmers have not over-planted, there will 
be more farm dollars and therefore more 
farm purchasing power this fall than there 
have been in several years. Let us all hope 
and pray that this may be the case. 
The Losses With the Profits 
N ot all years are good years, even with 
the middleman. This fact that must be 
taken into account when farmers try to 
market their products themselves through 
cooperative organizations. There are bound 
to be bad years, with losses which the best 
organizations in the world cannot prevent. 
Last year was such a year in the fruit 
business. Many of the dealers who handled 
peaches, pears, plums, prunes and early ap¬ 
ples in western New York lost money on 
them. There was a heavy crop and most of 
it had to be packed and shipped within six 
weeks. The railroads were just coming out 
of a big strike and there were, therefore, de¬ 
lays in transit. Markets were heavily sup¬ 
plied and nearly all of these markets grad¬ 
ually declined. 
The dealers covered such losses by taking 
it out of the winter fruit which they handled 
later, or out of profits earned in previous 
years. Cooperative associations, such as the 
Western New York Packing Association, 
must do the same thing. If the dealers lose 
money on a season’s deal, the cooperative may 
also lose. Perhaps if they have better meth¬ 
ods they will^ not lose quite so much. On the 
other hand, if the dealers make money it is 
reasonable to assume that if the cooperative 
has good management and efficiency, it will 
also make money. The success of marketing 
through cooperation, therefore, cannot be 
judged upon one year’s or even two years’ 
operations. 
Going After the Cows 
NE Sunday afternoon in early June, 
Uncle Sam Farmer roused himself from 
his chair on the sunny side of the porch 
where he had been cat-napping, to go after 
the cows. With a walking stick, which 
served both as a cane and a cow accelerator, 
he crossed the creek bridge, passed through 
the lane bordered on both sides by apple 
trees in blossom, and began the long hill 
climb to get the cows out of the farthest 
corner of the back pasture. Closing our 
eyes we can see him in imagination, swing¬ 
ing his stick and with bowed head slowly 
clmbing the hillside cow-path, turning every 
now and then to look down across the fertile 
valley whose productiveness and beauty his 
own hands had helped to make possible. 
As he sat a few moments to rest in the 
June sunshine, was he thinking bitterly of his 
long spell of sickness and of the quack 
remedies which the would-be farm doctors 
had prescribed; was he thinking, do you sup¬ 
pose, of the hard times through which farm¬ 
ers had passed and were passing? We be- 
lieye not. Memory has a nice habit of gloss¬ 
ing over past troubles and emphasizing the 
more pleasant of life’s past experiences. Be¬ 
sides, the surroundings did not lend them¬ 
selves to bitter thoughts. No, we think it 
more likely that Sam might have been re¬ 
calling that time when his father as a very 
little boy had come with grandfather and 
grandmother on an ox-sled into this valley— 
that time when the nearest settlement was 
forty miles away, when timber wolves still 
ran in a virgin forest which stretched, with 
few cleared spaces, one hundred and fifty 
miles to the Hudson Valley. Or maybe he 
was remembering that other spring Sunday 
back in ’61 when he had started after the 
cows and had come back four years later 
after doing his part to make Appomattox 
possible. There had been quite a spell then 
when someone else had to get the cows and 
milk them. 
Maybe he remembered, too, how uneasy 
and dissatisfied he had been with the quiet 
life of the farm after the excitement of the 
Wilderness fights, Gettysburg and Win¬ 
chester, and could, therefore, sympathize 
some now with Young Sam who thought the 
old farm pretty slow and was considering 
going off to the city. 
As he looked down across the pasture 
which the blossoming dandelions had made 
into a field of cloth of gold, perhaps the 
thought came of all the. changes that had 
come into this quiet valley and into the world 
in the span of only three generations of 
men. In the place where the forests had 
once stood not so long ago, he saw with some 
pride the dark green of the young clover 
seeding, bordered by the bare fields of newly 
planted corn and potatoes which he and 
Young Sam had just put into the ground. 
Next were the acres of oats just beginning 
to cover the ground, and on farther, near 
the farmstead, blossomed the orchard where 
a million bees testified to the goodness of the 
work of the Sam Farmer the First, who set 
the trees in their orderly rows. 
As Sam looked down across the valley that 
Sunday afternoon, upon his handiwork and 
saw that for the most part it was good, we 
are sure he was thinking that he was glad 
that his life, even with all its sacrifices and 
hard work, has been cast among the pleasant 
fields of this farm valley, and that he could 
make no better wish for Young Sam than 
that he would stay with him on the old place 
and “carry on.” 
Have They Kicked Yet? 
CORRESPONDENT writes: “I think we 
farmers have a habit, whether we sell 
milk, potatoes or apples, of not raising the 
standard and quality of our own goods volun¬ 
tarily, but always waiting until the customer 
kicks on the poor service or quality.” 
There is much truth in this statement. 
The New York City milk shed, that is, all 
the territory within fluid milk shipping dis¬ 
tance of New York City, is probably the best 
and most prosperous dairy section in the 
world, producing a quality of fluid milk 
which is not equalled in any other place. 
This state of affairs, which is desirable 
from both the consumer and producer’s 
standpoint, exists not because most of us as 
farmers voluntarily fixed up our barns, but 
because we were forced to, if we were to stay 
in the business of shipping fluid milk to the 
city. 
All of the grumbling and cursing that has 
been done by farmers because they were 
obliged to remodel and clean up their stables 
would fill a library. _ Some of this grumbling 
was, of course, justified because of unreason¬ 
able and foolish requirements, but in princi¬ 
ple, and in the main, the requirements were 
right; and there are mighty few dairymen, 
who, having once cleaned up and placed their 
barns in a position so that clean, high quality 
milk could be produced in them, would go 
back to the old way even if they could. 
One of the chief ways in which the coop¬ 
erative associations are going to help the 
marketing work of farmers is in recognizing 
the fundamental principle that good selling is 
based upon the production, grading and 
packing of high quality, clean products. Hav¬ 
ing once put this principle into effect, such 
products will almost sell themselves. 
If it is Farm News, you will see it in the 
American Agriculturist. 
