68 
Editorial Page of the American 
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 
E. C. Weatherby . Circulation Manager 
CONTRIBUTING STAFF 
Jared Van Wagenen, Jr. G. T. Hughes H. E. Cook 
Published Weekly by 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, INC. 
Address all correspondence for editorial, advertising, or subscription de¬ 
partments 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. 114 August 2, 1924 No. 5 
Milk Prices Must Advance Immedi¬ 
ately 
LUID milk in the New York City market 
may be roughly divided half and half be¬ 
tween that which is sold in bottled form and that 
which is sold in cans from the wholesale market 
platforms. Nearly all of the fight for markets and 
the price-cutting which has made so much trouble 
and cost the dairymen of this territory so much 
during the last few months has been with this so- 
called platform milk. The greater part of this 
milk is furnished either by the League or by the 
other cooperative plants. Almost exactly the 
same situation has existed in New England 
between the independent cooperative plants and 
the New England Milk Producers’ Association. It 
is a conservative estimate that in our territory 
alone this competition has cost dairymen at least 
a million dollars a month. 
An effort was made through the Committee of 
Fifteen to bring the warring interests among the 
milk producers of this section together. The 
League withdrew from this Committee because it 
claimed that a majority of the Committee’s 
members did not represent farmer-owned plants 
and therefore had no way of enforcing resolutions 
for higher prices. The League was at least 
partly right in this contention, but no one can 
deny that the plants of the Eastern States Milk 
Producers and of the independent cooperatives 
are farmer-owned. No one denies either that the 
chief trouble in the market is between the League 
plants and these other farmer-owned plants. 
THEREFORE, A TREMENDOUS RESPONSI¬ 
BILITY RESTS UPON THE DIRECTORS OF 
THESE!PLANTS, BOTH WITHIN AND WITH¬ 
OUT THE LEAGUE, TO BRING ABOUT AN 
UNDERSTANDING IMMEDIATELY. There 
has been a lot of talking and casting of blame 
back and forth, but still the situation continues 
and still the farmers are getting the ruinously low 
prices. The surplus period is now passed, pas¬ 
tures are short, grain prices are climbing every day, 
the hot season in the cities is increasing the 
demand; AND IT IS TIME, HIGH TIME, 
THAT THE PRICE OF MILK TO FARMERS 
BE SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED. It is 
time for action by those who are in a position to 
bring about results. Not very much action is 
needed, either. There is no immediate need of 
elaborate, complicated committees, milk ex¬ 
changes, or conference boards. All that is needed 
is just a little plain understanding between the 
leaders of the Dairymen’s League Cooperative 
Association and the directors of the Eastern States 
Milk Producers and other farmer-owned plants in 
this territory to respect each other’s business and 
not to steal each other’s markets. 
The Most Neighborly Act 
0 anyone who says that the world is going 
to the bow-wows, we commend the letters 
about the most neighborly acts which we are 
printing on the next page. Another page of these 
will follow shortly and we hope to find room latei 
for several more of these letters. Not in our 
experience have we read anything that has been 
more of an inspiration than these letters. We 
received nearly a hundred of them, and they were 
all fine, so good in fact, that it was a most difficult 
job trying to determine which were best. We are 
not sure that the ones to whom we have awarded 
the prizes are the best. We know they were good, 
but so were the others. 
But the matter of the prize was of small moment. 
The big thing is that these letters prove that, the 
pessimists to the contrary, the old world is still a 
pretty good place, a place filled with kind, sym¬ 
pathetic, loving folks. 
The Fruit Exhibitors and the State 
Fair 
T HE New York State Horticultural Society is 
considering recommending to the fruit and 
vegetable exhibitors that they change their ex¬ 
hibits from the State Fair at Syracuse to the 
Rochester Exposition. The Society points out 
that Rochester, being located in the center of the 
great fruit and garden belt of Western New York, 
is particularly convenient for a large number of 
fruit and vegetable exhibitors. 
But the chief complaint of the Society and of 
hundreds of fruit growers is the lack of cooper¬ 
ation from those in charge of the Fair. We 
confess to considerable sympathy with this com¬ 
plaint. Of all farm products, nothing adds more 
to a fair than the beautiful shows of fruits and 
vegetables. Yet it would seem that there has 
been the least consideration given to the ex¬ 
hibitors of these products. A’ear after year fruit 
and vegetable people have asked for a suitable 
building on the New York State Fair Grounds in 
which to make their exhibits. But each year 
something has come up to interfere and they have 
therefore been obliged to divide their exhibits and 
put them in unattractive buildings and spaces. 
Last year some members of the Horticultural 
Society were encouraged to believe that at last the 
State was going to build a Horticultural Building 
on the fair grounds in keeping with the magnitude 
of that branch of farming in the State. But talk 
of getting the Dairy Show here was brought up, 
and the Dairy Show management would not come 
unless the State erected a coliseum. The coliseum 
was put up and again the fruit people took a back 
seat. Of course the responsibility for there being 
no suitable building did not rest on the Fair Com¬ 
mission but on the legislature. 
There have been other grievances. It is claimed 
that the appointments of superintendents of the 
fruit exhibits have been made more from the stand¬ 
point of politics than from that of any real qualifi¬ 
cations for this responsible position. It is stated 
that both political parties have shown little 
consideration for the wishes of the fruit people in 
the management of their department at the Fair. 
It is, therefore, little to be w’ondered at that the 
horticultural interests are considering going else¬ 
where. Still, it is doubtful if such a move will 
result in benefit to anyone concerned. There can 
be but one big successful State Fair. 
The State has a lot of money invested in 
grounds and equipment at Syracuse. To get 
returns on this property, all branches of farming 
in the State should use it. We, therefore, most 
respectfully suggest to our friends, the fruit and 
vegetable growers, that they be patient just a little 
longer, and to those wdio have the Fair in charge, 
that they leave nothing undone to welcome the 
horticultural interests at the Fair and to give them 
the accommodations they need and should have. 
When Farjners Come to Wall Street 
Y ESTERDAY the Farm Bureau Agents of 
New York, together with a party of farmers, 
numbering nearly a hundred men in all, were 
the guests of the City of New r York. No stone 
was left unturned to show these men that the 
city was appreciative of the farmers’ efforts 
American Agriculturist, August 2, 1924 
Agriculturist 
to really understand how farm and food 
products were handled in this greatest market 
in the world. 
The men were here at the invitation and under 
the auspices of the New York Central Railroad 
for a three-day trip to study the city markets. A 
full account of this is given on another page. 
Yesterday, the third day of the trip, the men 
were invited by the Dairymen’s League Cooper¬ 
ative Association to visit their fine offices on 
Forty-second Street, to see how this cooperative 
organization actually operated under the pooling 
system. After the visit in the League’s office in 
the morning, the men in big sightseeing buses 
were conducted by motor-cycle policemen from 
Forty-second Street downtown to WEAF station, 
from there to the City Hall, and then to the docks 
at the Battery, where they took a boat furnished 
by the city administration to travel around Man¬ 
hattan Island in order to study the terminal 
markets and the city’s shipping facilities. 
The most dramatic and impressive part of the 
whole trip w’as the stopping of all traffic by the 
motor cops wdiile the buses carrying the farmers 
traveled with sirens screeching without a single 
stop from twenty-five to thirty-five miles an hour 
around either the left-hand or right-hand side of 
street cars and other traffic, while the gaping 
crowds, held back by policemen, wondered what 
notables were passing. We rode from the Bat¬ 
tery to Fourteenth Street with the boys at five 
o’clock when the home-going traffic is the densest, 
It was a unique experience. 
While traveling through the downtown crowded 
districts, including the passing of Wall Street, we 
were impressed with the progress farmers have 
made and the better appreciation city folks have 
of where the food comes from and of the men that 
produce it. On the other hand, these men will go 
back to the country after three days, including 
one whole night passed in the markets, with some 
real understanding of what the farmers’ great 
marketing problem in so large a city is. When 
these men talk about the markets, they will have 
an idea of wdiat they talk about. 
The effort that the New’ York Central Railroad 
makes every year in bringing the large group of 
farmers to the city for this purpose is to be highly 
commended, and the enthusiastic comments of 
the men who have made the trip give full credit 
for its success to Mr. R. W. Quackenbush, General 
Agricultural Agent of the New York Central. 
Mr. Quackenbush carefully planned the schedule 
so that not a minute was lost by the group in 
getting about the city and in making the best out 
of their time to study those market activities 
which are the most important. 
Eastman’s Chestnuts 
A LONG about this time of the year or a little 
jt\. earlier, city folks begin to think about a 
vacation, and to wonder if it is not about time to 
go and pay their farmer relatives a good long 
visit. If there are no near relatives, cousins five 
times removed, or even casual friends, will serve, 
provided only that they live on a farm. I suspect 
that a great sigh of relief is breathed in many a 
farm home when the long-staying city friends 
finally have to tear themselves aw’ay and leave the 
farm to settle into its w r ays of peace and rest again. 
Hospitality is all right, but there are limits, and 
when Mother sweats in the hot kitchen for weeks 
at a time to cook for her own family and as many 
more visitors, and wffien Father begins to wonder 
what he will have left to sell after he has fed all of 
his guests, the smile of w’elcome becomes rather 
forced. 
One of these summer guests found her hostess 
sobbing one day violently in the corner of the 
kitchen. 
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “wdiat are you crying 
so about?” 
“I—I—I am c-crving because I’m f-fraid you'll 
never c-come to s-see me any more.” 
“Why, Mary,” said her guest, “don’t feel badly 
about that. You know I’ll come again.” 
“But h-how c-can you come again, IF YOk 
N-NEVER GO AWAY THIS TIME?” 
