American Agriculturist, July 26, 1924 
Temper Farm Work with Recreation 
Then the Family Won’t Slip—Other Good Letters 
I S the American family slipping? I look at 
some people I know and say, “Yes, un¬ 
questionably it must be”; but when I ob¬ 
serve the great majority of my friends and 
acquaintances, I say, “No, I can’t believe these 
girls ever will allow it to slip far.” Perhaps the 
ones we know are above the average—in many 
ways I think they are—but they are as their 
mothers have taught them to be, and in their 
mothers’ day there were many other nice girls 
throughout the country; will they 
not have taught their daughters 
well, also? 
Chautauqua County should be 
fairly representative and, looking 
back twenty years, I can’t recall 
any rural section that could boast 
as many good, morally upright, 
symmetrically educated girls as 
we have in our home neighborhood 
to-day. Certainly we didn’t have 
so many here at that time, nor yet 
in the village where I attended high 
school. I do not know about city 
girls, but I believe country girls 
are not degenerating. 
Perhaps a part at least of my 
cause for optimism may be due to 
the way in ’which our girls spend 
their evenings. No doubt they 
sometimes attend movies—all of 
them—and good movies have their 
place and a distinct value of their 
own, but there are so many attrac¬ 
tive things for them to attend right 
in their own community that the 
temptation to go elsewhere for 
their amusement is reduced to a 
minimum. Our greatest problem 
is not to find entertainment but 
to find time to indulge in the many 
forms we have close at hand. Our 
summers are filled to overflowing 
with picnics, parties, and other 
outings, though the winter blizzards 
do sometimes check these social functions. Do 
not imagine that our youth is a lazy bunch either. 
These things mean work and they do the work, and 
incidentally grow into healthy, normal, self- 
reliant citizens.—E. M. Anderson, Chautauqua 
County, N. Y. 
* * * 
Before the Revolving Rake 
I WAS very much interested in your descrip- 
of farm implements of bygone years, in the 
American Agriculturist of June 28 . In refer¬ 
ence to hay-rakes I can state that prior to the one 
you pictured, The Revolving Rake, there was 
one of similar type with handles about the same, 
but with teeth on one side of the head only, and 
drawn in the same manner as the revolving rake, 
but when the rake was full the horse was stopped 
and the rake lifted up to drop “dump” the hay, 
then the rake set down in front of deposited load 
and the horse started again and so on to the end 
of the job. 
It did good work, but was hard on the man 
handling it.* Still it was a greater aid to the farmer 
over the hand rake than any improvement since 
made on that crude affair. The earliest use of this 
rake, to my knowledge, was in the early ’40s— 
1841 to 1845.— Henry A. Brown, Suffolk County, 
N. Y. 
* * * 
“ Dey Vas All On to It” 
N O farmer can carry on a set of expensive 
painstaking experiments, in order to start 
something revolutionary in the farming line. 
Neither can he depend on the experiment stations 
— for what the experiment stations have for the 
farmer is, to the farmer, very much like what the 
cow has for the calf is to him; no matter how pure 
By A. A. READERS 
and sweet the milk may be, the calf must digest 
it all over again before he can adapt it to his 
needs, otherwise he will have pains. Likewise the 
farmer when he gets material from the experiment 
station, must digest it all over again; if he does 
not he also will have pains. But if a farmer does 
undertake to carry on experiments, in nine cases 
out of ten, he will find himself in the same position 
as the small boy who when at a neighbor’s was 
offered a piece of cake, which he nibbled pretty 
gingerly and finally asked how it was made. The 
lady of the house being very proud of her cooking, 
gave him the recipe at length, and finally said, 
“Now, Johnny, I suppose you are going right 
home to tell your Mamma just how my cake is 
made so she can make one just like it.” “Not on 
yer life,” says Johnny, as he grasped the door 
knob, “I’m goin’ ta tell ’er just how it’s made an’ 
tell ’er never to make one like that for I can’t eat 
the stuff.” 
“A Rose By Another Name” 
But, on the other hand, if the farmer does strike 
something worth while, he will-find himself no 
better on than Mr. Schoenfeldt wets, in that little 
story he used to tell. It seems that one year 
there were no flowers for Memorial Day. This 
must have been in times when wild flowers were 
the only dependence, and it was a serious ques¬ 
tion with him what to do, but a happy thought 
struck him. He had been one of the very first 
in Western New York to sow a field of crimson 
clover, which he had done the season before and 
it was now in full bloom, and as the inspiration 
came to him he called to the children and, seizing 
their baskets, they all hurried to the field and 
picked a quantity of the beautiful flowers which 
he shipped to a Buffalo florist. Now it would 
have been no use to ship clover blossoms to a 
Buffalo florist, any fool would know better thab 
that and Mr. Schoenfeldt was no fool, so hei 
billed it as trifolium and, to use his words; 
“There came back promptly the message by wire, 
‘Send some more dose trifolium. What der —— 
iss it?” Well, they went out again and in the 
short remaining time picked all they possibly 
could and shipped to the same place, and they 
received a good big price for it. Then he said 
they tried the same thing over again the next 
year, “But you all know how it iss, dey vas all 
on to it.” 
Let a manufacturer discover some means where¬ 
by he can manufacture some article better or 
more cheaply than it has ever been done before 
and, for seventeen long happy years, he may reap 
his reward; but let a farmer discover some means 
by which he may grow some crop more quickly 
or better than it has been grown before and, 
for one short miserable season, he may reap 
his reward and then, “Dey vas all 
on to it.” 
One of the greatest obstacles to 
a great step in agriculture is the 
almost universal reluctance to pay 
even a fair price for raw material. 
A lady may go into a store and pick 
out a pair of the most impossible 
shoes, shoes embodying neither 
comfort nor durability, neither 
grace nor beauty, and she will will¬ 
ingly pay an almost unheard of 
price for them; but on going down 
to the market after this and finding 
a farmer offering some good whole¬ 
some potatoes for sale, she will 
haggle with that farmer over the 
price of a half bushel of potatoes 
that she knows have already cost 
him more to grow than he has asked 
her for them, if she considers his 
wages at half what her husband is 
getting. I am not throwing slurs 
at the ladies. The men are quite 
as bad. 
There came a time years ago 
when, because of the increasing 
population of our eastern cities, it 
seemed probable that the time was 
coming when the demand for farm 
produce would so nearly equal the 
supply, that the farmer would be 
able to obtain a fair price for his 
produce. This was unthinkable, so 
our Government offered foreigners 
and others free land in the West if they would 
come in and develop it. Later the eastern farmer, 
as well as others, was taxed that great reservoirs 
might be built, so that more produce might be 
grown and the same low price level maintained. 
Many farmers are saying hopefully that we are 
near the end of this, but are we? Experts claim 
THE PATRIARCH IS GONE ! 
HIS large Mission grape vine was a reminder of 
the days of Padres and Missions in Alta and 
Baja, California. It was without doubt the oldest 
and largest grape vine in the State and during its 
lifetime spread over almost a quarter acre of ground. 
Due to inattention and the insidious work of termites, 
commonly and mistakenly called “white ants,” it at 
last gave up the struggle and about three years ago 
was grubbed up and removed. 
that only about one-half of the tillable land of the 
country is yet under cultivation and probably even 
this does not include the great possibilities of 
Alaska, so do not look to the Government for 
help, for our Uncle Sam is, in such matters, very 
much like an old hen with a litter of chicks. He 
Lears only the one that yaps the loudest, which 
('Continued on page 61i) 
WHERE LAND AND FOOD ARE SCARCE 
I N many parts of the Orient, particularly Japan, Korea, and China, there is 
£very little land that can be cultivated. The bread of the people is “rice, ” which 
requires much water and rich soil. The ingenious natives have “ terraced’ the 
high mountainsides, planted the rice, and conduct the water by bamboo pipes. 
Very often these terraces will cover the entire side of a great mountain. The 
reader might ask, “How high are the mountains in the picture?” While it cannot 
be stated positively, we do know that they are less than 6,000 feet above sea-level, 
otherwise the principal crops cultivated could not be grown. 
