100 
Editorial Page of the 
American Agriculturist, August 16, 192 , 
American Agriculturist 
American 
Agriculturist 
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VOL. 114 August 16, 1924 No. 7 
The Costs of Milk Production 
AIRYMEN will be interested in the state¬ 
ment of costs of producing milk in Mr. Mark 
DuBois’s article on page 98. Mr. DuBois has 
studied the milk situation for years and has the 
facts. Dairymen do not nebd to be told that they 
are producing milk under the cost of production; 
they already know this from sad experience. But 
city people do not have these facts, and by broad¬ 
casting articles of this kind through the WEAF 
Broadcasting Station, American Agriculturist 
gives hundreds of thousands of city folks the real 
situation with which farmers have to contend. 
Certainly the city consumer ought to know that 
the milk he pays 13 cents a quart for brings the 
farmer less than 3 cents. 
In a recent issue, we said that if farmers were to 
continue in the business of producing milk, prices 
must be immediately advanced. We are much 
pleased that they have been. The League and the 
Sheffield producers have announced increases in 
milk prices for August. These better prices, 
while not what they should be, will bring a note of 
encouragement into many thousand farm homes 
throughout the New York milk territory. 
With the price of grain and other costs advanc¬ 
ing, we look to see a raise in the price of milk to 
producers every month until these prices are 
brought back to where they should be. We do 
not believe that there are now any good market 
reasons why milk prices should not continue to 
advance. If these increases are prevented by 
reason of foolish and unnecessary price cutting and 
unfair competition among farmer-owned plants, 
both in and out of the League, it is time that the 
dairymen who own these plants demand that their 
leaders end such ruinous competition. 
Cities Learning the Truth About 
Farming 
OTHER always used to be saying, “ There is 
no great loss without some small gain. ” One 
of the small gains, which may not be so small in the 
long run, of the present hard times on the farm 
is the changed attitude of city people and city 
papers toward farming and farmers. It has not 
been so long since the majority of the people, 
particularly in the larger cities, openly accused 
farmers of being profiteers and thought of them as 
heartless wretches whose chief desire was to starve 
city folks. Such feeling of hatred between 
country and city is bad for both. It is bad 
economically, for under our present civilization it 
would be impossible for either country folks or 
city folks to live without the other; and it is bad 
spiritually because class hatred is contrary to 
Americanism and to the teachings of religion. 
It is therefore with a great deal of pleasure that 
we have noted a great change for broad-minded¬ 
ness on the part of city people and city papers for 
the affairs that concern the farmer. A recent 
editorial in the New York American quotes 
Senator Copeland as saying: 
“To assume the mills and factories can prosper when more 
than forty million persons who reside upon the nation’s farms 
have been impoverished to such a degree that they are no 
longer able to purchase such merchandise would be the 
height of folly.” 
The New York Evening World recently said: 
“What the farm country craves is a leveling up of crop 
and livestock prices to the general price index. Wet skies 
and chill winds are seeing to that leveling. 
“ If and as this leveling proceeds farm unrest will recede. 
With it will go the hedgerow preacher of class hate and the 
political ‘dirt farmer,’ who has more calluses on his tongue 
than on his hands. The law of supply and demand has been 
working against the farmer. When it begins to work for him 
the professional ‘one gallus boys’ who ride into office on the 
farmer’s back may face the dread necessity of going to work 
and we can deal with the genuine farm problems with less 
hysteria and more common sense.” 
The New York Times said editorially in its 
issue of June 17th: 
“They (the farmers) have reason to take courage from recent 
changes in the agricultural outlook. Tricky and insincere 
politics have failed the farmer, but nature and economic law 
now promise to do him a good turn. Dollar and a quarter 
wheat ought to save us from the worse consequences of 
demagogues and disturbers of the peace this year. . . . 
There is no secret about the crops. The estimate of the yield 
this year is that the total wheat crop will be something like 
ninety-three million dollars less than in 1923. These facts 
translated into terms of the market mean a smaller supply, a 
larger demand, and a consequent higher price.” 
The above are illustrations of what is now 
appearing in the large daily papers about farming. 
Farmers have always known these truths, and 
now that the papers are telling them to city 
folks, a better understanding will be created 
which will mean a lot to both. 
Quiet Is Pretty Good 
HE other day in old disreputable overalls, 
cotton shirt, and straw hat, I took a milk pail 
and went off across the farm hills of my boyhood 
to pick .wild strawberries. There were lots of 
them this year, and it was not long before I had 
my pail full. Then I hunted up the spring where 
the cold water bubbled out of the hill, and lying 
flat on the cobblestones, I drank and drank, as 
only one can drink after hours in the hot sun 
without water. Some way you never get so 
thirsty, nor water never seems so good in the city 
as it does when bubbling out of the earth from a 
cold spring. 
From where I was, I could look off across the 
fields for miles without seeing human habitation 
or hearing a single man-made sound. Lying in 
the shade, with a few sunbeams peeping through 
the leaves and into the holes in the battered old 
straw hat over my face, and with nothing to dis¬ 
turb the quiet of the peaceful summer morning 
but the chirp of crickets and the distant caw-caw 
of the crows, I thought that there are lots of worse 
things than just good quiet rest and peace. The 
hurrying, hectic, so-called civilization of ours 
wears us out without giving us much in return. 
I thought Spenser had about the right idea 
when he wrote so long ago: 
“Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas. 
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.” 
And then I got thinking how hard it is for most 
of us to get things just right. Always there is 
something to mar a little that which would be 
otherwise perfect. The city man gets too much 
city and the country man gets at times an over¬ 
dose of country. Recently, I asked some of my 
city friends if they had ever eaten a real old- 
fashioned wild strawberry short-cake. They never 
had, did not-even know what it was! What do 
you think of that? And they miss a lot of the 
other good substantial things of life, too. • 
But on the other hand, in the country there may 
be too much solitude, too much loneliness, too 
much work, and too little money. Things some¬ 
how are out of balance, but still when it comes t( 
the grand total of real happiness, and true happj 
ness is what we are all striving for, I think farn 
people have a little the best of it.— E. R. Eastman 
When Farmers Advertised 
HE experience of the California Fruit 
Growers’ Cooperative Exchange in the last 
twenty years is one of the world’s great examples 
of the power of advertising. In 1905, there was a 
great over-production of oranges and lemons in 
California and the groves were coming on so 
rapidly that the outlook seemed to be hopeless for 
the producers. Then they organized the Co- 
operative Exchange, provided an efficient sales 
system, and set out to tell the American housewife 
about the advantages of oranges and lemons. 
They made no half-way job either in their 
publicity work. To spread their messages, they 
used yearly some 55 million magazine color pages, 
206 million newspaper insertions, besides poster 
and street car advertising. More than 200,000 
housewives write to the Exchange each year ask¬ 
ing for recipe material. As a result of this cam¬ 
paign, the per capita consumption of oranges has 
increased from 20 oranges in 1907 to 40 oranges 
annually from California, plus 20 more per capita 
from Florida at the present time. Twenty years 
ago oranges were considered a treat, only to be 
eaten on rare occasions, such as at Christmas. 
To-day, they are a regular article of diet in most 
homes. 
In 1905, the crop production in California was 
11,500,000 boxes, and this was over-production; in 
1924, the estimated production will be around 
27,000,000 boxes, and they will all be well sold. 
Advertising and orderly marketing did the trick. 
Not In Politics 
HE Washington office of the National Grange 
takes this opportune time to issue a little 
statement emphasizing the fact that the Grange 
is not in politics. Like in many other of its 
policies, the Grange is absolutely sound in this 
attitude. No farmers’ organization which enters 
partisan politics can long endure. 
Here is one paragraph from the Grange state¬ 
ment: 
“Many others (farm organizations) have come and 
gone, wrecked by being led into political participation, 
back of which has always been personal ambition of 
leaders or would-be leaders. But the Grange has, with 
few exceptions, escaped this scourge, and still lives.” 
' On being asked as to what planks the Grange 
had asked the parties to put in their platforms, 
the Washington representative of the Grange 
replied that the Grange did not ask any party to 
do anything for it, except to take notice of the 
platform which the Grange adopts each year in 
its own time and its own way and that the Grange 
then asked parties and all of the rest of the public 
to help it secure the proper recognition of its own 
platform. 
This is exactly the attitude of American 
Agriculturist. We are for no particular party, 
but we are for those things in all parties which 
we think will work for the benefit of American 
agriculture. 
Eastman’s Chestnuts 
AN implement agent from this country was in 
±\ England selling machinery, and while in the 
“Fen” country in Lincolnshire stopped to dinner 
one day at a farmhouse. In the family were the 
farmer, his wife, and their son. As it happened 
they had a boiled ham for dinner, and the boy, 
being pretty hungry, soon cleaned up his plate and, 
passing it to his father, said, “A little more am, 
please, father.” 
“You shouldn’t say am, ” said the old man; “ you 
should say am.” 
“ I did say am, ” said the boy. 
“You didn’t say am. You said am,” replied 
the old man. 
The old lady, who was sitting next to the agent, 
nudged him, and with a sly wink whispered,“ YOb 
KNOW, THEY BOTH OF THEM THINK 
THEY ARE SAYING AM.” 
