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Editorial Page of the American 
V American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
... , X., — 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr . Publisher 
E. R. Eastman . Editor 
Fred W. Ohm . Associate Editor 
Mrs. G. E. Forbush .Household Editor 
Birge Kinne . . Advertising Manager 
E. C. Weatherby . Circulation Manager 
CONTRIBUTING STAFF • , 
Jared Van Wagenen, Jr. G. T. Hughes H. E. Cook 
OUR ADVERTISEMENTS GUARANTEED 
The American Agriculturist accepts only advertising 
which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
Me positively guarantee to our readers fair and honest 
treatment in dealing with our advertisers. 
We guarantee to refund the price of goods purchased 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 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, $2 for three 
years, $3 for five years. Canadian and foreign, $2 a year. 
VOL. 114 October 25, 1924 No. 17 
Political Advertising 
T HE appearance of the advertising of any polit¬ 
ical party in these columns does not mean that 
American Agriculturist is pledged in any way 
to that party or to any party or individual candi¬ 
date. This advertising is accepted at the regular 
space rents and is paid for by the party or indi¬ 
viduals mentioned the same as any other adver¬ 
tising. Readers are requested to consider all 
political advertising as impersonal as far as 
American Agriculturist is concerned as this 
paper is absolutely non-partisan. We make this 
statement in order that there may be no misun¬ 
derstanding in the matter. 
McKelvie on Farm Taxes 
SHORT time ago we spoke of adding to the 
editorial staff of American Agriculturist 
the editors of the Standard Farm Paper group. 
These papers are the greatest farm journals in 
America. We are enthusiastic about this because 
we can give you through these men the best 
thought on farm subjects that can be had. After 
you read the article by Samuel R. McKelvie on our 
feature page this time, you wall be enthusiastic, too. 
Mr. McKelvie is publisher of the Nebraska 
Farmer , and was formerly Governor of Nebraska. 
When he speaks on the subject of taxation, we can 
be sure that he knows what he is talking about. 
Some of his statements are so outstanding that 
they are worth repeating here. He says, for in¬ 
stance, that more than 65 per cent, of all taxable 
values in Nebraska are owmed by farmers; that 
the only way to win back from the conditions 
caused by the war is to avoid extravagance either 
on the part of the State or the individual. 
“Each generation,” says Governor McKelvie, 
“ has its own obligations to meet. Therefore, it is 
unfair to tax the future. We should pay as we go.” 
And the following statement, we wish we could 
write as an axiom into the hearts of every American 
citizen: “THE MORE WE ASK THE STATE 
TO DO, THE MORE MUST WE PAY IN 
TAXES.” 
New Jersey Commission Merchants 
URING the course of a year, American 
Agriculturist Service Bureau answers thou¬ 
sands of letters from our people about commission 
merchants. Some of these letters want to know 
which firms are reliable and can be safely dealt 
with; others get our help in adjusting misunder¬ 
standings and unpaid accounts. If these ques¬ 
tions are about dealers doing business in New 
^ork State, our problem is comparatively simple 
for reliable dealers in this State are licensed and 
bonded under the New York State law. In an¬ 
swering questions about New York dealers, we can 
send a list of those who are licensed and bonded, 
and feel fairly sure that the farmer will get a 
square deal in doing business with anyone on this 
list. Then, too, these men who are licensed and 
bonded are reputable business men, making it 
fairly easy to adjust complaints against them. 
But in New Jersey there is no such bonded list. 
Time and again in handling a complaint we have 
found that a commission merchant in that State 
has done business for a time and then when com¬ 
plaints against him began to be embarrassing, lie 
has closed his business and opened somewhere 
else under a new name. There is not much hope 
for a farmer who is unlucky enough to have 
shipped produce to such a man. 
The remedy that would at least partially help 
this situation is a licensing and bonding law in 
New Jersey similar to the one we have In New 
York. But when we make this suggestion, we are 
informed by reliable sources that it would be im¬ 
possible to get such a bill through the New Jersey 
legislature, that there is not enough sentiment in 
New Jersey to pass such a law. This, it seems to 
us is a strange situation, for all reliable dealers 
ought to welcome a bill of this kind, and certainly 
there is not a farmer who will not desire it. 
Therefore, who stands in the way? We would be 
glad to hear from the New Jersey farmers on this 
subject. 
The General Farm Situation 
R. A. B. GENUNG, of the Bureau of Eco- 
omics of the United States Department of 
Agriculture, writing on the agricultural situation, 
has this to say about farm conditions in general 
over the country at this harvest time: 
The harvest is on once more. Wagon-loads of cotton 
lined up at the gins; threshing wheat in Dakota and rice 
in Louisiana; digging potatoes in Maine; picking apples 
in Oregon; drying raisins and prunes in California; cattle 
working down out of the high ranges of the Rockies; 
long trains of sheep rolling eastward; com harvest be¬ 
ginning in the Mississippi Valley. 
It is by all odds the finest harvest in five years—not 
the greatest in physical volume of products, but the 
best balanced and representing the best income. There 
is no single case of serious scarcity among the major 
products; neither is there any serious over-production. 
The Cotton Belt and the Wheat Belt, two regions 
that were plunged into a nightmare of depression in 
1921, will come back with this harvest—the South to 
fair prosperity and the wheat country to at least a more 
tolerable state of things. 
Corn is the one important crop of which shortage 
appears likely, but corn is a feed crop and will be sub¬ 
stituted for in one way and another. There is every 
likelihood that the proportion of soft, immature corn 
will be large. How best to dispose of this soft corn 
looms as one of the Corn Belt’s outstanding problems. 
AparUfrom the cattle depression, however, most other 
basic agricultural enterprises have moved into materi¬ 
ally improved position. The general index of purchas¬ 
ing power of farm products has moved up to 90, the 
year 1913 being considered as 100 . The up-swing of the 
last five months is the best sustained period of improve¬ 
ment since the war-time boom in the spring of 1917. 
Agriculture is working back to war* 1 a more reasonable 
balance with urban industry—fruit at last of infinite 
labor, privation, shifted population, andlastbutnot least, 
the weather. This is a harvest of deferred dividends. 
To Study Marketing 
HE New York State College of Agriculture 
announces that with the beginning of the col¬ 
lege year this fall, special courses will be given for 
the training of men in the science and business of 
marketing farm products. Several other agricul¬ 
tural colleges are already doing this work. 
SuUi teaching is commendable. Perhaps the 
biggest obstacle to success in cooperation is the 
lack of trained men. In fact, we feel that farmers 
have formed too many cooperative organizations 
before there were enough trained leaders to handle 
the business. 
When it comes right down to it, there are not 
American Agriculturist, October 25, 1924 
Agriculturist 
enough known facts about the real problems of 
marketing. It is easy to say that the spread be¬ 
tween the farmers’ prices and what the consumers 
pay is too great. No one disputes this point, but 
when we get to the point of actually reducing this 
spread, no one seems to know how to do it. There 
has been a lot of talk and a lot of theory, but not 
enough real study of the actual facts and experi¬ 
ence. 
Horseshoes and Happiness 
S INCE completing our horseshoe pitching 
tournament at Syracuse, one farmer said that 
he had his opinion of an editor or a paper that 
would give time to such foolishness when there 
were so many important problems in the world to 
be solved. 
In cooperation with the Farm Bureaus, the 
American Agriculturist encouraged a good 
niany thousand men all over the State to get 
interested in the old-fashioned game of horseshoes 
this summer, and in so doing we have no apologies 
to offer, for we believe we helped ;hese men a little 
in solving the greatest of all human problems, that 
of getting a little happiness out of life as they go 
along. 
For a time, as they engaged in the friendly 
sport, maybe they were able to forget care and 
trouble; for a time they did not have to think of 
the too low price of milk, or of high taxes, or 
where the money was coming from to pay the 
grain bills. Sometimes we think that a good 
niany folks forget that the right kind of happiness 
is the real aim in life. The wise founders of this 
nation knew this when they wrote into the 
Declaration of Independence those three great 
fundamentals—life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness. 
Whether people realize it or not, no matter 
what they do or where they go, no matter whether 
they run a farm or edit a farm paper, if they do 
not get som£ happiness out of it all, or if they do 
not add to the sum total of human happiness, then 
their life has indeed been a failure. 
The Chestnut Is Going 
“Under the spreading chestnut tree - 
The village smithy stands.” 
A FEW more years and there will be no more 
“ Spreading Chestnut Trees ” over the black¬ 
smith s shop nor anywhere else. The chestnut 
blight will soon finish the few that remain. All 
lovers of country life will be sorry to see these trees 
disappear. Aside from its high economic value, 
the chestnut dotting the hills and pasture lands of 
all the eastern farm country was an outstanding 
landmark, recalling one’s boyhood and memories 
of the pleasant times of other years. 
Eastman’s Chestnuts 
A FEW weeks ago a gentleman from Dixie was 
in my office when I was writing one of these 
stories. He became interested, and forgetting all 
about the business which he came for, he pro¬ 
ceeded to tell me a string of old Southern yarns a 
yard long. As usual, I forgot most of them, but 
here are a couple that I happened to remember. 
A Yankee was remonstrating with a Southern 
farmer about his shiftlessness in keeping “razor 
back” hogs. 
“Why,” said the Yankee, “I’ll bet that hog 
there is at least three years old, and if you had fed 
him right and taken the right care of him, you 
could have growed him twice as big in eight or 
ten months.” 
5 ou-all may be right,” drawled the South¬ 
erner, “BUT WHAT’S TIME TO A HOG?” 
* * * 
On another occasion, a Northerner pointed out 
a lanky porker, which just then happened to be in 
the act of rubbing himself against a tree, to a 
Southern farmer friend, and inquired: 
I suppose that’s what you call a ‘razor back 
hog, isn’t it?” 
“Yes,” agreed the other, “SEE, HE’S HON 
ING HISSELF NOW!” 
