American Agriculturist, October 25, 1924 
The Trouble Maker — By E. R. Eastman 
Jim Taylor broods on the hard conditions 
under which farmers work, but his neighbor, 
Johnny Ball, believes it is foolish to try to im¬ 
prove them. Johnny's pretty daughter, Dorothy, 
wonders why her old school playmate is so ab¬ 
stracted and tries to tease him back to good 
humor. 
CHAPTER II 
T HE little village of Speedtown laid 
no claim nor made any special effort 
to live up to its name. In early times, 
perhaps, in days when it boasted of a 
tannery and three saloons, it might have 
had more speed, but those days were 
gone, and like thousands of other villages 
in the farm country, the town’s only 
reason for or means of existence was the 
business that it lived on from the sur¬ 
rounding farms. The blacksmith shoed 
the farmer’s horses, the merchants bought 
his eggs and sold him his groceries, the 
feed and implement dealer furnished the 
supplies for his business, the high school 
educated his boys and girls, the churches 
tried, at least, to take care of his spiritual 
wants, and the village undertaker buried 
him when the struggle with his acres was 
over. 
The morning, when the farmers came to 
town to deliver their milk, was the only 
time in the day when Speedtown showed 
some, real activity. From all of the farms 
on the hills and in the valleys for a radius 
of five miles, teams were coming on this 
June morning of 1916 bringing in the milk. 
Teams were standing along the main 
street while the men were in the stores 
getting something that “Ma” had told 
them not to forget. Another long line of 
horses was waiting at the milk station to 
unload. Here eight or ten men had left 
their horses, and while they waited their 
turn, were deep in argument and discus¬ 
sion over the milk situation. In this 
group were Jim Taylor, and Johnny 
Ball’s hired man. Bill Mead. 
“Did you ever stop to think,” said Jim, 
addressing the group in general, “what a 
whale of a business this milk industry is? 
When you think of it, we farmers might be 
proud "of the job we are doing in furnish¬ 
ing milk for so many people to drink— 
and for my part, I would take a little 
pride in it if we could make a decent 
living out of it. Twenty-five million 
cows must be bred, housed, and carefully 
fed and milked twice a day, three hundred 
and sixty-five days a year, and the milk 
hauled to market. I read the other day 
that the milk from these cows for one 
year amounts to forty-eight billion quarts, 
enough to make a line of milk bottles 
that would reach to the moon eleven 
times!” 
“That’s just the trouble,” said another 
one of the men. “We make too darn 
much milk. If there was a little less of it, 
maybe we’d get more for it.” 
“ 'T'HAT makes me think,” said another. 
A “Did you hear about that Dairy¬ 
men’s League feller over in my neighbor¬ 
hood yesterday? Well, he didn’t come to 
my place, but one of the neighbors was 
tellin’ my wife over the phone last night 
that this League man was tryin’ to get 
him to join the League so that farmers 
could get more for their milk. Said 
there’d been a meetin’ of the directors 
of the League up to Albany, or somewhere, 
and that these directors had decided to 
set the winter prices of milk themselves 
’stead of letting the dealers do it.” 
“That’ll mean a big scrap,” spoke up 
one of the older men, “and it won’t do 
no good. The dealers have got all the 
stations, a lot of money and power, and 
'even most of the milk cans, and the 
farmers can’t even stick together. If we 
go to fightin’ them, all we will get is a 
darn good licking.” 
“Maybe you’re right,” said young 
Taylor, “but we farmers are gettin’ 
whipped anyway, and I don’t know but 
what I’d rather get licked doing something 
than just sittin’ still and taking it.” 
“Right you are, Taylor,” said another 
man. “If the milk prices stay where they 
are much longer, cows are goin’ to get 
scarcer than snowballs in a July hayfield. 
Things can’t be any worse than they are 
now.” 
“They’re pretty bad,” agreed the older 
man who had spoken first, “but if you 
go to foolin’ with them dealers, you’ll 
find out that things can be worse.” 
“Anyway,” answered Taylor, “I feel 
like giving them a run for their money, 
and if that League man comes around 
here, I for one will join.” 
“And so will I,” said four or five others 
in the group. 
L ISTEN, boys,” said Bill Mead. 
“One of them there dealers’ barn 
inspectors was up. at the Jenkins’ place 
yesterday tryin’ to locate somethin’ to 
find fault about. One of them city dudes, 
he was, and I ’spect about the farthest 
“What was that you were just saying 
a few minutes ago about joining the 
League?” asked Shepherd, the superin¬ 
tendent of the milk station. 
“Why, I just said,” answered Jim, 
“that it was about time you milk dealers 
had a run for your money, and that maybe 
the way to do it was to join this Dairy¬ 
men’s League that we hear being talked 
about these days.” 
The superintendent glowered at Jim a 
minute, but made no reply. Then he 
pulled the cover off of one of Jim’s cans, 
smelled of it, and put the cover back, all 
without dumping the milk. 
“Take that stuff back home,” he or¬ 
dered. “It’s sour. You ought to know 
better than to try to get it off on me. If 
you farmers would pay a little more 
attention to your business and a little 
From all of the farms on the hills and in the valleys, teams were coming on this Jqne 
morning of 1916 bringing in the milk 
from Broadway he’d ever been. Old 
man Jenkins was away from home, so 
the old lady had to go down while the 
inspector nosed around the cow stable. 
Now, if you don’t know Ma Jenkins, 
you’ve missed somethin’. She’s a holy 
terror! Old man Jenkins don’t dare say 
his soul’s his own. She’s always bein’ 
surprised at people’s actions that don’t 
suit her, so up there in the neighboihood 
folks call her ‘S’prize Jenkins.’ 
“Well, that there inspector looked all 
over the cow stable and everything seemed 
all right. Never do, though, to let his 
report go in to headquarters that way. 
His job was to find fault, and he was 
goin’ to do it if he busted a button. So 
after he looks the place over once, he 
starts over again, the old lady taggin’ 
him around, lookin’ like a thunder cloud 
and gettin’ more ‘ surprised’ every minute. 
Finally he came to a box where Jenkins 
kept his bedding for the stock. The 
young squirt scooped up a handful, 
sniffed two or three times, and then 
turnin’ to the old lady, he says, says he: 
T must insist, Mrs. Jenkins, that your 
husband stop feedin’ this grain. It isn’t 
fit for the cattle to eat. It’s sour, and it 
will taint the milk. I am sorry, but I 
have got to report this carelessness to 
headquarters.’ 
“The old lady glared at him a minute 
and then she snorted, ‘You dinged fool, 
I’m s’prized at you! You don’t know 
nothin’. That ain’t feed, it’s sawdust!’ 
She said a lot of other things, and the 
more she talked the madder she got. 
Finally she stepped back and picked up a 
pitchfork and said, ‘Now, you git.’ 
“ I heard old man Jenkins tellin’ Johnny 
Ball about it, and I guess by all accounts, 
that fool inspector hasn’t stopped runnin’ 
yet!” 
T HE men laughed and drifted back to 
their wagons. Jim Taylor climbed on 
his and drove up in turn to unload his milk. 
less to ours, maybe you wouldn’t have so 
much to grumble about.” 
Jim did not answer, but stepping over 
to one of his cans, pulled the cover off 
and smelled of it. 
“Shepherd,” he said, “that milk is 
sweet, and you know it is. I’ve taken 
special pains to keep it cool since it came 
from the cows. In spite of the fact that 
you’ve kept us waitin’ here in the jhot 
sun for an hour, I’ll bet you five dollars 
it’s not a degree warmer than fifty-seven 
right now.” 
“Here, let’s see who’s right,” he said, 
taking down a thermometer from a nail 
and holding it in the milk. When he 
pulled the thermometer out, it registered 
fifty-five. 
“By thunder,” roared Shepherd, “we’ll 
see who’s runnin’ this plant. You take 
that milk, put it in your wagon, and get 
out of here! You’ve been doing alto¬ 
gether too much talkin’ about this milk 
business lately, and I’m showin’ you who’s 
boss.” 
“All right. Shepherd, I’ll go,” said 
Taylor, “but before I do, I want to show 
you a little something.” 
Stepping in a little closer to Shepherd, 
who was a heavy man, Jim brought his 
right fist up from his hip, straight to the 
point of the superintendent’s chin. With 
a look of amazement on his face, Shepherd 
tottered for a second, stepped back to 
try to catch his balance, lost it over a 
milk can, and fell backwards with a loud 
splash into the weighing can half full of 
the last farmer’s milk which had not been 
released into the vat inside the station. 
Jim then calmly turned his back on 
the splashing and cursing superintendent, 
put his cans back into his wagon and 
went home. 
T HE news soon spread all through the 
township that Jim Taylor had licked 
the milk dealer. On every hand there 
were chuckles of amusement and a gen¬ 
eral feeling that Jim had been fighting 
their cause as well as his. But there was 
a smaller group of the older farmers who 
shook their heads and, while they had no 
sympathy for the dealer, thought that 
Jim had been unwise and had made a bad 
matter worse. In this group was old 
Johnny Ball, Jim’s neighbor. 
That night at the supper table, with 
hisVife and daughter and the hired man, 
old Johnny mildly deprecated the whole 
affair and said that Jim had made a 
mistake. 
To his surprise, Dorothy flew into a 
rage greater than her father had seen 
since she had been a child. 
“I’m just as glad of it as I can be,” 
she said with glowing cheeks. “That 
man Shepherd got just what was coming 
to him!” 
“Why, why,” said the old man gently. 
“Why so much excitement, Dorothy?” 
“I don’t care,” she answered, lapsing 
into slang which she did not ordinarily 
use. “I wish that Jimmy had knocked that 
old Shepherd into the middle of next 
week!” 
“My sentiments persactly, Dot,” said 
Bill Mead, “and if you change your 
middle of next week to the middle of the 
milk vat, that’s just what Jim did do!” 
CHAPTER III 
J UNE passed and July came, and with 
it the long hot days in the hayfield. 
Sitting on his porch in the cool of the 
early evening, Jim Taylor could hear some 
of his neighbors driving into their fields 
or shouting at their horses, hustling in 
the last loads of hay. As he listened, he 
scowled unpleasantly and muttered to 
himself: 
“What fools we farmers are, rushing out 
after supper to work just as long as we 
can see, and the longer we work the less 
we get. Never catch organized labor 
doing that. Pay and a half for them for 
overtime, you bet. Some of the farmers 
can’t stop long enough to attend a meet¬ 
ing, even when it’s put on Saturday 
night.” 
Just then Harry Bradley, the county 
farm bureau agent, drove up to Jim’s 
house and hailed him, and the two men 
drove down to the other end of the North 
Speedtown community to attend a meet¬ 
ing that the county agent had advertised 
on the milk situation. It was understood 
that a representative of the Dairymen’s 
League was going to speak. 
When the two men drove up in the 
battered old farm bureau flivver, they’ 
found the little school house jammed with 
men who, in spite of the heat and their 
weariness, were there hoping to find some 
remedy for a situation that had become 
desperate. 
The farm bureau man called the meet¬ 
ing to order and asked for the election of 
the chairman. 
“I nominate Johnny Ball,” said a 
farmer. ' * - 
“Second the motion,” said another. 
Bradley put the vote, and Ball was 
elected and took his seat at the teacher’s 
desk. 
“As Mr. Bradley here, our farm bureau 
agent, called this meeting,” said Ball, 
“we’ll now hear what he has to say. I 
guess he needs no introduction in this 
neighborhood.” 
T HE big county agent got slowly to his 
feet. He was an outstanding and 
striking figure anywhere. Although he 
was probably the tallest man in the 
whole county, his great height never gave 
him the impression of being slim. His 
long arms ended in ham like hands. When 
he walked he seemed to glide, and his 
head, topped with a mass of brick red 
hair, taken with his general bigness, 
left with you a feeling of clean strength 
and virility. Deep blue eyes, wide set in a 
boyish face, and mouth which seemed 
always to be laughing, made for him 
friends ancUfollowers everywhere. 
(Continued on. page 297) 
