554 
Editorial „ Page of the American 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
Henry Moegenthau, 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. H. E. Cook 
G. T. Hughes M. C. Burritt 
OUR ADVERTISEMENTS GUARANTEED 
The American Agriculturist accepts only advertising 
which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
We 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 November 22, 1924 No. 21 
Announcement 
T has been our aim ever since we have been 
with the American Agriculturist to keep the 
fads and the frills out of the paper, and to have 
everything in it written by men and women who 
know what they are talking about. We believe 
that farmers are tired of being told this and that 
by writers and speakers who would be flat failures 
as farmers. First-hand experience by first-hand 
and first-rate farmers, written in an interesting 
way, makes, in our opinion, the best kind of a 
farm paper. 
That is the reason we are pleased to have such 
men on our staff as the veteran farmer, H. E. 
Cook, of Denmark, New York, one of the best and 
most successful diarymen in the State. 
Another one is your good friend, Jared Van 
Wagenen, Jr., whose people have lived for genera¬ 
tions on the same farm in Schoharie County, New 
York. 
And now we have added M. C. Burritt, fruit¬ 
grower of Hilton, New York. Mr. Burritt is 
known all over the East as the successful extension 
director of the New York State College of Agricul¬ 
ture. But he never got very far away from his 
large fruit farm at Hilton, and now he has taken 
his family back there, depending upon the farm 
and his own efforts for a daily livelihood. 
Few men in the State have a better knowledge of 
actual fruit-growing and of general farming as it is 
practiced in western New York than Mr. Burritt. 
For several weeks, he has been writing for Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist fruit and farm notes from 
Western New York. He will also furnish an 
occasional feature article about the problems that 
the farmer faces in his daily work. 
We are glad that we have been- able to get Mr. 
Burritt to write for you, because he fits into our 
plans of furnishing a practical farm paper which 
will be of some use in the hard job of farming on 
which all of you work every day. 
projects we may safely ‘ignore agricultural depres¬ 
sion?’ You will note Mr. Mead refers to ‘increasing 
arrears of payments by settlers’ and ‘widespread de¬ 
mand for postponement of payments ... on irrigated 
projects.’ Is this consistent with anything but an 
extremely conservative, if not absolutely antagonistic, 
policy regarding future reclamation projects? Why 
tax farmers—or others—to extend agriculture, to help 
glut already glutted markets, to make more farmers 
miserable, and to increase the difficulty the already 
established farmer has, by further increasing produc¬ 
tion? 
“I say, “Let a shortage of food in this country be the 
next stimulant for land reclamation, and to those who 
ignorantly continue to clamor for cheaper food, £ a 
prosperous farmer means a prosperous country.’ 
“What do you say?”—W. D. L., Bucks County, 
Pennsylvania. 
T his correspondent has put his finger on a 
movement in this country that every farm 
paper, every farm organization, and every farmer 
ought to oppose. The clipping refers to a report 
made by Dr. Elwood Mead, Commissioner of 
Reclamation, after he had made a nine thousand 
mile inspection trip in the West. 
The report urges more Government activity in 
reclaiming land for farm purposes. Thus we have 
one set of so-called Government experts talking 
about aiding farmers all of the time, and another 
set urging the expenditure of large sums of 
Government money for the expensive reclaiming 
of land projects. 
The curse of farmers for generations has been 
the low prices caused chiefly by Overproduction. 
There is enough good land already in cultivation 
to swamp the country with farm products any 
time that prices are fair enough to pay the costs 
of production. The huge expenditure of federal 
funds for reclamation schemes is foolish from 
every standpoint and would be a direct injury to 
the American farm industry. 
Taxes Must Come Down 
T HE cost of government—national, state and 
local—has reached staggering proportions. 
When taxes were low, it did not make so much 
difference who paid them. They were not un¬ 
duly burdensome to anyone. Now that they are 
high, it is imperative that they be distributed 
more fairly. Farm land is carrying an unfair 
proportion of the tax load. It cannot stand the 
strain. That is why we must have a square deal 
in taxation. 
Read the outline of what American Agricul¬ 
turist proposes to do in its tax-reduction pro¬ 
gram, and then do not fail to write us. 
The Best Place to Live 
W E hope you will not miss the article about 
the farm community on the feature page 
of this issue by Clarence Poe, editor of Progressive 
Farmer. This is the second one in the series by 
the Standard Farm Paper editors. 
Clarence Poe is not only a great farm editor, 
but he is noted throughout the entire South for 
his good words and work. His particular hobby 
has been to do what he could to make the farm 
neighborhood the best place in the world to live. 
The Majority Want the Truth 
“I have been going carefully over each number of 
the American Agriculturist as it comes out and have 
noticed the constant building up of the paper with con¬ 
siderable enjoyment. I believe your efforts for the 
things you stand for will in the long run reap reward.” 
—0. H. C. 
No More Land Reclamation 
“As a subscriber to the American Agriculturist, 
and as a callous-handed practical—perhaps it is 
impractical—farmer, suffering from acute vacuum of 
the bank account, I wish to call your attention to the 
enclosed clipping from a Philadelphia, Pa., paper: 
“With normal crops resulting in world surplus, as you 
have intimated in the American Agriculturist, and 
these normal crops selling always on a buyer’s market, 
do you agree that reclamation work, other than that 
already begun or that designed as relief in districts 
already colonized, should be attempted? 
“Do you think that in considering future reclamation 
L ETTERS like the above help along the day’s 
work. We are trying to carry out certain 
fundamental policies which seem to us to be based 
on plain common sense. Unfortunately for us, 
perhaps, there is nothing spectacular or loud- 
sounding in these policies. Common sense and 
worse are seldom team mates. Sometimes when 
we are a bit discouraged, it seems to us that loud 
noise, sensationalism and propaganda are what 
the people want. 
But we cannot believe this to be true of farmers. 
We think that a majority of farm people want 
American Agriculturist, November 22, 1924 
Agriculturist 
facts. They want the truth, even if it hurts 
sometimes. Anyway, this paper, even at the risk 
of failure, will not court popularity if we have to do 
it by advocating schemes that we know are not 
sound. 
The Real Feed Test 
I N a recent address the president of a large feed 
manufacturing company stated that it is a 
fair estimate that during the current year of 1924 
farmers of New York State will purchase grain and 
feed for their dairy cattle at a cost to them of more 
than forty million dollars. 
“And it is likewise an equally fair estimate,” 
said the speaker, “in fact a very moderate one, to 
state that five million dollars of this amount rep¬ 
resents an economic waste; that is, unnecessarily 
spent for milk production.” 
He goes on to call attention to a bulletin pub¬ 
lished by Cornell University showing an actual 
study of 149 farms in Broome County. This 
study showed that it took an average of 42.8 
pounds of grain to produce 100 pounds of milk. 
The manufacturer said that this same milk pro¬ 
duction could have been secured by proper feeding 
methods with 28 pounds of grain per 100 pounds, 
and the saving thus resulting on the 149 farms 
would have amounted to more than seven thou¬ 
sand dollars. 
We think the above estimates to be veiy moder¬ 
ate. We believe it a fair statement that there is 
a loss of from 20 to 25 per cent, on grain fed to 
dairy cows in the average dairy, which amounts 
to eight or ten million dollars a year to the 
farmers of New York State alone. Much of this 
loss is caused by indiscriminate feeding without 
regard and often without exact knowledge of the 
production of each cow. 
We have nothing to say, for we have been guilty 
of this kind of feeding ourselves in years past. 
But how often you can go into a barn at feeding 
time and see the dairymen take a bushel of feed 
and a smaller measure and go down the long line 
of cows, dipping it out to them without much re¬ 
gard to whether the individual is producing ten 
pounds or sixty pounds a day. At $50 a ton, 
every pound of feed is worth 2>2 cents. If a man 
will stop to think of this, perhaps he will be more 
careful how he throws the valuable stuff around. 
Even where a farmer has made a careful study 
of feeding values, and knows the protein and other 
food content of his grain, he is quite apt to feed 
at a loss. The speaker went on to say that the 
only true test of a feed is the response the cow will 
make to it. It may show, he said, quite a large 
protein content and yet not come through in ac¬ 
tual milk production. 
He is largely right. We believe that the analysis 
of feed to determine the amount of protein, car¬ 
bohydrates, etc., may be used for a rough guide, 
but in the end, the real test is the cow herself. 
And it is comparatively easy to make this test. 
All that is necessary in testing out different feeds 
is to be sure that other factors in the cow’s feeding 
and care practically remain the same. There is 
so much involved and the difference between 
profit and loss in milk production is so close that 
it is well worth every farmer’s attention to make j 
absolutely sure that he is getting full value from j 
his concentrates. 
Eastman’s Chestnuts 
Y OU have probably heard of the New York 
City consumer who said she was not worried 
about the dairymen’s problems because, as for her, 
she got her milk from the milk man! 
This may be a little like what Mark Twain said 
about reports of his death, “Very much exagger¬ 
ated”; but it certainly is true that the lack of 
knowledge of farm conditions on the part of the 
average dweller in the big city is perfectly astound¬ 
ing. 
What started me off with this thought was the 
story that one of the men on our staff just told 
about the city boy who refused to go to the 
country for a summer vacation. “Because,” 
said he, “they have thrashing machines in the 
country, and it’s bad enough fer a feller in the city 
where they do it by hand!” 
