American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
* A 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man .”—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. OS. Established 1842. 
Volume 114 For week Ending December 27, 1924 Number 26 
Pit falls of the Young Breeder 
By DeWitt C. Wing, Managing Editor of The Breeder's Gazette 
S OME of my young friends have asked 
me to discuss this threadbare subject. 
If the reader’s head is not already two- 
thirds gone to bed, I promise to keep him 
awake 17 minutes. 
Most young farmers today are more cau¬ 
tious and keener in business transactions than 
their fathers. 
In raising pure bred or improved livestock, 
middle-aged and elderly men fall into more 
pits and experience more difficulty in getting 
out of them than young men. 
All Fall Now and Then 
“Old fools” head the long and ancient list of 
men who make and often repeat mistakes in 
business and matrimony. 
But every man, whatever liis business, falls 
or is pushed into pits 
throughout his career. 
Falling is one of the 
things that we do when in 
infancy we learn to walk. 
It is an essential part of 
our training in the art of 
walking. 
. A neighbor’s boy, 13, 
fell into a rock-walled 
well 50 feet deep. He was 
young enough to learn 
through that experience that he couldn’t af¬ 
ford to fall into it again. He didn’t. He was 
taught, but unhurt by the fall. It would have 
injured and probably killed a man. A farmer, 
52, fell into a caved-in cellar, and broke a leg. 
Falls damage and often permanently handi¬ 
cap mature men; they are rough, but effective 
teachers of boys and young men who are cap¬ 
able of learning anything. 
Boys who never fall into anything rarely 
climb up to high places. The lad who is active, 
eager to learn, and full of the 
spirit of adventure, suffers many 
a fall. By falling he learns to 
walk with an ever increasing 
steadiness and surefootedness in 
his vocation or' profession. 
A sweet and tender motherli¬ 
ness would safeguard boys from 
all pitfalls, but he-boys glory in 
and grow by falling and getting 
up and going down again, and 
coming up stronger and wiser. 
Far be it from me to urge a 
young man who aspires to be a 
stock breeder to shut his eyes and 
fall heels over head into every 
hole in the roadway to his goal, 
in order to train himself. 
It is inevitable that he will drop 
into some of them, regardless of 
voiced warnings and conspicuous 
danger signals. In many instances 
,he may be led or pushed into 
them by mercenary shylocks who 
infest all the highways and by¬ 
ways that humanity travels. 
What the business world ought 
to be, according to our ideals, is 
one thing; what it is, as experi¬ 
enced, practical men know it 
from day to day, is a decidedly different thing. 
One is ideal; the other real. The latter is full 
of pits for the soft-headed, the dull, the blindly 
trustful, and the reckless. Even the hard- 
headed, the keen-witted, the open-eyed sus¬ 
picious and the prudent stumble into bogs and 
holes. 
Modern shylocks and shysters always prof¬ 
fer some kind of alleged “personal service” to 
the young man whose money they covet. They 
are scattered along all roadsides, guiding him 
into pits by volunteering their “services,” and 
taking his money as he goes down. 
In the improved stock-breeding business 
these smooth scoundrels wear many guises. 
Many of them during the late “boom” days 
were “fieldmen,” employed on a high commis¬ 
sion basis by publishers of “breed organs.” 
A “breed organ” is a monthly or semi¬ 
monthly journal which plays for and preys up¬ 
on farmers who raise any one of the leading 
breeds of stock. Some of these “organs” are 
reputable and useful; many are neither. 
Intellectually Inbred 
Farmers who obtain information and news 
in regard to any bred from a “breed organ” 
are apt to be misled and deceived, because 
every “breed organ” exaggerates and “over¬ 
sells” the merits of the breed that keeps it go¬ 
ing, and directly or by implications condemns 
every rival breed. The man who supports a 
breed organ, and depends on it alone to sell 
his stock and keep him posted, becomes intel¬ 
lectually inbred and narrow. 
A second class of shysters who feed on the 
financial fat that young men and beginners 
carry when they engage in improved stock 
breeding consists of dealers and speculators in 
animals for breeding purposes. Not all deal¬ 
ers belong to this class, but those who do are a 
wily lot. When times are good, they buy a 
few fair animals and many that are inferior or 
diseased, or both, and sell them at a big profit 
to the uninitiated. 
Parasites, middlemen, speculators and shy¬ 
sters are always numerous in any prospering 
business. Where treasures are laid up or in 
circulation, thieves always abound. 
Get Good Advice 
Let the young breeder bear in mind, how¬ 
ever, and be reassured by the fact that there 
are as many honest and square-dealing men in 
the United States as there are in any other 
business or profession. 
Another point to be considered by young 
men headed toward stock raising is that for 
the asking they can obtain sound, practical ad¬ 
vice in regard to breeding animals, blood¬ 
lines, health, and other related matters from 
reputable breeders and many other sources in 
the trade. 
Men who are competent and employed to 
render a real service to young breeders and 
beginners are accessible to them in person or 
through correspondence. 
There is no excuse today for a beginner to 
go wrong or be misled by charlatans. If, 
however, he belongs to the gambling, reckless 
and uninformed class, and goes at high s^eed^i 
where he should stop, look, think and ask 
questions, he is in for trouble. A fool and his 
money are soon parted. No kind of protection 
can protect a fool from himself in matters of 
money or morals. 
If, during the remarkable prosperity of the 
pedigree stock trade from, say 1910 to 1919, 
breeders had advertised in farm weeklies and 
the few weekly livestock journals which served 
and still serve all breeders, both sellers and 
buyers would have saved a pile of money. 
Moreover, many young farmers 
who were inveigled by uncon¬ 
scionable fieldmen for one-breed 
hog journals in particular and 
some other breed organs in gen¬ 
eral into paying fabulous prices 
for animals with worked-up repu¬ 
tations as winners, sires or dams, 
would not have been led into the 
pits from which, in due course, 
they emerged broken or badly 
bent. 
A son of one of my boyhood 
neighbors was victimized by a 
hog journal’s fieldman to the tune 
of $30,000. He is one of many 
young men who were swindled by 
fieldmen in the days of “$60,000” 
boars. 
In many cases these “busted” 
young men and their “I told-yeu-w*i 
so” bankers, relatives and friends 1 
now regard the improved stocle^ 
breeding business as a “crooked 1 
game,” or as a hobby for rich men 
who ride it as plug-hat gamblers, 
and have no interest in it as a 
practical farm enterprise. 
The raising of improved live- 
(Continued on Page 452) 
Standard Farm Paper Editorial 
Service 
T HIS is the third of a series of special articles by 
the members of the Standard Farm Paper Edi¬ 
torial Board. The members of this Editorial Board 
are as follows: 
C. V. Gregory.Prairie Farmer, Chicago, Ill. 
D. A. Wallace.The Farmer, St. Paul, Minn. 
H. A. Wallace.Wallace’s Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa 
Clarence Poe. ......Progressive Farmer, Birmingham, Ala. 
Donald Keefer.Pacific Rural Press, San Francisco, Cal. 
E. R. Eastman... .American Agriculturist, New York City 
T. A. Leadley.Nebraska Farmer, Lincoln, Neb. 
John Cunningham_Wisconsin Agriculturist, Racine, Wis. 
A. J. Glover.Hoard’s Dairyman, Ft. Atkinson, Wis. 
Dewitt C. Wing.Breeder’s Gazette, Chicago, Ilk 
DeWitt C. Wing, author of this article, is well 
known to live stock men as managing editor of the 
Breeders Gazette, which for more than a generation 
has been the leading livestock paper of the United 
States. The subject of this article is one of great 
importance just now, when we are recovering from 
the slump that has affected the purebred industry 
during the past four years. No one is better qual¬ 
ified than Mr. Wing to discuss this subject. 
The next article in this series will be a discus¬ 
sion of “The Other Side of Farm Life” by Dan Wal¬ 
lace, editor of the Farmer, St. Paul, Minnesota. 
