Editorial Page of the American 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
E. 
2 
y 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr .Publisher 
E. R. Eastman .Editor 
Fred W. Ohm .Associate Editor 
abrielle Elliot .... Household Editor 
6irge Kinne .Advertising Manager 
. L. VONDERLIETH . . . Circulation Manager 
contributing staff 
H. E. Cook, Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., H. H. Jones, 
Paul Work, G. T. Hughes, H. E. Babcock 
OUR ADVERTISEMENTS GUARANTEED 
The American Agriculturist accepts only advertis¬ 
ing 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 pur¬ 
chased 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 departments to 
461 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, December 15, 1922, at the 
Post Office at New Y ork, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
Subscription price, payable in advance, $1 a year. 
Canadian and foreign, $2 a year. 
VOL. 112 July 14, 1923 No. 2 
Conditions in 1859 
D O not miss that fine old humorous article 
copied on the feature page of this issue 
from American Agriculturist, published in 
1859. We are not sure who wrote it, probably 
it was the editor, but he certainly could handle 
English. Note the word “peripatetic” in the 
second paragraph. It is big enough to choke 
a cow. How many of you know what it 
^neans? Do you think a larger proportion 
of American Agriculturist readers knew the 
meaning of this and other unusual words in 
1859, than our readers do to-day? Inci¬ 
dentally, “peripatetic” means walking. 
Speaking of cows, note that the price of 
cows was about thirty dollars. The pay for 
a day's attendance at court was one shilling. 
These prices went up for a time, following 
the Civil War, and then they came down 
again and stayed down for many years. 
These prices will not seem strange to most of 
you because it is but a few years since one 
could buy a whole dairy for twenty-five or 
thirty dollars a cow, and when the pay for a 
good strong boy to hoe potatoes for a straight 
ten hours was but fifty cents a day. 
Varying Butterfat Tests 
O NE of the greatest causes of trouble be¬ 
tween dairymen and milk dealers is over 
the butterfat test. Farmers cannot under¬ 
stand why the same herd Laving the same 
feed will vary sometimes from two to five 
points from the test of the previous month. 
Without question there has been and is some 
dishonest testing, but it is also true that there 
is less of it than most farmers believe. 
A majority of the dealers doing business 
at the same stand and with the same patrons 
year after year, know that honesty is the 
best policy and try to give a square test. 
With the small minority of buyers who juggle 
the test, the remedy lies in having the State 
Colleges of the State Agricultural Depart¬ 
ments check the samples. Or best of all, 
buy a tester yourself or join a cow testing 
association. Those in the cow testing associa¬ 
tions have the least trouble with their but¬ 
terfat test. One reason is that the dealer 
knows that the farmer knows what his test 
is every day and therefore he cannot cheat 
on the test and get away with it. Another 
reason why dairymen who test have less 
trouble with the dealers, is that the farmer 
finds out, for reasons sometimes hard to ex¬ 
plain, that the test of the individual cow and 
of the whole dairy does vary considerably 
from day to day and from month to month. 
For instance, there is a record of a dairy 
where a heavy thunder shower at one even¬ 
ing’s milking, greatly reduced the butterfat 
test. There is reported by the Ohio State 
College another case where a cow was milked 
half by a machine milker and half by hand. 
The amount of milk greatly decreased, while 
the test rose from 3.2 per cent butterfat to 
4.2 per cent. In another case, some unknown 
cause made a cow decrease her flow to half 
of its usual amount and her test decreased 
also to one-half her average test. At the 
evening milking, both flow and butterfat test 
came up to normal again. 
Those who are doing constant testing 
either themselves or through cow testing as¬ 
sociations, know that these unreasonable 
variations in the butterfat tests do occur, and 
they are not quite so quick to accuse the 
dealer of dishonesty. When they do accuse 
him, they have the evidence to back them 
up. There are many reasons why the owner¬ 
ship and use of a Babcock tester or a mem¬ 
bership in a cow testing association is one 
of the best investments a dairyman can make. 
Reading in the Old Days 
A FRIEND from down Maine way, talk¬ 
ing to us a while ago about what farm 
people read, said that back on the home farm 
fifty years ago his father took only two 
papers; one of them was a religious weeicly 
and the other was the American Agricul¬ 
turist. “But,” he continued, “how those two 
papers were read. Every word of every ar¬ 
ticle and every advertisement from the be¬ 
ginning to the end of the paper was carefully 
read, often out loud, and the pictures were 
studied _ and discussed. Many times when 
the articles had a special appeal they were 
laid aside for reference and for further 
reading.” 
Abraham Lincoln is perhaps typical of the 
people in the old days who had few books, 
but those books were classics and folks read 
them so thoroughly that they became well 
educated. In our own boyhood days in a 
country neighborhood, we remember several 
men of the older generation who were not 
only well informed as to current affairs, but 
who could also discuss intelligently many of 
the Old classics even to the extent of quoting 
them extensively from memory. Unhappy 
was the man who attempted to argue with 
one of these old boys in history, literature, 
religion or politics, who did not have his own 
facts at his tongue’s end. In spite of the 
fact that we of this generation have one 
hundred times as much reading no\v as our 
grandfathers had, ‘we doubt if we are on the 
average any better informed. Is it because 
we have so much that we read little of it 
well or are we better informed on a much 
wider range of subjects? 
He Broke Even 
O NE of the things that is doing a lot for 
our country boys and girls is the junior 
project work. It is surprising what a dif¬ 
ferent feeling toward the farm work it gives 
boys and girls to own an animal or animals, 
or a crop, and to be personally responsible 
for their success. This is what the junior 
project work does. The boys and girls learn 
in school how to raise the animal or the 
crop in a scientific way and they set their 
theories immediately into practice on the 
home farm. They are obliged to keep a very 
careful record of all their work and all their 
American Agriculturist, July 14,1923 
# 
Agriculturist 
expenses so that they know at the end of the 
season whether or not their project paid. 
The story is told of a boy who lived in the 
State of Maine who took considerable in¬ 
terest and pleasure in raising a pig as his 
project for the season. In writing up his 
report to his instructor, he said that if he 
were obliged to figure in all of the time he 
spent with the pig, his ledger would show 
that he lost $1.57 on the project. But if he 
took into consideration that he had the com¬ 
pany of the pig, why he broke about even. 
Which Are Your “Boarder” Crops? 
I N a trip through several agricultural coun¬ 
ties, we had occasion to ask farmers to 
give us cost figures on certain crops. With one 
or two exceptions, these farmers did not 
know and, as a matter of fact, very few 
farmers do know anything definite about the 
cost of growing and keeping animals or farm 
crops. About all that most of them are sure 
of is that the profits on the business as a 
whole are generally few and far between. 
Cost accounts might show that what profits 
there are, come from comparatively few 
crops. or animals, and that these few are 
carrying a number of other dead-heads; but 
without definite figures, such as are kept in 
all other business, few of us really know 
which parts of the business are profitable 
and which unprofitable. 
A recent letter from a farmer expresses 
this situation so well that we think it worth 
repeating here. He says: “I believe that no 
greater service could be rendered the Ameri¬ 
can farmers than that some power or influ¬ 
ence could induce them to keep a simple ac¬ 
count of their main enterprises, taking 
chiefly account of their cash cost and the 
amount of labor put into them during the 
year as compared with the other enterprises 
they are carrying on. For I believe that they 
would soon discover that if they cut out just 
about 50 per cent of their enterprises and 
devoted but a little more attention and 
thoroughness to the remaining ones there 
would be less complaining of the 14 and 16 
hour day with no vacation for relaxation or 
recreation. I believe that at the end of the 
year they would find that with less work and 
less worry they had made more money, and 
also had had time to produce a greater propor¬ 
tion of a better living from their own farm. 
I believe that if the farmers could be in¬ 
duced to keep some such check every time 
they plunged into a new enterprise that they 
would soon quit plunging into unfamiliar 
farm practices and would be more inclined to 
take a little time off occasionally and learn 
to live. 
“This problem is the same as that of the 
boarder cow. The few enterprises that make 
a profit on the farm must carry the farm and 
help support others that have never paid a 
profit and yet have robbed the farmer of his 
time and energy. I believe this problem is 
of equal importance with the problem of 
stronger -cooperation. If the two can be de¬ 
veloped side by side the position of the Amer¬ 
ican farmer is secure and his future pros¬ 
pects not unattractive. The falsity of di¬ 
versity in an age of specialization persists in 
keeping many farmers largely engaged in 
unprofitable activities.” 
There are probably two main reasons why 
farmers do not keep books. One of them is 
that it is very difficult to keep accurate cost 
accounts on the many different varieties of 
farm business; and the other is, that farmers 
are so tired and sleepy when they come in 
from a day’s work they are in no shape 
mentally to wrestle with bookkeeping. But 
we maintain that the job should never be 
done in the evening, and that it is important 
enough to take time during the day to do it 
—so important in fact that the time used 
would prove to be the most profitable of any 
work done in the whole farm operation. 
