52 
Editorial Pag 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr .Publisher 
E. R. Eastman .Editor 
Fred W. Ohm .Associate Editor 
Gabrielle Elliot .... Household Editor 
'Birge Kinne .Advertising Manager 
H. L. Vonderlieth . . . Circulation Manager 
CONTRIBUTING staff 
H. E. Cook, Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., IT H. Jones, 
Paul Work, G. T. Hughes, H. E. Babcock 
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Published Weekly by 
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461 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, December 15, 1922, at the 
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VOL. 112 July 28, 1923 No. 4 
Are Farm People For Prohibition? 
E are surprised and gratified by the 
tremendous amount of interest farm 
people are showing in American Agricul¬ 
turists’ prohibition poll. Votes are coming 
in by the hundred. Ballots have been sent 
to several of the different farm organizations 
and will be sent on application free of charge 
to anybody who wishes to see that their 
neighbors are recorded on this important 
problem. We are getting hundreds of let¬ 
ters with the ballots, a few of the more in¬ 
teresting of which are printed on the‘op¬ 
posite page. Tabulations showing the re¬ 
sults will be started in an early issue. Al¬ 
though the majority are for prohibition and 
the strict enforcement of the Eighteenth 
Amendment, a surprisingly large number of 
farm people are recording themselves 
against it. 
Interest throughout the East is being 
aroused by this vote. It is an opportunity 
for the farm people to go on record on what 
is without doubt the most important prob¬ 
lem before the American people to-day. Fill 
in the ballot and get your neighbors to. 
Johnson Not Representative 
HE election of Magnus Johnson, the can¬ 
didate of the Farmer-Labor Party for 
the United States Senate from Minnesota has 
attracted much comment and interest. He de¬ 
feated his chief opponent, J. A. 0. Preus, 
the Republican nominee, by a very heavy 
majority. Many leading newspapers view 
Johnson’s victor over the Republican candi¬ 
date as an indication of what will happen to 
the Republican party in the next national 
election. Others say that the Minnesota 
senatorial election indicates only a protest of 
farmers against dollar wheat and the many 
other troubles with which western farmers 
have been contending for some time. 
American Agriculturist is, of course, in 
favor of a strong representation of farmers 
in . every Legislature and in Congress. But 
while Mr. Johnson is a farmer, he is by no 
means a representative one. Pie is a radical 
e of .the American 
of the extreme type, advocating such policies 
as full sympathy with Soviet Russia and 
government ownership. He belongs to that 
class who evidently believe that all farmers’ 
trouble can be be corrected by legislation. 
Samuel Gompers pointed out the foolishness 
of this in a recent article in the American 
Agriculturist when he said, “Farmers can¬ 
not hope to get help from politicians, but 
should resort to their own power, their own 
capacity and their own intelligence.” Those 
who voted for Mr. Johnson will look in vain 
for the increased prices of their farm pro¬ 
ducts which they hope will come through his 
election to the Senate. 
While there are some radical farmers, es¬ 
pecially in our northwest, the great majority 
are the most stable class of people in Amer¬ 
ica, and it is to be regretted that a man of 
Johnson’s type is in a place to give the world 
a wrong impression of th£ real farmer. 
What Was Wrong With the Picture? 
N the cover of the July 7 issue of Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist there was a fine farm 
picture showing a man cutting clover with 
a mowing machine. We asked our people 
to write in and tell us why this man was 
. apparently using poor judgment. There have 
been several answers, out of which the 
following were right: H. E. Ankeney, Charl¬ 
ton, Md.; Clayton Young, Camillus, N. Y.; 
Miss Ardis E. Hawkins, Lake Ronkonkoma, 
N. Y.; Emma Czirr, Oswego, N. Y.; and 
Miss Helena Schneikle, Oswego, N. Y. 
These people said that the man was ap¬ 
parently cutting heavy clover just before a 
big rain, which was poor judgment. In our 
opinion this was the correct answer. 
One other said that the man was showing 
poor judgment because he did not have fly- 
nets on his horses. Fly-nets are, of course, 
an aid, but comparatively few farmers are 
using them. Another answer said that the 
man was apparently driving his machine 
right through the uncut clover and was 
thereby showing poor judgment. This an¬ 
swer was also correct, because if one looked 
closely at the picture, the mower did appear 
to be right in the clover. 
It is interesting to note that three of those 
who guessed right are women. Sometimes 
some of us are apt to forget that some of 
the best judgment that goes into directing 
the farm business comes from the women. 
More Encouraging 
T HE July crop estimate of the United 
States Department of Agriculture pre¬ 
dicts a billion dollar increase in the value of 
farm crops which farmers will sell this sea¬ 
son. This is in spite of a 3% decrease in 
crop acreage farmed. Of course, much may 
happen between now and the harvest of 
many of the crops, but a prediction based 
upon the department’s accurate surveys will 
not likely be far out of the way. 
A billion more, dollars in the pockets of- the 
American farmers, while not bringing all of 
his crops up to their costs of production, will 
do much to increase the general prosperity, 
and to put more hope and encouragement in 
the farmer’s heart than he has had in several 
years. It really begins to look as if the tide 
of the har'd times for farmers had begun to 
set the other way. 
Did You Get Yours? 
NE of our subscribers writes as follows: 
“Last year we waited over fifteen 
months before the state paid the indemnities 
on our cattle which they had condemned for 
tuberculosis. This year we waited a little 
over two months. It was a pleasant sur¬ 
prise.” 
American Agriculturist helped to bring 
American Agriculturist, July 28,1923 
Agriculturist 
about this very decided and necessary im¬ 
provement in the payment of State in¬ 
demnities for slaughtered tubercular cattle. 
Owing to our insistence and to that of farm 
organizations and cattle breeders, the Legis¬ 
lature in its last session passed adequate ap¬ 
propriations so that dairymen need not wait 
such a disgracefully long time for their in¬ 
demnities as they have in former years. 
What Over-Production Does 
I N a daily paper which we have before us 
there is a table showipg business condi¬ 
tions with several different commodities, 
none of them agricultural. The report-reads 
something like this: “Cotton—demand light, 
prices lower, sharp curtailment in produc¬ 
tion.” All but one of the commodities read 
about the same way. Each show that the 
moment the demand lets up, production is 
stopped or curtailed. 
The same paper reports wheat below a 
dollar a bushel on the Chicago market. The 
reason for it is too much wheat, but there 
will be little or no curtailment by the wheat 
farmers of future production. 
The same daily also shows hogs selling 
for more than a dollar a hundred less than 
it cost to produce them. The reason is too 
many hogs. Months ago, American Agricul¬ 
turist warned farmers to go slow in hog 
production, predicting a big slump due to 
over-production. . Fortunately for eastern 
farmers the low prices of wheat and hogs 
is not so serious as in the West, but all of us 
East or West,, are just the same in our blind 
disregard of market demands. 
• When will we farmers learn the lesson that 
every other business constantly practices, 
that to avoid constant and disastrous loss 
we must in some way regulate production 
to suit the demand? 
We Rise to State an Objection 
INCE the candidacy and election of Mag¬ 
nus Johnson, a farmer of Minnesota, to 
the United States Senate, the newspapers 
have contained many references again to 
the “dirt farmer.” A “dirt farmer” is sup¬ 
posed to be one who actually works with his 
own hands on his farm as contrasted with 
the man who owns a farm but never does 
any work there himself. The term “dirt 
farmer” is supposed to be complimentary, 
but we vigorously object to its use as ap¬ 
plied to farm people. Webster’s dictionary 
gives as synonyms of “dirt,” “foul, filthy, 
nasty, squalid”—a nice lot of adjectives in¬ 
deed to apply to the man who actually works 
on the land! 
The next time you hear some speaker try 
to compliment you by calling you a “dirt 
farmer,” -we advise you to educate him then 
and there, with a brick or an ancient egg, 
to the fact that real farmers work in the soil, 
one of the cleanest and most purifying of 
Nature’s' agencies. 
Quotations Worth While 
Let us hope that one day all mankind will 
be happy and wise; and though this day 
never should dawn, to have hoped for it 
cannot be wrong. And in any event, it is 
helpful to speak of happiness to those who 
are sad, that thus at least they may learn 
what it is that happiness means.—M aurice 
Maeterlinck. 
* * * 
The secret of managing a man is to let 
him have his way in little things. He will 
change his life when he won’t change his 
boot-maker.—J ohn Oliver Hobbs. 
5jC 5|« 
To our shame a woman is never so much 
attached to us as when we suffer.—H onore 
De Balzac. 
