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Editorial Page of the American 
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., H. H. Jones, 
Paul Work, G. T. Hughes, H. E. Babcock 
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ing which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
We positively guarantee to our readers fair and 
honest treatment in dealing with our advertisers. 
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chased by our subscribers from any advertiser who 
fails to make good when the article purchased is 
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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 York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
Subscription price, payable ip advance, $1 a year. 
Canadian and foreign, $2 a year. 
VOL. 112 September 1, 1923 No. 9 
National Dairy Show 
N another page we give the address of 
W. E. Skinner, manager of the National. 
Dairy Show, which he broadcast from 
WEAF.on Wednesday, August 29, on Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist farm radio program. The 
National Dairy Show and the World’s Dairy 
Congress is to meet at Syracuse October 5 
to 13. Probably not again in a generation 
will there be in New York State such a 
gathering of the dairy interests and the 
tools of the trade as will be this world’s ex¬ 
position at Syracuse. Representatives from 
practically every dairy country in the world 
and from every dairy State in the Union 
will bring exhibits, showing all the long list 
of highest quality products which come from 
the dairy cow. 
And Madam Cow herself will be there in 
state and in large numbers representing 
every type and every breed. 
These are times when farmers must count 
their pennies, but for the men who are work¬ 
ing so hard to make their living from the 
cow, a trip to the Dairy Show gives every 
promise of being a good investment from a 
financial standpoint alone, to say nothing of 
the holiday and recreation which nearly 
every farmer needs. 
Label the Exhibit Stock 
EARLY all the agricultural fairs spend 
thousands of dollars for premiums for 
farm stock. This is the right procedure, for 
one of the objects of the agricultural show 
is to give people examples and results of 
good breeding methods. But unfortunately, 
the value of these exhibits and of all this 
premium money is largely lost because of 
the way in which the exhibits are conducted. 
Except for a few professional breeders, a 
row of cows or horses, or a pen of hogs or 
sheep means little or nothing to the thousands 
of farm folks who walk by them in an effort 
to learn something new in their business. 
The cattle are often covered with blankets, 
successfully hiding their characteristics, and 
in most cases not even the name of the in¬ 
dividual is given, telling who she is, to say 
nothing of any descriptive matter telling 
what she has done. The result is that the 
average observer goes idly by, and no mat¬ 
ter how interested, is able to get little or no 
real or instructive information about the dif¬ 
ferent individuals in the exhibit. 
We venture to say that the value of the 
average stock exhibit could be at least 
doubled if over each animal there was a 
placard giving his or her name, a brief sum¬ 
mary of her pedigree and the outstanding 
features of her record. 
A Matter of Service 
A S a part of our service to our people, 
.American Agriculturist made arrange¬ 
ments some time ago with a reliable in¬ 
surance company to furnish for fifty cents 
extra with every one of our three-year sub¬ 
scriptions a thousand dollar travel accident 
insurance policy. 
Although we have been doing this only a 
comparatively short time our readers have 
taken over five million dollars insurance on 
this plan and several of them have already 
received returns on this policy for accidents 
that they unfortunately have been in. 
We investigated this policy thoroughly and 
believe it to be so well worth while that it is 
worthy of special mention. 
Another Point for the East 
I N commenting upon the tragedy to every¬ 
one concerned of wheat selling below a 
dollar a bushel, the American Farm Bureau 
Federation recently said that cooperative 
marketing is the ultimate solution to the na¬ 
tional wheat price problem. 
With this statement, we do not entirely 
agree. The right kind of cooperative mar¬ 
keting would help the problem a lot, by 
putting the wheat on the market gradually 
instead of dumping nearly all of it at one 
time. But cooperative marketing, as it is 
now organized, cannot take care of over-pro¬ 
duction or lack of demand, for they both 
amount to practically the same thing—is 
just what is the matter with the wheat situa¬ 
tion of the present day. 
The Eastern farmers can certainly con¬ 
gratulate themselves upon their diversified 
farm practice. The West is up against it, 
as “Breeder’s Gazette” so well puts it: “Less 
than seven per cent of the value of farm 
crops and livestock last year was represented 
by the American wheat crop. That per¬ 
centage had seldom been higher than seven. 
The existing furor over the price of wheat, 
however, has apparently led some unin¬ 
formed or misinformed business men and 
others to believe that the financial stability 
and future of this country are dependent 
upon the price which farmers obtain for 
wheat. Undeniably wheat is one of our 
major crops, but in total value its position 
in relation to the total value of other farm 
crops and livestock is low. 
“The man who makes wheat his chief, if 
not his only cash crop, whether in the wheat 
belt or elsewhere, is a gambler. He is sure 
to lose much oftener and much more than he 
wins. 
“America can never be made safe for the 
one-crop farmer. He will always be in hot 
water—and in politics. His extremity will 
always be the political demagogue’s oppor¬ 
tunity to be elected to an office. Funda¬ 
mentally the woes of the one-crop farmer 
are the fuel and the flame of the farmer- 
labor party movement. 
“America never has been and jiever is 
likely to be unsafe for the farmer who 
practices diversified farming, the keystone 
of which is livestock.” 
All we need to add to the statement of the 
“Breeder’s Gazette” is the thought that East" 
Ameriean Agriculturist, September 1,1923 
$ 
Agriculturist 
ern farming is diversified farming based 
upon livestock, chiefly dairying. This kind 
of farming has its troubles and its periods 
of depression, but seldom, if ever, does it 
have the stark ruin which now stares the 
one-crop wheat farmer in the face. 
Do Silos Pay? 
VERY time a dairyman fills his silo and 
has brought home to him the high cost 
of growing corn and producing ensilage, he 
wonders if it really pays, or if there is not 
some other way of getting a succulent feed 
for dairy cattle at a lower cost. There have 
always been dairymen who have never built 
silos and claim that they can produce milk 
cheaper without ensilage; and there have 
been many others who came to the same 
conclusion after using a silo for a time. 
Because of this debated question,,we have 
read with a great deal of interest a new bul¬ 
letin entitled “A Comparison of Roughages 
for Milk Production,” published by the Iowa 
State College of Agriculture at Ames. After 
several years’ experimental work in the use 
of corn silage as compared with other 
roughages, the writer of this bulletin sum¬ 
marizes his conclusions as follows: 
_ 1. The use of corn fodder instead of corn 
silage reduces milk production 6 per cent 
and fat production 3 per cent. 
2. When the value of dry matter in silage 
was worth 66 cents per 100 pounds, that in 
corn fodder was worth 32*/2 cents. 
3. With silage valued at $4.50 per ton, an 
acre of corn yielding 8 tons of green feed 
and converted into silage will yield $36 
worth of feed, whereas, if converted into 
fodder the value of the crop will be reduced 
to $16.21 per acre. 
4. When timothy hay is used to replace 
alfalfa hay in a good dairy ration the pro¬ 
duction of milk and butterfat is reduced 7 
per cent. 
5. With alfalfa hay at $15 per ton, timothy 
hay is worth 86 cents per ton for feeding 
producing cows. 
6 . When corn fodder and timothy hay are 
introduced in a ration in place of corn 
silage and alfalfa hay, there is a decrease of ' 
eighteen per cent in milk and fourteen per 
cent in fat production. 
7. When the two poor roughages, corn 
fodder and timothy hay, are fed together, 
this combination gives to them a slightly 
higher value individually than where one is 
fed with a good roughage, but good produc¬ 
tion or economical returns from the feeds 
cannot be obtained. 
8 . Corn silage and a legume hay (alfalfa) 
are the best roughages for dairy cattle, while 
corn fodder and timothy hay are poor. 
9. If the corn crop is all to be fed to the 
cows it should be put in the silo. On the 
dairy farm, hays such as timothy should be 
sold and legume hays purchased in their 
stead. 
American Agriculturist would be very 
glad to conduct a discussion by our readers 
from their own experience as to the value 
of silage and ensilage in the production of 
milk. 
Quotations Worth While 
Hold up your head! You were not made 
for failure, you were made for victory: go 
forward with a joyful confidence in that re¬ 
sult sooner or later, and the sooner or later 
depends mainly on yourself.— Anne Gil¬ 
christ. 
* * * 
If it wasn’t for the optimist, the pessimist 
would never know how happy he isn’t.— The 
Chicago Daily News. 
* * * 
No use puttin’ up yer umbrelP till it rains. 
Alice Hegan Rice. 
