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American Agriculturist, September 8,1923 
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 
Btrge 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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Published Weekly by 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, INC. 
Address all correspondence for editorial, advertising, or 
eubscription 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 in advance, $1 a year. 
Canadian and foreign, $2 a year. 
VOL. 112 September' 8, 1923 No. 10 
A Farmers’ World’s Fair 
T HE chief reason for a Fair or Exposition 
is to give folks a good time, and farm 
people as a rule have too few changes to get 
away from the daily grind of farm work. 
But the fairs also have another good ex¬ 
cuse for their existence and that is in their 
educational value. One of the greatest main¬ 
springs of human action is emulation which 
is but another word for competition. “Keep¬ 
ing up with the Jones’s” is all right as long 
as the Jones’s set a good example, and the 
Jones’s who strive with one another to put 
on exhibits at fairs of products that excel, 
do much to give those who visit their ex¬ 
hibits, ideals and examples that they can 
very profitably emulate. When you see a 
large pumpkin, a plate of nice apples, a beau¬ 
tifully baked loaf of bread on exhibit, you 
think to yourself, “I’ll bring one next year 
that’ll knock the spots right off’n that un.” 
Back in the days before the printing press 
and rapid communication and transportation, 
the great fairs in England and on the con¬ 
tinent of Europe did more than any other 
single factor to educate the people of one 
part of the country as to the best practices 
and customs in the other parts. The same is 
true to a somewhat less extent with our own 
World Fairs held in Philadelphia, Chicago, 
St. Louis and Buffalo. 
And now we are to have a World’s Fair in 
the dairy industry. In the meeting of the 
World’s Dairy Congress and the National 
Dairy Show to be held in Syracuse, October 
5 to 13, we are to see the greatest* coming 
together of dairymen and milkmen with all 
the paraphernalia of the trade that the world 
has ever seen. Delegates to the show are 
now arriving almost every day from nearly 
every country in the world. These men will 
bring the last word of dairy progress in their 
own countries. The Swiss will be here to 
tell how dairying is done and dairy products 
manufactured in the Alpine country, and 
there will be delegates from the original 
home of the Holstein-Friesian cow as well 
from the Isles of Guernsey and Jersey, and 
from Scotland’s mountain vastnesses from 
whence originally came the Ayrshire. 
There will be individual entries of all dairy 
products, and farmers of the East are in¬ 
terested in the fact that their exhibits will 
be shown alongside of those of farmers of 
the West, thus giving striking and valuable 
demonstrations of different methods used in 
various countries of the world and various 
sections of the country. Best of all this is 
a show for the average dairymen from back 
in the hills. Thousands of grade cattle will 
be on exhibit and the needs and interests of 
the small farmer will be especially looked 
after. 
Because the exposition is the greatest thing 
of its kind that has ever been planned, hav¬ 
ing a vital and practical message to both 
farmers and city people, and because it is 
being held in Syracuse in the center of the 
East, easily accessible from any section of 
the country, it is expected that from two to 
three hundred thousand people will attend, 
we hope that you will be among the number, 
because we are sure you will have a good 
time and that it will renew the interest in 
your business. Hotel and rooming reserva¬ 
tions should be made immediately. 
“Fifteen Die — Scores Hurt” 
NE cannot pick up a newspaper without 
reading headlines like the above about 
automobile accidents. Hundreds of people 
are horribly mangled and killed every day by 
automobile accidents. What is the answer to 
the ever-increasing number of cars and poor 
drivers ? 
Every road is full of them even in remote 
places. The speed and driving is more often 
than not, reckless and dangerous and no mat¬ 
ter how carefully you may drive yourself, the 
chances are that sooner or later you will 
figure in an automobile accident through no 
fault of your own. 
We had this brought emphatically to our 
minds some two weeks ago. We were driv¬ 
ing at a moderate speed not exceeding 
twenty-three or twenty-four miles an hour. 
An old man who was deaf and who never 
should have been allowed to touch an auto¬ 
mobile wheel came at a speed of at least 
twenty miles an hour out of a lane com¬ 
pletely shaded by trees. He was going so 
fast that the tracks of his automobile showed 
later that it had been necessary for him to 
cover the whole of the main road when he 
turned into it from his lane. 
When we saw him, we blew the horn and 
put on all the brakes. But he was deaf and 
could not hear the horn and his manner of 
coming into the road left no opportunity 
whatever of escaping from going into him 
which we proceeded to do, badly smashing 
both cars. 
Sooner or later drastic action must be 
taken to prevent the great toll of human life 
that the automobiles are taking. Perhaps 
the solution will come through the air. The 
time is not far distant when there will be 
many who will travel the “air lines” in cheap 
and comparatively safe aeroplane “flivvers,” 
thus relieving earth’s crowded highways. 
They Made Their Own Market 
UCH has been said about the success 
of the cooperative fruit organizations 
of the Pacific Coast, and particularly of 
their ability to sell their products to such 
good advantage in the eastern markets. What 
the western grower has done in marketing 
his products is one of the most interesting 
trade achievements of modern times, because 
of the obstacles which had to be overcome. 
Success was due to cooperation and to adver¬ 
tising which was followed up by splendid 
sales methods. A friend who has just re¬ 
turned from a trip to the Pacific Coast has 
brought to our attention some of the pamph¬ 
lets which these western organizations use to 
convince the proprietors ot the retail fruit 
Agriculturist 
stores, and sales-stands of New York and 
other eastern cities how they could make 
money handling western fruit. 
One excellently written pamphlet is en¬ 
titled “How to Retail Fruit Efficiently.” 
This book, written in a language and with 
illustrations that a child could understand, 
shows the retailer to the last detail just 
how he should handle the western fruit, just 
how to sell it, and the percentage of profit 
that he should charge. The pamphlets are 
written entirely from the retailer’s stand¬ 
point. Simple explanations are given show¬ 
ing such details as how the number of ap¬ 
ples in a box differs as the size of the apples 
differs, and how to figure the selling price 
and retailer’s profit on each size and grade. 
The booklets contain little hints to the re¬ 
tailers, such as “be fussy about the apples 
you sell,” “the valua^of knowing the season 
for each apple,” ancF“sell the right apple at 
the right time.” Only a few leading varie¬ 
ties are suggested under this last title. One 
of the mistakes that eastern growers make 
is producing and attempting to market too 
many different varieties. 
Fruit men throughout the east are looking 
forward with a great deal of interest to the 
coming Apple and Fruit Exposition in the 
Grand Central Palace, New York City, in 
November because it marks one of the first 
efforts on the part of eastern growers to 
follow the westerners’ example by paying 
„ more attention to the actual merchandising 
of their product. This means not only the 
production of high quality fruit, but also 
properly grading and packing that fruit and 
then, most important of gll, following it 
through to the consumerby cooperating 
with every agent who handles the product. 
Still They Come 
N the opposite page we are giving the 
first count of the prohibition votes re¬ 
ceived up to and including August 25. This 
is just to give you an indication of how the 
vote is running. They are still coming in 
at the rate of several hundred a day and we 
expect that they will continue until well in 
the fall. If you have not voted, or if the 
subject has not been discussed in your 
church, local farm organization or other 
body, won’t you send to us for some ballots 
and help us to register as large a rural vote 
on this important question as possible? 
A Usual Transaction 
A FRIEND of ours recently told us this 
little story which we believe worthy of 
passing on to you. It seems that this friend 
was partaking of some ice cream in a Greek 
fruit store in a small town. While he was 
there a farmer came in with some straw¬ 
berries and asked the proprietor to buy them. 
The Greek looked them over, said that they 
were poor—anyway he didn’t want them. 
The farmer had the usual mental attitude 
of wanting to ‘‘get rid of his product” in¬ 
stead of selling it as a good salesman would, 
so he let the Greek know that he was very 
anxious to dispose of his berries. After 
$ some more talk, in which the proprietor kept 
belittling the farmer’s product and telling 
him that he really didn’t care for any berries, 
he finally bought them for something like 
8 cents a quart. 
Five minutes after the farmer had gone 
out, a lady came in and asked the Greek if 
he had any strawberries for sale. “Yes,” he 
said, “we have some of the finest I have seen 
this season, just,off the vines.” The lady 
asked the price and was informed that they 
were 20 cents a quart. She bought some and 
departed. 
In that little transaction is the answer to 
about nine-tenths of the hard times of farm¬ 
ers, and in reaching your conclusion don’t 
by any chance blame the Greek. 
