388 
American Agriculturist, December 8. 1923 
Editorial Page of the American 
Agriculturist 
American 
Agriculturist 
Founded 1842 
to work with you to help stop the flow of hundreds 
of thousands of dollars of hard-earned savings 
for schemes from which nothing is received in 
return. If you know of any such operations send 
us full details. 
Henry Morgenthau, Jr. 
E. R. Eastman 
Fred W. Ohm. 
Gabrielle Elliot 
Birge Kinne . 
E. C. Weatherby. 
. Publisher 
Editor 
Associate Editor 
Household Editor 
Advertising Manager 
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 advertising 
which it believes to be thoroughly honest. 
We positively guarantee to our readers fair and honest treat¬ 
ment in dealing with our .advertisers. 
We guarantee to refund the price of goods purchased 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 de¬ 
partments 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 December 8, 1923 No. 23 
The Truth in Advertising 
“ T WISH to express my hearty congratulations to the Amer- 
1 ican Agriculturist on the courageous and bold stand 
you are taking in regard to frauds and fraud advertising, of 
which the Standard Food and Fur Association is a typical 
example. Such efforts must be successful, and because they 
are bound to be, I know you will receive the lasting gratitude 
of your subscribers, and the hearty approval of the reading 
public. Again my congratulations and best wishes." L. H. H., 
Onondaga County, New York. 
W E have received many such letters showing 
that the American Agriculturist’s de¬ 
termined stand to help clean up the frauds and 
fake advertising is appreciated. If you could read 
some of the heartrending letters that come to 
our Protective Service Bureau, piteously asking 
for aid, usually when it is too late to do any good, 
you would see the need of the publicity we are 
giving to those who promise much for nothing. 
There is not a community that has not from 
one to several people who have been fleeced out 
of some or all of their savings by the nefarious 
operations of swindlers. Still, in spite of all the 
warnings, every mail brings a new list of victims. 
The front pages of the newspapers carried 
recently the story of the conviction in a Federal 
court of Dr. Frederick A. Cook, who was sen¬ 
tenced to the penitentiary for fourteen years and 
nine months, and fined $12,000 for using the mails 
to defraud in oil promotions. Dr. Cook will be 
remembered as the great fakir who came back 
from the Arctic several years ago and announced 
that he had discovered the North Pole. He was 
received as a hero until Dr. Peary, the real dis¬ 
coverer of the Pole, returned and exposed him. 
In sentencing Cook, the judge said in part: 
“Cook, this deal of yours is so damnably rotten 
that it seems to me your attorneys must have 
been forced to hold their handkerchiefs to their 
noses to have represented you. You have stolen 
this money from widows and orphans. Have you 
no decency at all? Are you not haunted at night 
by these pitiable figures? How can you sleep? 
You ought to be paraded as a practical warning 
in every State where you have sold stock.” 
We shall have more of these articles. Our 
Protective Service Bureau and our lawyers want 
“I Am From Missouri** 
A FEW days ago we heard someone ask, 
“Where is the nigger in the woodpile in that^ 
new Rural School Bill? I’m from Missouri,” he 
continued. This last was spoken with a good 
deal of pride, but for the life of us, we never could 
see why it was so much better to come from 
Missouri than any other State! 
According to some people, there must be some 
trick about that School Bill. If it cannot be seen 
on the surface, then it is a hidden nigger in the 
woodpile. According to their belief, the farmer 
members of that Committee of Twenty-one are 
scheming rascals, whose only purpose in spending 
their time and money on the Committee was to 
put something over on their fellow farmers. No 
matter if you read to these doubters the actual 
statement in the bill itself that there can be no 
consolidation in any rural school district except 
by the vote of the people themselves, they still 
would maintain that there is some trick about it. 
No matter if you actually prove that rural school 
taxes in hundreds of districts, because of more 
State aid mostly paid by the cities, would be 
actually lower than they are under the present 
law, they still steadfastly refuse to believe the 
evidence. No matter if it is clearly shown that 
item after item in the new bill provides for more 
real local control of the schools than farmers now 
have, there will still be some who doubt. They 
still boast that they are “from Missouri.” 
iVnd the attitude of these chronic doubters is 
the same toward all issues of life and toward their 
fellows. Sometimes when these people of little 
faith find that their suspicions were actually un¬ 
justified, we wonder if they are not really dis¬ 
appointed. Fortunately, they are comparatively 
few in number. 
The Prohibition Vote 
S OME months ago we set out to get some ex¬ 
pression from our people on the problem which 
is so much in the public mind at the present time— 
that of prohibition. It is, of course, impossible by 
a straw vote to get anything but an indication of 
sentiment, but we have received thousands of 
letters from both those who believe in prohibition 
and from those who are against it, and these letters 
show how much and how deeply farm people are 
thinking about the wisdom of the Eighteenth 
Amendment. As far as space has permitted, we 
have printed letters giving the arguments for both 
sides. The letters are so good that we wish we 
could use more of them. 
In order to give all who wished an opportunity 
to vote, we have kept the vote open over a long 
period of time. We have now decided to bring it 
to a close January 1st, and in one of our January 
issues we will publish complete and detailed 
results of this canvass together with sortie more of 
the good letters. 
If you have not voted and wish yourself to be 
counted on either side, send in your vote. Ballots 
for Granges and other local organizations or 
individuals will be furnished free of charge upon 
application. s 
A Farm School at Columbia? 
I N his annual report, just published, Dr. Nicholas 
Murray Butler, president of Columbia Uni¬ 
versity, New York City, urged the addition of an 
agricultural college to the University. With a 
splendid State agricultural college at Cornell, 
with good agricultural teaching at Syracuse, with 
half a dozen State farm schools and many agri¬ 
cultural high schools, and with many similar insti¬ 
tutions in’other States, President Butler’s sugges¬ 
tion to establish a farm school in the heart of 
New York City will strike every farmer at first as 
ridiculous. 
But let us see. This new agricultural college at 
Columbia would, according to Dr. Butler’s ideas, 
not attempt to teach farmers how to produce 
more. There would be no crop raising or animal 
husbandry courses. On this point. Dr. Butler says: 
“American farmers can now raise enough food¬ 
stuff to feed the world.” He would concentrate 
his teaching forces on the problems of marketing, 
transportation, farm taxation, government aid, 
and the everlasting question of how to keep the 
young folks on the farms. 
We think the proposal is excellent, and that it 
would do much to help farmers. It might be 
criticized from the standpoint that one who works 
on the farmer’s marketing and financial problems 
must also have a very intimate understanding of 
his production problems, and that this under¬ 
standing could not be obtained by men who were 
so far away from the farms as New York City. 
This objection could be overcome if the proper 
men were put in charge of the work. We have 
said many times that too little thought has been 
given to the great economic problems of the farm, 
such as marketing, taxation, government aid, 
etc. In the long run, these kind of farm problems 
are also city problems. The markets are in the 
cities, and the greatest market in the world is 
New York City. 
The bringing together by a college, such as Dr. 
Butler proposes, of the best experts and econo¬ 
mists that can be found anywhere to devote their 
entire time to the farmers’ economic troubles, the 
chief of which is marketing, ought to help solve 
some of those difficulties, to give city folks a better 
idea of what the farmer has to overcome, and to 
educate more young men in the correct principles 
and methods of farm marketing and finance. 
An Experiment 
Y OU will note that this issue of American 
Agriculturist looks somewhat different than 
those you have been recently receiving. 'I'he 
different appearance is due to change in the style 
of type. We are constantly working and experi¬ 
menting to get you the very best possible farm 
paper, not only the best in pictures, articles and 
advertisements, but also in general appearance. 
The use of the type in this issue is one of our 
experiments. Some folks in the office do not care 
for it. Perhaps you will not. Anyway, if you do 
not like it, let us know and it will soon be changed. 
You can help us give you what you want in a farm 
paper by frequently telling us what you think is 
poor and what is good. 
Eastman*s Chestnuts 
I F there is any class or trade that has suffered 
more from hard times than farmers, it is the 
publisher of local or country newspapers. The 
price of news print paper has multiplied itself 
many times during the last decade. Other manu¬ 
facturing and equipment costs of the printer have 
done the same thing and the country publishers' 
labor problems are worse even than those of the 
farmer. On the other hand, the possible number 
of subscribers to country weeklies is limited and if 
has been practically impossible to raise the sub¬ 
scription price or the advertising rates very much. 
The result has been that hundreds of country 
newspapers have had to go out of business. 
This is extremely unfortunate, for the local 
weekly fills a real need in every community that 
cannot be met by any other agency. I am sorry to 
see them go, and I sympathize very deeply with 
one of these country editors who sat one day in 
his office sadly figuring up his weekly losses. 
Suddenly, he looked up to see a funeral proces¬ 
sion going by his window. He took one horrified 
look at the hearse, and then, throwing up his 
hands in a gesture of despair, exclaimed: 
“By gosh, there goes my subscriber!” 
