VOL. LXIV
INDIANAPOLIS, MAY 29, 1909.
NO. 21
Robbing the Farmer.
By J. H. Haynes.
Editors  Indiana Fanner:
Your corerspondent, L. S. Duncan, is
troubled about the baby of 50 years
hence—what he shall eat and with
what he shall be clothed.
This baby is too remote to trouble
your brain or mine. We should    be
more especially concerned about the
baby of today—how it shall be fed, etc.
Perhaps in that fifty years to 'come
Providence, from the exigencies of the
case, may reconstruct the stomach of
the infant so that it may subsist on the
morsel of food that may fall to its lot.
Perhaps its feet may be covered with
hoofs like those of the ox, thus relieved
from the greed of the leather trust, or
shoe pirates. (Jr again it may feather
out and be aisle to line its own nsst
from a surplus of feathers. Let th.at
lsalsy alone; lossk tsi tlissss- now ssn hand.
Friend Duncan comments largely on
Increased production by increased fertility, secured by moans of commercial
fertilizers, etc. But my dear sir, the
Roosevelt commission says that no
matter how much you increase the
proiluctH ast tho soil the farmer will still
remain poor until certain robberies are
stopped.
Here is where the nail wants to be
driven. According to the report of
this commission the farmer gets about
30 per cent of the products of his labor,
and the combines get the 70 per cent,
that the grape and raisin growers of
California get 25 per cent, the other 75
per cent going to the handlers.
Now what doth it profit the farmer
to increase the production when the
sharks get the big per cent of the increase. Stop the robberies first; then
talk about increased  production.
Patten, the wheat pirate, gets $5,-
000,000 on wheat gambling. Who pays
it? The laboring man. Who loses it?
The farmers. Now Patten proposes to
force the cotton market, to take away
the calico frock from the baby and its
mother.
Mr. Duncan talks about waste and
extravagance. True, but who is in a
great part responsible for this? The
men who falsify the reports of fabulous crops, overflowing granaries, foreign demands ,etc.
Had the truth been told last season
that a great shortage was on hand,
thsse people would have seen a necessity for economizing and saving. A
sample of this mode of falsifying is now
going the rounds of the press, wherein
the Canadian wheat crop was in far
hatter condition than it was last year,
and the quality of the grain is much
better than was that of the crop of
1908, when the truth is that the grain
to produce the new crop is not yet
sown, nor will it be in the next four
weeks.
What is Congress doing for the babes
of today, their famished mothers and
overburdened fathers? Absolutely
nothing. What we need today is an
other Oliver Cromwell, a man with a
backbone. Legal   authorities   arrest
and imprison a common thief, but land
pirates stealing the caammodities of life
from the poor, go unscathed.
Ijist harveat farmers sold their
wheat at 70 to 80 cents, because they
had to. Today it sells for $1.25. Wins
gets  the   increase   of   45   cents?       The
pirates. Who pays it? The laboring
men and women. Who should receive
lt, if it is Just? The farmer, the man
who produced it. Who suffer from these
gamblers? The babes, the children,
the mothers.
The little each one can do towards
lessening this cruelty should be done
with voice and pen; but of the dumb
creatures upon our own premises we
can prevent the suffering that much of
them undergo, through lack of feed and
The Timber Question.
By Walter S. Smith.
Resistance    to  Potato Blight.
Row on right is from seed selected   from hills showing resistance to early
blight.     Xext row showing all vines blighted.     Wooster, Ohio, Station.
Xo, friend Duncan, don't worry about
tin babes 50 years hence. Just see
that what we now have are fed. The
danger of America is not that of the
"Yellow Peril," but It Is one far more
threatening, as every observant man
can easily see.
Carroll Co.
Cruelty to Animals
Editors Indiana Farmer:
In a recent issue of an eastern farm
paper there was a short article about
the cruelty allowed to be done on the
ranges, to the cattle; according to law
the cattle have to be fed, during the inclement weather, but only the letter of
the  law  is obeyed,    the writer states.
A skimpy load of spoiled hay is given
to a herd of cattle, so numerous that
the weaker ones hardly get one spear
of the hay. That the suffering is intense ali who read accounts of the
great losses of cattle after severe
weather, given in the dailies, can't help
but  know,  and  greatly deplore.
water,  especially the latter,  during the
frozen season.
If your sympathies are dulled to the
water craving of your stock look at the
money side of the question. Stock will
not thrive unless given all the liquid
needed, and that they will consume
quantities of it during the winter, all
who have cared for stock well know.
E. C.
A Travel Worn Dog.
An Illinois bird dog called Spot has
made a great record for endurance and
love of home. Last February his master, William Horn, of Champaign Co.,
gave him to a friend, who carried him
by box car to Baton Rouge, La. On
the morning of A pril 8th the dog staggered into his old home with bleeding
feet and a starved appearance. Henry
Good, to whom the dog had been given,
wrote a few weeks ago that he had disappeared. Horn says he can stay with
him the rest of his dog days.
Editors  Indiana Farmer:
I have recently been "stirred up" on
the subject of our arboreal prospects;
and I am here to say it is a lively issue.
The flrst article to "stir me up" is in
a last year's issue of the Technical
World Magazine, (October, 1908),
written by John Ray Smith, Jr. I have
had the paper all this time, but the article I did not read until a week or so
ago.
The figures that Mr. Smith has gathered up are simply appalling. We
are able to comprehend tens and hundreds and even thousands of things; but
when it comes to millions and billions
we are stupidly passive. Yet the forty
billions feet of timber used
in a year's building, the 37 millions more nsed in laths and shingles,
the 200 millions used in propping up
the shales overhead in mines, and the
like amounts in railroad ties, telephone
and graph poles, fence posts, etc., are
as actual as if we could appreciate such
numbers.
Extensive areas, measured by square
niib's are denuded every day by the
paper-making industry; and the match
factories, pencil factories, and toothpick factories could astonish us by a
parade of figures far up in the millions, billions, and  even trillions.
The other article was in a magazine
called Arborculture: A journal of the
the   Forests. I   fell   upon   the  April
issue, which is marked, "Vol. VIII: No.
2. John P. Brown, Editor and Publisher, Connersville, Ind."
The article is entitled "Indiana Forestry and the New Governor." It
quotes, out of the Governors' Message,
what he says about selling our State
Reservation and using the proceeds to
send lecturers over the state to disseminate the much needed instruction in
forestry among the  people.
I am satisfied that the Governor is
correct. Men ought to be so aroused
to this issue that none of our acres need
be  allowed  to go to  waste.
I have some suggestions of my own:
1. Let the taxes be lifted from forest land, so as to encourage all farmers
to maintain them,    and to add to them.
2. Let railroad companies be encouraged to grow their own tie-timber.
3. Let the pulp paper mills be treated in the same way.
4. Let acorns and walnuts and hickory nuts be planted in soils suited to
their several natures.
5. Let telegraph and phone companies, fence companies and all
other organizations, using poles
or posts in large numbers, go
into the project of producing their own
wares.
6. And last but not least, let this
lecture course, proposed by Governor
Marshall, convince the people of the
vital and urgent necessity of reform in
the matter of forest cultivation. Maple
seeds by millions of tons could be gathered up under our shade trees and sent
to the prairies; and by guarding against
prairie fires we might very soon have
the desert overspread witli life and
verdure.
The stalk of clover sent us by E. J.
M., from Dexter, Mo., for name, is
Crimson   clover. He   says   it   grew
among his alfalfa clover.    It will do no-
harm there; the alfalfa will kill it out.