The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-09-11

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piled that it is impracticable if not i'm
possible to dry heavy crop of ensilage
fodder-corn; and if it could be dried,
nothing but the leaves would be eaten
by cattle. To preserve it as ensilage is
the only way to utilize the whole crop.
1t is also claimed that in the form of
ensilage it is more digestible, that cat
tie thrive better upon it, and that it is a
valuable winter food for mich COWS,
being substitute for the green forage
of summer and increasing the flow of
milk"
FARM WAGES. - There are few
brighter farmers in Vermont than w.
w. Higbee of Charlotte. Writing in
the Homestead, he says: " Farm wages
are out of all proportion with the price
of farm products. The cost of getting
work done is the main cause of depres-
sion in farming. Think of $3.50 to
50 a day, and corn set down here for
forty-eight cents. Potatoes at one
time were as high as seventy cents,
and are now dropping to eighteen cents;
beef has no sale and pork is S4 per
hundred weight. Land sells for S15 to
S1S per acre, and the best farms bring
$50 to $50 per acre, with buildings all in
good shape. The meaning of this is,
farmers must insist on prices for labor
to correspond with prices for produce,
or stop doing business. We do not
carry it on for fun" This all sounds
true enough; but Mr. Higbee offers no
solution of the difficulty. Why does he
not settle it by refusing to pay high
wages? The very moment he puts this
question to himself he finds, as we all
do, that we are confronted by the fact
that, if we hire cheap help, they turn
out to be the most costly in the end.
In this matter, to use a sailors express
sion, "we stand between the devil
and the deep sea-" We must pay good
men high wages, because otherwise
they will 60 elsewhere to get them. In
the struggle of the operative class to
keep up high wages by strikes and high
duties, the effect extends necessarily to
all working men. We can not see any
help for it, otherwise than resort to
measures for the reduction of the price
of all manual labor, which we are re-
solved not do in America. We shall
have to pay high wages in the future as
in the past; and the only remedy is to
get more work from fewer men by the
use of improved machines, and to get
higher prices for our products by having
them as abundant and good as skill can
make them. -
"FLUENT WRITERS LYING IN THE
SHADE. "-Referring to few remarks
in these columns, to the effect that farm
ers are apt to forget that people in the
city have hard times, too, in " making
strap and buckle meet" the Mirror
and Farmer says: People who go
from the cities into the country to
spend a few weeks in fishing and lying
in the shade of the farmers trees and
eating his strawberries and cream and
other delicacies think because the
farmer does not have to pay spot cash
for them that they cost him nothing.
That is the view that far too many of
these fluent writers on farm life take
of the subject If all such people could
have the benefit of the school of eX-
perience and make their visits at other
seasons and work in the muck bog and
clean out the pigpen and spread the
manure and work on their knees in the
dirt, setting strawberry plants, and
mend fences in the woods among the
mosquitoes, to keep the cows out of the
corn-field, and know that they were not
doing this for a fixed salary where
Sinking would be so much gained, as
it is in their work in the city shops and
mills, but feel that their success and
the necessaries of life for themselves
and families depended on their labors
and that they must work whether it
was agreeable or not, and that all the
money they were to have or handle
must come from the sale of their
products, the poetry of farm life would
not be so musical to their ears" The
"huent writer" of which our contem-
porary speaks so fluently in this SEN
tence of 100 words, is a farmer in his
sixty-second year, who begins work at
daylight even in the longest days, and
rarely drives his market wagon into
the barn early enough at night to get
through with his chores before dark.
He has probably set good many more
strawberry plants than his critic; but
he hopes he has rather more foresight
about his business than to leave his
fence-repairing to be done in 'sketer
A