The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-01-14
Reads a Paper to the State
Board of Agriculture On
HOW TO MAKE MONEY
At Farming, to Which Members
Take Exceptions.
Nevertheless, the Paper Was
Full of Good Sense
And Thousands of Farmers
Could Profit By 1t.

There was danger of a small sized
row for a short time at the final meet
ing of the State Board of Agriculture
in Representative hall last night. 1t
was occasioned by a paper read before
the board by J. Logan Jones, OF Kan
sas CITY. in which the farmer was
slightly criticised along certain lines.
The paper was entitled THE Farmer
and His Wife as Seen by the Mer-
chant" Mr.. Jones gave the farmer a
considerable amount of advice, and
it was good advice. too. But the
fact that city man told them how to
run farm successfully rather amused
some of the old farmers who have been
farming for 80 or 40 years, and thought
they knew all about it.
Mr.. Jones is a member of the Jones
Dry Goods company of Kansas City. A
dozen years ago he was running a little
12X15 store out in Stafford county anu
he saw a great deal of the farmer across
the counter. Now he is at the head or
one of the largest department stores i'll
the west, and he applied a few of the
successful merchants principles to
farm life.
Better business methods" he said,
better bookkeeping, more intelligent
department work may, perhaps, be ad-
Vised as an important improvement. A
producing various things to sell. 1t has
many departments, and some of them,
no doubt, make money, while others
lose. Is it good business to continue a
department if it is losing money and
how are we to know if it is profitable
or the reverse unless we keep an ac-
curate set of books? The merchants
most common criticism of the farmers
methods is that he is too hap hazard,
too dependent on chance, in the meth
DDS he adopts in his farming.
Mr.. Jones then took up each depart
ment of farming, and said the farmer
should keep a set of books so that he
could tell exactly what his orchard, his
poultry, his cows, and every other de-
partment pays him.
He criticised the wastefuI habits of
many farmers, recalling the oft-repeat-
ed criticism that farmers leave their
machinery out to go to pieces in the
weather. He also said he favored fire
insurance as against lightning rods,
and advised the farmer to insure not
only his buildings, but his wheat stacks
as well. Continuing he said:
ITO get good prices for farm produce,
it is first necessary to merit good prices
1t takes no longer to churn one pound
of fine sweet, rich dairy butter, worth
25 cents a pound, than it takes to churn
one pound of white, foamy, sour butter
that goes begging at cents a pound.
1t takes no more milk in one case than
in the other 1t costs no more to feed
and care for a thoroughbred Jersey
whose ancestors ran wild on the plains
of Texas. The one makes an album
dance of 25 cent butter. the other a
skinny quantity of 6 cent stuff. The
farmer who has his various depart
ments so carefully systematized as to
get and produce the best in each and to
see to it that the high quality brings
its equivalent in high prices is the farm
er whose beautiful mansion is pointed
to across the fields as well to do and
successful.
advertising is the greatest known
force in selling goods. 1 think if 1
made excellent butter and more than I
could sell at a good price, I'd put a little
notice or adj in the town paper about
1T. Thus, for rs or so cents expended in
advertising space, reaching several hum
dred possible purchasers, from among
this number, customers enough might
and should, be secured to take constant
ly the entire output"
Mr.. Jones also gave good advice bo,,t
reading magazines, and said that the
farmer who took daily paper never got
taken in by a gold brick scheme
When Mr.. Jones had concluded G f
Westhrook, of Peabody, rose and said
he had been farming for 40 years and
he was glad that a young man from
Kansas City had come out and told him
so much about running his farm that he
had not found out in all his exDerienca
About this keeping books business
he said the trouble is that farmers
VINO Keep books don't like to look at
young fellows can beat US figuring
They are nice fellows, but we would
like to have these editors and LAWYERS
and bankers and merchants who taII
us how to get rich off a farm, inst 70
come out and show US how it is done,
Ex-Governor Click then called the in
coming president, T. A. Hubbard to the
chair, and when called on for a sneecb
he said:
I'VE farmers are not as big fools as
soIne peopIe thlnk. Many men who
came 70 Kansas with nothing but a
wife and lot of courage and settlad on
the prairies a few years ago now bo4ra
comfortable homes and are well off
It's always very easy to advise DaoDIa
in business you don't know anything
about 1t makes me tired to have NO.
get up and talk about machinery heinz
LEFT out in the weather and tell farnoerS
now to succeed when they ACKNOWLEDGES
1haI only TOUR out of every ones hun
dred merchants succeed; when a largo
majority of farmers make a success
walter n. Allen of Meriden also crit
Acized the paper. A half dozen other
men tried to get the floor. Mr.. Jones
replied briefly that he didn't offer The
paper in spirit of criticism
president Hubbard shut off the dis
cusslon at this point by calling on the
Modocs, who had come in in the mean
time, to sing, and when thew got at 81
the audience made them give an entire
concert. A
The discussion was opened later NV
"A. W. smith, who defended the paper
and moved that vote of THANKS te -
tended to Mr.. Jones, and after consid-
cradle discussion the motion was car
ried. was E@r-
Mrs. c. F. Wilder of Manhattan also
OF farm life VAC"
Secretary of Agriculture Wilson. who
was on the programme for an address
last night failed to arrive, nor did he