Norwich bulletin., 1909-05-22
4 FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
Dean Roberts Cause for Unsatisfactory Results in Agr cuture-How Others Have Diagnosed the Situation Staple Farm Crops Sold at a Loss-l1ow the Price of Milk is Pushed Up-A Years Accounting and the Action it Prompted.

much of my five-cent loaf of bread, which weighs twelve ounces, the farm CT gets. When it comes back from the laboratory where it has been sent 10 determine its moisture content, l VIII know. However, I can readily see that he gets less than one cent out of my five"
 There you have the truth in all its shameless nudity: the man who pro- duces and supplies all the real value there is in the loaf of bread gets less than one-fifth of it's pricei If all the prosecuting attorneys of all the courts should combine their ability anu ex- rerience, they couldn't frame so damn ing an indictment as that mere state ment of fact.
 . Nor is wheat the exception. The other day I saw in tabular form statement of where the money went for the milk which is sold in New York city at ten cents quart. or that ten cents. something went to pay the dealers profits, something went for transportation, something went for administration" (Heaven bless us, administration" to sell a quart of milkl) and something went in several other ways. The farmer got just two cents and a half! Two cents and a half for the milk in the pitcher and seven cents and half 60 the man who passes it to youi Do you wonder why the farmer doesn't have pianos and automobiles? Or why some other peo- pie do have them?
 One of the best dairynen in a good dairy portion of New York wrote re- gently to his farm paper that, after do- ing business for more than thirty years with m all-the- year-round herd of about thirty cows he was ''very much surprised to be above ground He had greatly increased the fertility of his farm, but as to the happiness and comfort of those conducting the business I cannot say that I would care to repeat the experiment." The Erice of feed is going up; the price of dairy products is not. A few men in the west fix the price Of feed; the milk exchange fixes the price of butter, etc. The dairyman hasn't a word to say about either. Another dairyman who kept careful record of his herd from october to April reports that ahe got just $1S.S0 per COW during that time and paid out, for grain alone, $18.04 ger COW. This left him IS cents for hay and straw, for labor and inter- est and wages, for six months. Is it aIiy wonder he doesn't paint his barn and curry off his cows twice a day?
 Some years ago l kept daily accounts with all my farm crops for full year charged against each crop the rent of land at five per cent. of it's value the cost of fertilizer and seed and la bor, and it's pro rata share of the bur- den of taxes and insurance which the farm must, somehow, pay. Then credited each crop with the actual market value of the gross product That is, if I sold half my hundred bushels of corn, I credited the crop with the other half which I fed out at the same price, and also with the value Of stalks used for fodder, at the cur rent rate for such roughage. The re- suit of this little excursion into book keeping was very Illuminating. haven't the record at hand, but I re- member that some crops l was raising didn't return me as much as I spent on them; one crop-oats-paid me wages of just fifteen cents a day for my labor. including the use of two- horse team and tools, some crops paid expenses and gave ms wages of from fifty cents to dollar a day; a few mostly garden vegetables not only raid their way, but gave me wages oi S2 a day and left something over for profit. That's just the reason I stop ped general farming and went into market gardening. I'll be blest if I'm going to work for somebody else for nothing-and pay for the privilege oi doing it!