Norwich bulletin., 1912-10-26

Cwritten Specially for The Bulletin)
 think we've talked together, once or twice, about the relative attractive mass of West and East for farmers. But I occasionally find such spienold textz for further sermonizing on thai topic that can't resist their tempta- ton.
 For instance, here's letter I've inst read in The Wisconsin Agricul- turist from a settler in Northern Idaho. He writes:
 q have come up here as some of you would perhaps like to do, and VIII sav to you as the best advice l can give: Stay in good old Wisconsin! There you have a chance of making living where you can grow a great variety of staple crops, as you can not do here"
 He uoes on to say that some fruits do fairly well where he is and that 1t is a good hay and potato country, .'but they do not yield well without irrigation and plenty of fedtiiizers. Corn. spring wheat, rye. alfalfa, etc, -do very poorly" Melons. squash. uzwupkfns, tomatoes. c1cumbers" do not mature and ripen-" And then he goes on to add the final knock down comment
 we have no local market and so must ship everything Markets are generally oveFstocRed when our pro ducs gets ia And we must take waht we can get The small stores here will take a very small amount of stun which we must trade out at about half its real value-T Tt will take good crops for twenty years to enable us to get our money back from our investment in land" If they had put the same money in q savings bank at four per ceht- compounded annually, 1t would have done better than thatl "You can grow more," he goes on, ion ten acres in Wlsconrin than you can on twenty acres here"
 We in staid old Connecticut lift our eyebrows a little to read such talk. We are accustomed to thinking of Wisconsin as being "out west and have to readjust our mental geography little to get the view point of this former Wisconsinite who has gone farther into the real west and re- members his former Wisconsin home as back east"
 And then, many of us still think of the virgin. untitled frontier fields as being the perfection of soil to farm in. To be told that they don't produce even limited variety of crops with out irrigation and plenty of fertiliza- tion" is in the nature of a surprise to some of us.
 But what this Idaho settler says about markets and the helplessness. of the farmer whose only salable crops come in just at the time when the markets are overstocked and the price down to zero,-this complaint Is noth- ing new. We farmers here in Connecti- cut have to fertilize heavily. So 1t seems, do those in northern Idaho. They also have to irrigate, which we don't often need. They nave To ad- vantage over us. SO far. They can raise only three or four salable crops, after all they've Gone: we can raise thirty or forty, if we choose, or can make choice between any halc dozen of that number. Thoy have no ad- vantage over us, in that direction, either.
 When it comes to markets, they aren't even on the same race-track with us;-they're off cross country, in the swamp, among the ditches and be- hind the woods. They have no li- cal market and must ship everything They can only trade out very little of their produce at .local stores and that "at about half it's real value"
 We Nutmeg farmers are simply surrounded and squeezed by markets which are eager for almost anything or everything we can grow. As a cold matter of fact we don't raise a pitiful fraction of the farm and garden and orchard produce which our own Connecticut markets call for and pay for.
 There is hardly farm in Connecti- cut which isn't within horse haul dis tance of one or more markets. TGe few exceptionally remote farms of the state are still within easy shipping distance of some city or large town Why, the state is so small and is SC thickly studded with cities and factory towns that it is difficult to imagine a farm in it as much as twenty-f five miles from some center of population whose people must eat.
 This Idaho farmer must limit him. self to what his soil and his climate will permit: and they permit only z very few crops. He can grow hay anl potatoes,--with plenty of water an( manure: he can grow a few hardy fruits, such as apples and entrants but no peaches or cherries or grape. or pears: he can grow cabbages anC onions and carrots and beets but nt melons or squashes or tomatoes ol