Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1913-12-05
RUNNING A FARM VS..
OPERATING A NEWSPAPER

The man who owns 80 acres of land
and who has brains enough to till it
makes the lot of the country news
paper man look like the last sad
remnants of a dutch lunch. The
farmer has the best of it all around.
He is as Independent as the Ameri-
can Express Company. He doesn't
have to write soulful obituary over
the remains of some punkhead bloke
who caved his wife's ribs in with a
grub stake and kept on display an
exhibit of cut plug profanity that
would make the efforts of steamboat
mate sound like a meeting of the Ep-
worth league. He doesn't have to go
into raptures over the beauty of an
open-faced bride with cast of coun-
tenance that would blow out the gas,
and he can say what he dunn pleases
about candidates for township offices,
something no newspaper man ever
dared to do unless he had lost the
postoffice.
The farmer isn't required to lie un-
til his back teeth fall out about the
sterling manhood of a groom with
ears like a caulifower plant and
brain power of a shoat. He don't
have to run a piano contest for the
most beautiful young lady in the
community, and print a 75c half-tone
of the beauty that looks like a tin
type of grandma at the age of thir-
teen.
There is nothing in the farmers
curriculum that obliges him to paint
the local soprano as a heaven-sent
songster, when in fact she has a
voice that would make a guinea hen
weep. He isn't called upon to paint
the virtues of a prominent citizen
who earned his money by collecting
notes with a draw shave and who
would have an attack of heart fail
ure if suddenly separated from two
bits in real money.
The farmer can stand on the street
corner and roar about the smallpox
in town until his whiskers curl up
like a man with the wind collie, and
if the newspaper man runs a three
line item to the same effect his ad-
vertisers will land on him and make
him resemble a crushed fruit salad.
The farmer can sit on his front porch
and lambaste the board of supervis-
ors or trustees from supper to break
fast and if the newspaper man jars a
board off the fence in that direction
his appeal for printing will be about
as effective as curing live boil with
tobaScO sauce.
The farmer can express his opinion
of the local preachers in firm and
loud voice on the four corners. If
the printer ventures to express the
view that the preacher ought to be
chasing a comb over a milch cow in
stead of filling large room with
thin ozone he will lose subscribers so
fast that he wont have the circulation
of a cold storage egg.
If the editor takes two days off in
succession his patrons call him a
loafer If he works until he is bowed
over like a fat man with the cramps
people say he is too stingy to hire
extra help. If he contributes $500
to the w. C. T. U. and wears a boiled
shirt on Sunday the bank calls in his
note with noise like wooden-leg
ged man falling on a tin roof; if he
refuses to dig up for church supper
he is branded as a miser and avoid
ed as if he had the hives. The farm
er can look every man in the face
and tell him to go where there is no
premium on cold slack If the print
er informs a man who tries to beat
him out of four years subscription
that he is so crooked that he couldn't
co to sleep in a round house he is
liable to be reduced to the consist
ency of a corn starch pudding
Monroeville Spectator.