The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-06-25
problem of the country life question is
the organization of its social life.
Farmers Clubs

the organization of its social life.
Farmers Clubs
Farmers Clubs are powerful organs
for producing active community spirit,
local pride. and healthy cooperation.
They are a good thing from the stand
points of rural society, education, and
finance. Through the club, farmers
are able to get concerted action on all
matters which are vital to the country
community. one important feature OF
club work is the looking after markets
both for selling farm products and for
buying farm supplies. To secure these
advantages, cooperation is necessary
Farmers are the only large morgan
lied section of society, and their in
ability to secure all that is coming to
them is due TO this lack of unity.
The Register publishes in full the
address of Editor |. ID. Aldrich of Big
Stone. on The Weekly Newspaper in
Rural Improvement" which was de
livered Saturday afternoon. Mr.. Aid
rich said:
In discussing the influence of the
weekly newspaper in rural improve
ment | shall try to remember that |
am not addIe Ssing a convention Of
newspaper men with the intention of
making suggestions to the craft where
by they may become more useful to
the communities which they serve,
but rather, here, | am to tell you,
representatives of many communities,
how you can work with your news
paper men to procure the best cooper
ative service toward the advancement
of better standards of living on the
farm.
The country newspaper is an lnStl-
tuition whose field has changed greatly
in it's character within the last ten or
fifteen years. The farmer no longer
depends on his weekly newspaper for
his outlook upon the worlds activities.
The daily rural mail delivery has
brought to him an avalanche of reading
matter. The worlds news m to
him every day in his daily. The farm
paper, whose name is legion, gets
him on its mailing list. and YIELDS his
address into the mailer so tight that
nothing short of a %cataclysm can ever
jar it loose. Some of them he gets
with an order for garden seeds, some
of them follow up an innocent inquiry
in regard to some advertised article,
and some of them come to him be-
cause his neighbours little girl sells his
wife a package of needles to earn her
self a bit of cheap jewelry, the trans
cient quality of which ornament in no
wise forecasts the endurance of that
subscription. The farmer is beseiged
and bombarded with cheap publica-
lions of all kinds, in which a multitude
of vendors offer him rare bargains in
poultry foods, hog cholera remedies,
patent medicines, chromos, butter COM
pounds, hair removerS and hai1 re-
storers, and combination tools that
will pull corks, file saws, punch holes
in leather, and furnish first aid in all
sorts of trying situations, and the COM
mercial nature of the publication is
but thinly disguised by a little boiler
plate agriculture and a woman's de
partment conducted by Aunt Eva"
which is usually the non de plume
for an individual who is equipped for
the service with a pair of shears and
a corn cob pipe.
Many farmers who get these papers
think that they are taking a farm
paper, and maybe they are, as there
are just as many kinds of farmers as
there are farm papers.
The point is that the farmer is going
elsewhere for a good deal of the mat
ter that his father used to look for in
the country newspaper. The country
newspaper has lost its general field.
1t is no longer depended upon for ma,
tional news, and hardly for state news.
In state politics it has lost the inter-
est of it's readers to a great extent.
One takes it up to see what slant the
editor uses in taking his political OBJ
servations, and the perusal may be fol-
lowed by a chuckle or a sniff, indicat-
ing the readers agreement or disagree
ment, but his opinions are formed from
his daily and his magazines.
The farmer gets his general news
from his daily, his agricultural pabu-
lum from his farm papers, and his
politics from Lord knows where, out
of the air most likely, and what is
there left for the country newspaper
to do?
Let me venture my own opinion.
There is not a large city in the Unit.
ed States where, in the bundle of mail
placed upon the rolltop desks on a Fri
day or Saturday morning there is not
in nine cases out of ten an unpreten-
tious little newspaper, none too neatly
folded and wrapped, that is the first
paper to be opened that morning. The
war in Mexico may wait, the canal tolls
bill may be suspended in mid-air, while
the busy nan reads the local news,
from his home town. The Mexican
crisis may be at a thrilling point. but
he does not know any Mexicans per-
sonally. Royalty may be joined in the
bonds Of matrimony, or unjointed in
the due process of court procedure and
the law Of supply and demand, but he
cares not. What he wants to read is
about the folks at home, the people he
Grandma Peters rheuma-
tism is any better, and how much the
Ladies Aid made at the last supper,
and If the Henderson girl and that
gawky Jim Burns are married yet, and
what Cy Hendricks got for his colt.
He may not know the colt, but he
knows Cy. and he ear visualize the
dicker between him and Lem Baker in
a manner that Is almost as good as a
visit back home, and as he sits there
with the little croasod apd rump1od