The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-12-06
PRAISES FRENCH
FARMERS WORK
FOR FATHERLAND
Efforts in Wheat Field AS
Valuable AS Their Help
At the Front.

Hdr1S, Lee. o. Inc ldIIuSIo VI
France have done well for the coun-
try and their efforts in the wheat
field as we'll as on the battlefield must
be recognized said Oh. Brillaud de
Laujardiere, head of the great ma
tional agriculturists' society of
France, to a correspondent Of the AS
ISOLATED Press.
= Farm hands alone furnished more
than third Of our fighting strength
than the men of any other
occupation, and their exploits have
furnished pages of citations in the
Journal Official. The peasants at
the women, have,
in their way, done quite as we'll They
have really been the staff of life to
France during these trying two years,
since they have provided the bread.
but until lately they got only praise
while those at the front get decora-
tions.
EVERY peasant woman or farmers
wife or daughter who has replaced
man called to arms shall have a sort
of decoration, too, in the form OF a
diploma that will tell what she has
done for her country, just as gen.
erals citation makes known an act
M. Laupardiere is qualified to speak
for the rural population; he feels the
pulse of French agriculture every
morning when he opens the thous-
ands of letters that come to his office
from farms all over the country. He
presides over the Syndicate Central
des Agriculture de France. This is
not quite the same thing as the Ma
- tot
but in many ways it bears the same
relation to it's members. It's men,
bership comprises more than thous-
and local syndicates besides 1900
individual members among the elite of
the French agriculturists.
"The French farmer was formerly
essentially individualist," said M.
Laujardiere, "but he has learned the
value of association and nearly every
farming community is organized.
There are SITS agricultural syndi-
Gates in France with membership
before the war of 100000, assem-
bled in 85 different unions of syndi-
Gates.
"a single one of these syndicates in
the department of Loir and Cher
bought for its $1,000 members to the
equivalent of a million two hundred
thousand dollars annually before the
war.
"Our syndicates are not merely the
sales and buying agents Of the inci-
vidual farmer; they go farther; they
stand between the farmer and the
man from whom he buys or to whom
he sells in any misunderstanding,
saving him from lawsuits and ex-
penses; and they act as his banker,
in a way, through the organization of
mutual agricultural loan societies
which are separate from the syndi-
Gates.
"Any landowner can borrow the
money he needs to exploit his farm
from one of our SO regional or 1000
agricultural loan BANKS. whose, COM
bined capital was 35 million Francs in
1918; the state has also placed at
their disposition sums aggregating Sc
millions. They discounted about $40
million francs of farmers paper in
that year.
eve not only help the farmer but
we help train his children to be far
mers-do all we can to attach them
to the soil. We teach them the scien-
tific part of grain and stock raising,
and of butter and cheese making, we
show them how to keep farm &C.
counts so that they may know .wheh-
er they are making money out of any
given crop; the farmers daughters
are taught farm housekeeping with
special attention to the rational util-
ization Of foodstuffs; when we get
through with them. they have no
longer any excuse for. haphazard or
wasteful use Of provisions.
"War prices have helped the far
mer in one direction and hampered
him in another. He gets the equival-
ent Of S1.97 a bushel for his wheat,
or At cents more than before the war
He gets the equivalent of sc cents a
bushel for oats as against IA cents
before the war, and, this year, the
oat crop was a record one. Wheat
was deficient as compared even to
last year, but the farmer probably
realizes more in cash than for last
years crop. On the other hand he
pays a great deal more for all that
he buys-fertilizers fuel, salt, sugar,
flour.
'"The French farmer will after the
war still be beset by difficulties that
we must tighten. Traction farm ma
ch1nery, now almost prOn1D1t1Ve In
price to the individual farmer must
be provided to make upS for the lack
of farm labor.
1.-THE desertion of the farm for the
town had long ago developed crisis
that will be aggravated by the vast
age of war and the upheaval Of con:
ditions afterward; it is another of the
problems these syndicates are trying
to solve.
Farmers sons and simple farm
hands in the long watches in the
trenches alongside Of the city boys
have learned many things they never
knew about town life," M. Laujar-
diere thinks. Curiosity aroused by
tales of the town will draw them in
even greater numbers than ever after
the war unless counter attractions are
provided The syndicate proposes tc
make their life on the farm more at
tractive by higher comfort in their
nabitation and by such distractions as
are transportable from the city to the
country.
Composed to the alluring descrip-