Norwich bulletin., 1917-03-03

 | the few bushels they had laid by for domestic use. They are not doing this | for charity nor through any prompt | ings of benevo1ence. They are doing | it as a straight business proposition. When they can sell their potatoes for I two and half or three dollars a bush | eI, they do it.-and use the resultant money to buy other forms of food at a desirable saving Anybody who cares to find out-which anybody can do without the learning costing him two cents-knows that there is more real food in $3 Worth of corn n-meaI or oat- meal or rice or sweet potatoes or raw l four or even beans and split peas, despite their present outrageous prices, than in any bushel of white potatoes ever dug or any twenty ] pounds of cabbage ever headed will the time never come when people will use their brains to ben eft their stomachs?
 Nevertheless. when all has been | said that ought to be said about the I ignorance and the stubborness which are chiefly responsible for such occur rences as those of the past week or so, the sorry facts of real deprivation and actual suffering remain to be met. That these people are ignorant is manifest. That they are shortEighted is clear. That they want what they want rather than what they can have is apparent. Exactly the same things
  Of Us,-or you and I. s well as the incompetent cooks and injudicious buyers of Third Avenue. We are ig- norant, thickly. densely stupidly ig- norant in the sight of the All-Wfse. We are short-sighted, as our own sad experiences have too often taught us. We are selfish.-as our best friends know, alas. too well.
 We cannot really afford to throw many stones
 
 lNo@ can we do very much to help these city unfortunates. The cities which have produced and sheltered the conditions which we all deplore must now attend to their cure or at least, their a1leviation.
 But the object lesson which the whole affair gives to us farmers as to our own duties and privileges is too striking to be ignored.
 Whatever may be the reason or cause for existing conditions in the domestic food supplies of the big ci- ties, there is neither reason nor ex- cuse nor pretext for our coming with in a like shadow. It is always unsafe to make detailed predictions, either of the weather or the market. But 1t is the fate of us farmers to be compelled to forecast the future of both, every season. And we all know that the maintenance of high prices. It would hardly be safe to predict a continu- ance of $3 potatoes, or of fifteen cents a-pound cabbages, or of SIS a hundred lower. Likewise they may go even higher. But the general aspect of things points strongly to the proba- bflity that good if not actually high prices will continue to rule for the average of our farm products.
 We all want our share of them, too. How are we going to get it? With ing in price, from fertilizers and labor to bran and dung-forks, how are we going to raise things to sell?
 It's a problem, a puzzle. an enigma doesn't seem to be any answer to cover all cases. The problem Is diff ferent on each farm and for each far mer- We must work it out for our selves. each one in his own way ac- cording to his own lights.
 In a nearby county I have heard of the inception of a movement to- wards cooperation in labor between the farmers themselves. They are slowly perfecting arrangements to unite. so far as circumstances will permit, in working for and with each other. For illustration: in one case Of which have heard. it happens that Neighbor A has some dry and early spring. Neighbor E. on the other hand, has got to put his oats on colder and later patch. Instead of each hiring an extra team for the blowing, as usual, B is going with his team to help A work his early land while his own. B's. Is still unfit for the blow. Later, when his, too, dries off. A Is coming on to repay labor for labor.
 Details of other work swapping ex- pedients are being talked over and planned out. Little knots of farmers are going so far as to plan out their seasons campaign in such a way as to make their respective crops dovetail with each other rather than overlap each other, thus making it possible for two or even three to exchange days works without neglecting their own peeds. i tt !ntiGht in some cases be practi- cable for a farmer whose land is adapted for stock rather than for cereal or root-srops to plan a system by which he should raise beef or nut