Norwich bulletin., 1921-01-14

paid at the farm As matter of fact. & large proportion of the cabbage-crop of the biggest caSbage-produciag state in the 1 union was left to rot on tce ground, last .aIl, because the growers couldn't get [! | q. ton for 1t f o. b.
 Weu enough of that. We practical farmers haSn. admittedly, less interest
 n the possible deductions. from mare or
 iess doubtful statistics than we havs in
 the manifest. apparent and unden:abie facts which we are up against. When
 we come in, soaked to the skin, from our work in back lot we don't look at the , weather bureaus forecast to know whether it is raining or not We know vixen we are wet through, without refer ence to governmental confirmation Of the dampness Similarly, We know when We are being stuck by the market, wheth-
 CT Washington and New York city know
 it or not
 l It is comparatively easy to sit In 2 snug city of1ice and write out rainbow l tinted boomlets for the country. It is not l difficult for those accustomed to mani | pulating official figures to make them prove anything, either of fact or of fic- tion. | Indeed, judging from the sort of stuff
 which gets into the big city papers ahont
 farming, it might seem as if, the less ore kIlCHS dDOul Ill., lu0 DGlAGT AN@Gu HS
 feels himself to lay down the law con-
 corning it.
 Facts are not only stubborn but often depressively hampering things. The writer who is burdened with the fewest of them can often Soar higher into the l realms of imaginative ether than his matter-of- fact brother, who really knows , the difference between garget and heaves l and who has to sell his potatoes before I he can pay his. taxes
 2 The trouble Is that farming Is not ax = affair of the imagination, but one of dirt
 manure, rain, blight. bugs, incompeten : help and a thimble-rigged market I doesn't depend upon what can be proyet l. about 1t with figures so much as upol r what can be done for it with hoe. : Almost anything can be proved If yo S go at it right. Some saintly monk ono
 proved that ten thousand angels coul
 stand upon the point of a needle Arch : bishop Whateley proved that Napoleo st comes gentleman from the neighboI It hood of Wall street; who asserts and as e suInes to prove that the drift frcm tn y country has ceased, because farmers ar n making so much more money than any l. body elsei
 n i Despite the serried arguments of Arci ,a n bishop Whateiey. most of us are still f. is cl:ned to believe that Napoleon was mal c 5, substantial than a myth. Despite the b uu' u figures of any New York city magazinI I- We farmers know that the drift to t. iA cities didn't cease between 1904 ar
 1912; that it didn't cease between l9. ne and 1920; that it hasn't ceased yet, ar st that we are everywhere and every d: ey throttled and shackled by the loss K farm labor due to it. We neither kne
 nor care what expert statistic-iu- 2n may assert about it; we know whrn ISL rains or when the sun shines. and , r. know that We had to pay more for in bor and more for fertilizer and more f by tools in 1920 than We did in 1s1s---a, g. then had to sell our crops for about h, in what they fetched, per bushel, in tn 20 same 1s19i
 h. It may he possible to figure this 0 as as prosperity" on paper
 lst But all the fine figuring of all the fi
 writers in all the cities of the lard vvo, est i'll th" emptiness in the farmers' DOC 20 cts Moreover. we know what is in a 00 what is not in our own pockets. bett
 than anybody else.
 l. THE FARMER