The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1922-08-24

Johnson
rake than any other tool. 4 It does
| not look at all like the picture
above.
The johnson scarifier Is made for
the purpose of taking all the alfalfa
and clover seed in a field or in a
county, and scratching the surface
of each seed enough to allow mois-
ture to quickly penetrate the center
of the seed to sprout it.
It has been found that when a
man seeds a field to clover or alfalfa
in this climate, there is about 20
per cent of the seeds that do not
sprout when the rest of it does, and
in order to get good stand Of these
plants, more seed has to be sown.
When seed is worth SO cents a
pound and they have to put on two
pounds to the acre to allow for what
does not sprout, then it costs dol
lar an acre to remedy that difficulty
and still the unsprouted seed is
likely to be that portion that falls
on the little dry spots that do not
water perfectly or that drain quickly
in times of showers, so there are
spots in the field even then.
Seed men have found that by
scratching the surface of each seed,
and breaking thru the oily covering
provided by nature, almost all the
seeds will sprout if exposed to just
little moisture. OF course, nobody
can take each seed and scratch it
as they would the rhind of water
melon, but machines have been
made to do that by wholesale, and
Johnson's scarifier is one of them
and is the best one known to Bing-
ham county seedmen. We know
this because the principal organiza-
ton of seedmen in this county, those
who supply about Is per cent of the
worlds supply of pure Grimm
alfalfa seed have recently tested this
new machine of Arthur Johnson's
and bought it to supplant the best
one they had been using.
The mode of operating is some
what like the old tanning mill, only
the grain is swept around thru a
circular path lined with garnet
paper which is similar to sand
paper. AS the seed rushes along
this surface it is Scared or
scratched in the required amount.
The speed of the machine and the
air draft carrying the seed regulates
the amount of soaring.
Looking at the picture you will
see hopper, and that feeds the seed
into the machine. Just at the left of
the hopper is the fan operated at
high rate of speed. AS the seed
falls thru a groove into the machine,
it is struck by the air current and
forced around the outer curve of the
circle leading downward and then
back, and it is delivered into the
large box in such way that it is
released from the air force, and
feeds down into bin or sack while
the air passes out above it. Its
capacity is about fifty bushels an
hour of alfalfa seed and garnet
paper, which is coated with fine
glass particles, has to be renewed
about every 200 sacks Of $50 pounds
per sack.
Mr.. Johnson is one of our local
farmers who has worked in the seed
warehouse scarifying seed and while
working to solve its problems and
to combat the daily troubles, de-
veloped this new machine, has ap-
piled for patent and has already
sold his first machine to the Idaho
Grimm Growers association Of
Blackfoot.
1t has been only a few years
since the first seed scarifier was
made, and it was done by Profess
sor Hughes at the agricultural col
lege Of Ames, Iowa. Out of the
bigness of his heart he made q
present of the patent rights for it to
the American people, so that nobody
could put it on the market at hold
up prices by reason of their
monopoly. And right here came a
demonstration of the fact that a
patented implement can be made
better and sold cheaper than one
that everybody has the right to
make and use. And in this same
demonstration comes the proof that
an advertised article, If it has merit,
can be sold cheaper than the same
article can be sold without advertis-
ing. Here is the way it works:
1t has been found that no manu-
featuring company would undertake
to make these machines excepting
at high cost, because they could
not know in advance how many they
could sell. Anybody who considered
it, foresaw that any man who was
handy with tools could look at one
Of those machines in operation and
then 60 and make a pretty good one
himself. OF course, 1t would not be
perfect, and it would waste a great