White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1935-07-25

ably smaller.
"The small ones will be around cities
knee and hoe operators, selling truck,
more or less direct, into town. Person
ally, I'm not interested in that sort
of farming.
"Out here-out where there's room
we're going to rip out our fences,
throw our farms together, use more
machinery, pool our operations, cut
our costs and make money!"
"Co-operative farming or corporate?"
Neither. Inter- family farming. The
farms of this prairie will never be op-
| Grated under city capital and city
management. City men can learn
enough to farm on paper, but to farm
outdoors something else. That's
matter of highly specialized, variable
knowledge. You can't get it from books.
You get it almost instinctively, work.
ing outdoors, day to day, year to year.
The weather beats it into you
And another thing: when you're
farming, whether it's managing a
whole farm or just working by the
day in the corn row, the hand and
the head must be on the same body.
The thing cannot be standardized. It's
| not at all like working at a machine
| indoors.
mo, there's not the slightest chance
of big business stepping in and solv-
ing all our problems for us. Big bust
T, ness doesn't know enough. Well have
| to do it ourselves.
"And here's how we'll do it: We will
apply the overflow of specialized man.
agerial capacity from those farms
| where there is surplus of it to the
| farms that lack it. Each family will
retain ownership of it's own farm and
will contract with other families for
the operation of it.
Here, concretely, is the proposal my
sons are making to our neighbors
around here: Rip out these fences. Sell
your machinery. Keep your live stock
| if you want to. Continue your feed
ing. Keep on living on your own land,
| in your own houses.
We'll come in and farm your fields
for you Well crop for you in the same
| way that threshermen have always
come in and threshed for you. Plant,
| cultivate, harvest-the whole business.
Well do it on any basis you like best:
on shares, by the acre, by the bushel
or ton.
1--WE can do it. We know our costs.
/ Sc
found that out here over a period of
more than forty years. We've farmed
right through two depressions, and
| have always come out all right.
But our big advantage in this mat
| ter lies in this: I'm well past middle
age, just as most of the other men
around here are, but all their boys
have gone-left them. No young blood
mo real chance, therefore, to trans
| late their farming into modern terms
! engineering terms.
I'm this day, when one man can
take care of 100 acres of corn, they
haven't got the machinery and can't
afford it. A hundred-acre farm can't
afford both team and tractor. Most
of them get along with three horses;
and one man directing a three-horse
! outfit in this day-it's economic sui
eide!
II can take you out into any county
of this state and show you farm after
farm so cramped for space, so UNDER
equipped, that it can't possibly make
money. The land is all right. The man
may be all right. But he is trying
without live stock or Investigation to
match his light teams and his little
hundred acres at growing staples
against fields as large as his whole
farm, and against the practically un-
limited iron horse power of farmers
farther west.
mo wonder such fellows won't keep
books! All bookkeeping could show is
that their overhead is eating them up"
The Miller farmstead stands at the
outskirts of the small town of Sum
bury, on the central prairie of Ohio,
just little back from the road, an
attractive, thoroughly modern, COM
modious house of gray stucco.
The barns and outbuildings sur
round the house and back from the
grouped buildings stretch, with that
slow, strong heave which distinguishes
the Ohio prairie, the 290 acres that
have more than forty years made a
good living for this family, supplied
it with every comfort and sent three
boys through college, with two still to
go.
Power plays each year an increasing
role in the life of Falkland farm. They
need no longer cut and haul ice; cleo
tricity freezes it for them In neat cubes
right in the kitchen. And outdoors,
electricity milks cows for them, shells