Dearborn independent. [volume], March 06, 1920, Page 15, Image 15

About Dearborn independent. [volume] (Dearborn, Mich.) 1901-1927

Image provided by: Central Michigan University, Clark Historical Library

                
15
oze .4 merica 's Champion Corn
Grower Won the Prize
By CARL SCHURZ LOW DEN
mm
"W
The corn ktJ " the doorway of
thebandiui! church seed-house
But
ELL, how
docs it feel to
be a cham
pion?" 1 asked Peter
Lux when 1 called upon
him at his prosperous
home in Shelby County,
Indiana. "And," I add
ed as an afterthought, "a
double-gaited one at
that?"
The 1920 corn king
removed his ever-present
pipe. He smiled a bit as
his mind went hack to
the day at Chicago
where, in the interna
tional show, the biggest
event of its kind in the
world, he defeated seven
teen thousand contesting
ears and won the crown
with twei white beauties grown by his own hand on
l:. l. ,1 "It's LTeat." he answered. "I feel like
115 umi - " T o p , V i
a real man that has accomplished something
where (W that double-gaited stuff come
in?" Tin- was easily explained, fie nau
won the grand sweepstakes with his white
corn; with his yellow entry he had taken
second place in the fourth region which
included the principal corn-growing states
of the Union. At other shows he had
taken top honoM with the yellow variety.
He is just a much double-gaited as a
horse that can win a pacing race and can.
after a rest, follow up with a trotting
victory; but Peter, of course, can do his
winning simultaneously.
I told Peter that I wanted to "shoot"
him with my camera. He made no ob
jection, but his wife came in and sug
gested that he really ought to dispense
with the service! of his pipe while the
shutter clicked She never did like a
pipe anyhow.
"We really ought to have some rib
bons for a background," I said. "Are they
handy ?"
They w re We emptied two crammed
stationery boxes, smoothed the crumpled
ribbons, ai d attached a small part of them
to two squ i ei of white cloth.
"That" , tlie ugliest ribbon I ever got,"
said Peter during the process. He handed
me a cheap -looking strip of faded letters.
and con ied: "but it brought me five
hundred d 'liars in gold on ten ears I had in a Missouri
show." Wai that the time they rode you around on
their sh. lers like a football hero?" 1 queried.
"Yes Peter replied, "I'd won the grand sweep
stakes of h show."
lie has two chances to avert the ill effects of the drouth
and to obtain a proper pollenization. Some farmers
invariably pull the suckers from the corn. Lux does
not. He believes these extra shoots store up moisture
and act as a reservoir when the weather turns dry.
77re? Seed Most Important
HE KM PLOYS great care in the selection of his seed
corn. He picks it from the fields before it has
reached a stage of maturity; it really should be mature
before it is plucked, but Jack Frost is a dangerous fel
low that would ruin its power of germination. Jack
must be beaten in the race, or he'll beat you.
Lux is a scientific farmer that co-operates closely
with the county agent. It's "Hello, Pete!" and "Hello,
Kuss !" when they meet; then follows an exchange of
ideas and experiences, for since the world began two
heads have been better than one. I asked the cham
pion if he considered an agent's work beneficial to a
county and if he thought the system worthy of con
tinuance. He grinned; then he answered with a whole
hearted "Amen."
Last year the average yield of the Lux corn was
seventy-three bushels an acre. Perhaps the secret of
1 "
mm mmmm m mmmm.m ' J aa -tkm
How He Produces It
AFTER
ft all lb
corn. 1 1
with wh
early foi
it with i
picture had been taken, Mr. Lux told me
his methods for producing prize-winning
ill-plows his fields. He rotates his crops
ind clover. The last of April is none too
nting. When the corn is up he goes ovei
iry hoe. at the same time thinning out the
weaker ts. He cultivates it five times, with each
cultivat! other from the stalks.
1,1 rk," the champion said, "is the price of
raoceM ni-growing. If a man will work early
and late ! every day and put plenty ol pep and get
th im t and use his head, he'll make good in the
game pre ided he plants good seed."
Lux ha been growing good corn for ten or twelve
ers. Hi ,t the idea when, as a young man, he at
tended the tanners' short course at Purdue University.
",s ther was the old type of fanner that ranked
"WClte ah ,-e science. Peter practiced what he learned
urdui nid he returned year after year. Now he
one oi the instructors in that course. He is also
f, m demand as a corn judge and as a lecturer upon
th' subject.
DlaY l,1,iml,,un nas two farms, on one oi" which he
the u U' u aml 011 tnc otluT whitc conK l:ach ot
half1 1S l,1,'Uctctl wih a barrage of similar corn about
cor w Ta WkU- lf his ,uiKhbors will not buy white
seed f irUI nCXt his wh,u' fieWf hc ftt White corn
fore k ' thc samc ru,c ho,ds f(jr ylow. Be-
the w" I "'U(1 this 1lan the bir(,s a,ul thc bcc an(1
neiehh1 'V'JU'(1 clear thc Partition fence and mix his
variety Vr11' PUen with that of his prize whitC
cntaminati WCTC many hybrid ears because of thc
Th' '''u.
0ut it thI Ollt,1'at'on s a very necessary process; with-
bc unfit fCrn WOUld not be fertiIe a,u! thereforc wou,d
inopnort Sml Occasionally a drouth comes at an
Medina nt,me and reatI' interferes with the cross
failn r two sucn experiences and compara
days af erttaUgnt Pctcr Lux a ,esson- AboUt flftcen
fie,ds and 1 or,Binal Panting he goes through his
u arops a grain here and there. In this way
PETER LUX
The cup was won at the International Corn Show and was awarded to thc winner in the grand
kwecpttakct on 20 ears of white corn. The ribhons were won in various exhibits.
this tine yield is the fact that he uses plenty of
fertilizer. "The twenty prize ears," he said of the group
that made him the new corn king, "were selected dur
ing the first week in October from a forty-two acre
field of as pretty corn as 1 have ever seen. This field,
from which clover hay was cut the previous year, was
plowed ten inches deep in March, 1919. was dragged
down when the weather permitted, double-disced both
ways, and then dragged again.
"After this soil preparation, two hundred and fifty
pounds per acre of twenty per cent acid phosphate was
applied broadcast with a grain drill. On the fifteenth
of May the corn was planted with an application of
one hundred pounds of fertilizer drilled in the row
with the corn.
"After the corn was big enough, it was plowed five
tunes at proper intervals with a two-row cultivator.
Just before it began to tassel, it was again gone over,
but this time I used a shallow-tooth cultivator."
The government has a test plot on the l ux home
farm. Every year fifty rowi of seventy-rive hills each
are planted. In the fall trne arc gathered and ex
amined, the sheep are separated from the oats, the
disease-free ears from the diseased. The experts are
trying to breed seed of the disease-tree type.
"Healthy teed," Lux told me, "is fully thirty per
cent better in every respect; it stands up better, it looks
finer, and it yields more than the diseased kind that is
invariably drilled."
The Government Interested
THE plot will be used by the government for ex
perimentation during five years. At the end of that
period it is probable that a definite, workable method
for eradicating the various corn diseases will have been
discovered.
When 1 asked the world's master corn
grower to say whether the yellow variety
is better than the white or the white su
perior to the yellow, he demurred. Then
he turned toward me and resolutely de
clared :
"The white was my first love, and
I'd never go back on it. But I like the
yellow, too."
His seed-house is an old frame build
ing that was known as the Ripple Church
before its abandonment. Rows of long
double shelves reach from the floor to
the ceiling ; some are loaded with pearly
white and others with yellow gold. It's
the farm mint, a veritable treasure house.
Boxes and barrels, both filled and empty,
line the front; power machinery and
sacks of the shelled grain stand on the
north side of the old meeting-house.
Prom this abandoned building Lux has
on various occasions selected corn for
South America. The buyers live in Ar
gentina and Brazil. Shipping the seed
across the equator is a delicate proposi
tion ; it must be packed in hermetically
sealed cans 10 that the high temperature
will not kill it.
Prosperity is in the air around the Lux
farms. And why shouldn't it be? There's
line furniture and electric lights in the furnace-heated
home. There's a metal corncrib and a big silo at the
barn. Your eyes tell you that this man, who is only
thirty-eight, has successfully ridden his hobby.
But hil h'bby is one that leads to the betterment
of mankind, that leads to supplying the human race
with more and better food, for he has demonstrated how
to improve a very essential crop, t make the acreage
produce more so that all the world may have more.
And like other benefactors of humanity he helps him
self in helping others.
England and Japan Both Seem Satisfied
With Their Alliance
ONE of the most important pre-war alliances still
existing, and certainly one with far-reaching ef
fect on the war itself, is the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
It was this alliance which brought Japan in on the
side of the Allies. The clause invoked was the one
which stipulated that if Britain, while at war, should
feel herself menaced in the Far East, then Japan should
take Britain's part.
When the war began Britain was not menaced in
the Far East. J3ut when the German raiders darted
into Eastern ports, destroyed shipping, and darted out
again to haunt the high roads of British commerce,
the clause was assumed, both by Britain and Japan, to
be met, and Japan entered the war.
It is 20 years since the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was
formed, and it is clear today that both powers have
been influenced largely by it; each certainly has modi
fied its conduct out of sympathy with, or at least re
spect for, the other. Both powers have constantly ex
pn ssed their satisfaction with the arrangement, and if
Japan at first felt she was gaining the greater ad
vantage bv reason of the early recognition it then ac
corded her of her new-born status as a first-class
power, Britain in the long run has received full meas
ure, not only in this war, but in the constant satisfac
tion she experienced through having a policeman on
the beat in her far distant Oriental orchard.
Everything points to the renewal of the agreement.
Britain more than ever desires it. Australia, her great
Pacific Commonwealth, may well insist on it. For
while Australia is frankly suspicious toward Japan she
may well feel that bound in an alliance with Britain,
Australia as an important member of the Empire, en
joying with the other parts of the Empire fuller in
fluence in the councils of the motherland than before
the war, can expect to enjoy a certain immunity from
Japanese aggression, as any move of Japan against
Australia would be in fact a move against her treaty
partner, the British Empire today being actually a
corporation of partner members, nominally headed by
the United Kingdom.
Japan, for her part, might look long before finding
a more useful arrangement, since it gives her com
parative safety of operation all over the world, while
permitting her to harbor and nourish her own careful
resources close at home.
It is true that public feeling in Britain is not so
warmly disposed toward the Japanese as heretofore; in
fact since the sentimental applause during the Russo
Japanese war there has been a steady decrease of en
thusiasm; but public feeling is not strong enough
yet in Britain to dictate treaties ; the statesmen, both in
Britain and Japan, want it. That will be sufficient
"Poland goes neither to the right or the left. By
swerving in either direction she would plunge into the
ditch of reaction, or the slough of anarchy. Poland
will progress straight forward, eagerly accepting the
best the right and left offers to help her do creative
work and beat hardship, making the national road ever
w ider and more permanent " I. J. Padercwski.