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'RICH MEJSI'S TLAV FA*RMS
Down on his magnificent ranch in the Sun
nyside country not long since, Elbert F.
Blame, the well known Seattle. attorney and
financier, held a grand birthday reception
and entertainment, at which scores of his
Seattle friends were taken either by train or auto
mobile in order to make merry with him. Mr. Elaine
has a magnificent country home and we suspect that
it has cost him more actual cash to make it so than
the accumulated earnings of one hundred laboring
mechanics on an average salary of $4 per day. We
suspect that a glass of buttermilk on Mr. Blame's •
ranch is just as expensive, all things considered, as a
glass of champagne served by one in the city, but he
has Hie money and that is one of his ways of enjoying
it, and no one should begrudge him his happiness.
However rich men by their far mextravagance may
kill the present growing idea of "back to the farm"
by fitting up such expensive play farms that the real
farmer has a delicacy in trying to farm by the side of
his rich neighbor.
Elbert F. Blame, however, is a prince of good fel
lows and has a heart in him as big as his whole ranch
with liis magnificent city home thrown in, and those
living near his country home are made to feel that he
is their friend, and if they show any disposition to im
prove lie lends them a helping hand. He sees to it
that the highway in front of their properties is beau
tified the same as in front of his. He is as congenial
to the neighbor, who earns his bread by the sweat
of his brow as he is to the neighbor, who, like himself,
periodically betakes himself to the country to enjoy
his play farm in order to perfect some new hobby on
which he can spend a few more thousand dollars. Mr.
Blame is a great student of nature and especially the
evolutions as well as revolutions of the human family,
and being a man of money, he can devote the most of
bis time to the stduy of man Recently he spent con
siderable time in Sw.it/erland and other European
countries and devoted a great deal of leisure moments
to studying the conditions of the working classes. He
is doing the same thing in this country and already he
is a bubbling fountain of knowledge as to the economic
conditions of the age and, if he would, he
could write a most valuable book on Capital
and Labor.
MONEY MAKES MONEY.
Orchard Tracts, that part of the famous
Sunnyside district, in which the home of Mr.
Blame is located, may not be the most beau
tiful country plat on earth, but certainly
it is the most beautiful the writer has ever
seen or even expected to see. Nature seems
to have done nothing toward beautifying
that section, but it did leave it in a condi
tion that with energy and pluck man could
fashion and farm it into a beauty spot that
will put the most gorgeous efforts of Dame
Nature to shame. There is no doubt but that
to the old fashion "hay seed," who has
raised cotton, corn, taters and hell, the five
and ten acre tracts, such as are Orchard
Tracts, are mere "play farms," but the hard
headed business man, who balances the cost
against the profit, has a different interpreta
tion to give to it. Yes, it is a play farm on
the same principle of the clown in a circus
that is paid a princely salary for playing
work. The returns from the fruit and alfal
f;i crops from those play farms are so fabu
lous in comparison to the cost of the invest
ment and production that an account of it
THE SEATTLE REPUBLICAN
reads like a leaf from the story of Alladin
in the Arabian Nights, and especially the
one, which tells of the garden, where the
trees grew pearls and other precious jewels.
To have seen Mr. Blaine'a Orchard Tracts
/■B « Bk\
I\vo years ftgo and see them now is such a
contrast that you are convinced that even
Alladin's wonderful lam]) and its cohorts of
geniia could not have accomplished more in
so short a time. While it is a fact it takes
the man with money to make money, it is
also a fact that it takes the man with the
money to demonstrate the real worth of the
country that the man with the brain and the
brawn can follow in the wake of the man
with the money.
WORKING MEN, GET TOGETHER.
There will yet come a time when the far
mer and the city consumer of farm products
will devise ways and means to deal direct
ly with each other and cut out the middle
men, who get the real cream of the farmers'
earnings. In the state of Washington the
farmer refuses to raise but little more than
he or she needs for home consumption and
all because he realizes but little from the
things he ships to the seaport markets. "If
1 have eggs to sell I must sell them to the
local merchant at not only almost 50 per
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1912
cent less than they bring in the market cen
ters, but I have to take whatever they bring
in trade," bitterly complained a farmer not
long since, and as he spoke, so think others.
To such an extent has this sentiment grown
ELBERT F. BLAINE.
among the farmers that, they think it is the
same as throwing produce away, so far as
they are concerned, to ship it to the market
centers to be handled by commission men.
However, the immense fruit crops that are
yearly growing larger in the state of Wash
ington has set the farmer to thinking as to
how best to sell those crops to avoid being
robbed by the commission men and slowly
but surely he is devising ways and means
to reach the consumer at a cheaper rate to
him. and at the same time the farmer get
more for his products.
CO-OPERATION PLANNED.
Unless the well laid plans of the Farmers'
Grange and Organized Labor miscarry, they
will soon have perfected a subsidiary com
pact which will make it possible for the two
to deal directly with each other. The plan
is to open a co-operative store in every city
and community where organized labor is a
factor and for the farmers to supply those
stores with their products, and for the mem
bers of organized labor, so far as is possible,
