The ranch., November 01, 1903, Page 5, Image 5

About The ranch. (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914

Image provided by: Washington State Library; Olympia, WA

                
LEARNING THE BUSINESS OF
FARMING.
By Henry Wallace in Wallace's Farmer.
There is a very general impression, less
general now than in former years, that
farming is purely an art which any person
with a reasonable amount of strength and
natural sense can acquire without any great
amount of instruction ; in other words, that
successful farming consists of certain
manipulations of the soil of which the main
requirements are patience and brute
strength. It has only in recent years dawn
ed on the mind of farmers' boys that farm
ing is a business of itself, a science as well
as an art, and that it needs to be learned
quite in the same way as any other business.
The farmer in fact needs to learn the un
derlying principles of his business quite as
thoroughly as the lawyer or the doctor.
When a young man begins to study law,
he does not commence by pleading cases
before the supreme court nor the circuit
court nor even before the justice of the
peace. He begins with the principles under
lying the practice of law; in other words,
with the theory of law. He spends weari
some days and nights with his Blackstone
and Coke. It is dull, hard work, drudgery
as pronounced as that of milking cows or
hauling out manure. After he has mastered
these elementary principles of law in general
he takes up the laws of his own country
and finally of his own state, and after he
has thus drilled in a lawyer's office and in
the law school, he is prepared to practice
law Of course, no amount of theory or
understanding of the principles of law will
make him a good lawyer without the prac
tice. It is only by practice that any man
becomes perfect.
The young man who wishes to become a
successful physician does not begin treating
cases of typhoid fever. He must first under
stand the underlying principles, the science,
before he is permitted to practice. He
must understand the anatomy of the body
must cut up more or less dead people and
find out the location of the arteries, of the
veins, and the nerves. He must know about
these things before the state will permit
him to practice. As with the lawyer, so
with the doctor. No knowledge of anatomy,
or of the nerveous, or the venous system, or
the pathology of disease alone will ever
make him a good doctor. In connection
with these, he must have the practice and
must learn how to diagnose a case; that is
tell what is the matter with a man, and
then apply the remedy. He must accumulate
a vast and varied fund of knowledge be
fore he is fit to be trusted with the precious
lives that may seek his aid in time ot
trouble. , ,
The farm boy may as well understand
that there are certain underlying principles
of farming which he must master before he
can become a first-class farmer, and he
really needs a wider range of knowledge
than" either the lawyer or the doctor He
must understand soil physics, the make-up
of soil in general, and of the soil of his own
farm in particular. He must understand
how water moves in the soil; how to pre
pare the seed bed so as to utilize the largest
amount of water. He must understand how
plants grow. He must understand the
Structure of the different animals on his
farm the various elements in foods, and
how to combine them to produce the best
results He must understand not only the
w of nutrition but of heredity. He can
fam in a sort of way without these things
on^irgin soils. Tens of thousands of men
THE RANCH.
We Can Handle
Anything
Ship us your EGOS, APPLES. POTATOES,
GRAIN, or anything you raise. We can dispose
of it quickly and we make prompt returns.
References: Any wholesale house in Seattle.
Matheson & Deady
Produce and
Provisions
606 Western Aye., SEATTLE, WN.
have got rich without knowing the under
lying principles of which we speak. Thous
ands more in new countries will get rich
a great deal quicker if they knew not merely
the how of things but the why of things
as well. If they had certain definite prin
ciples to guide them instead of simply fol
lowing the example of others and farming as
their fathers did, these fathers in turn farm
ing as their grandfathers did, under similar
soils and under similar conditions, they
would make much better progress.
The high price of land and the partial
exhaustion of much of this high priced land
makes it imperatively necessary for the far
mer to know the why of things as well as
the how. Fortunately, the farmer's boy can
combine the why with the how, the science
with the practice, more easily than the
boys who undertake ony other profession
He is not required to go through an agri
cultural college before he begins to farm.
He must begin to farm before he goes to
college, else he will be at a great disad
vantage. The farm does not choose the
men who are to farm it as the client chooses
his lawyer or the patient his doctor. When
he is growing a crop of corn he can study
how plants grow and thus learn how to
plow so as to put the soil in the best possible
physical condition and conserve its moisture
While he is feeding cattle, he can know how
they thrive on one feed as compared with
another. By noticing carefully the similar
ity between the young live stock on the
place, and their sire and dam, he can get
important lessons in the law of heredity,
and the study of elementary books while he
is engaged in farming will do much to trans
form what would else be drudgery into
pleasure.
The young men who are to win success
in the next quarter of a century are those
who are now busily engaged in learning the
principles underlying the business of farm
ing. Never since the world began had
farmers' boys so many opportunities as they
have now. Never were there so many good
agricultural papers to be had for a dollar
a year—two cents a week. Never were
there so many books available which put
in shape the experience of farmers since
farming began. Never were there so many
agricultural colleges and experiment sta-
tions, and never yet was there so great an
incentive to the boy who starts out to
farm with brains. Land is high now in
most sections, but it will be a great deal
higher when the little fellow who is now
playing with his rattle in the cradle starts
out to buy a farm. He will need to know his
business.
GROWTH OF FARMERS' MOVEMENT.
Last December the leaders of the farmers'
co-operative movement in Kansas and Ne
braska decided to change from their former
system of a chain of local associations
operating through a central office, to a
single corporation embracing all the locals
as branches. This change was decided upon
for the reason that it was found impossible
to maintain that unity of action necessary
to the operating of a large wholesale bus
iness, among a hundred independent asso
ciations. The "theory" of such operation
was plain and simple, but in actual practice,
it was a failure. Therefore the plan was
substituted of capitalizing a vast farmers'
corporation, with its branches at every grain
shipping station. A charter was taken out
authorizing The Farmers' Co-operative
Shipping Association (offices in Topeka and
Kansas City, Mo,) to do business with a
capital of $200,000, of which nearly or quite
sixty thousand ($60,000) dollars is paid up.
The association began active business about
July 1, with three grain elevators in the
southermost portion of its territory—Okla
homa. As the threshing season advanced
north through Kansas and into Nebraska,
other elevators were added at other station,
until over twenty elevators are in operation,
and the shipment of grain reached a half
million (500,000) bushels on September 15—
two and a half months after the purchase of
the first load. In most localities, the price
at which the grain was bought was several
cents higher than had been paid prior to the
opening of business by this company, and
the entire amount of such increase in price
is the first instalment of profit made by the
farmers through operating their own associ
ation. A man who raised and sold 5,000
bushels of wheat and realized three cents a
bushel more than was formerly paid by
other dealers, realized a profit on day of
sale of $150. If his stock in the association
was $100, it not only cost him nothing but
his membership of stock in the association
in addition to paying for itself on the first
shipment, paid a fifty per cent dividend. If
no general dividend should be earned by
the association this year, still the profit
earned in this initial transaction is sufficient
tp warrant the farmer in placing a higher
value on the stock than on any other pro
perty on the farm of like cost.
With such results, it is not at all sur
prising that the association is having an
unprecedentedly rapid growth, and at the
same time, it has none of the features of
stock jobbing or watering. Every dollar in
stock is paid for with one hundred cents,
and the company has elevators or cash to
show for it.
The company or association has opened
offices on the Board of Trade in Kansas City
where it owns its own membership and is
operating in the second largest grain market
in the United States and the greatest hard
wheat market in the world. The farmers
have learned or are fast learning the lesson
long since learned by other business men
to have confidence in themselves and their
class, and adopt modern methods in the
handling of their business.
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