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partments. Nevertheless, Brigadier General William Crozier and Brigadier General A. R. Buffington, who are the patentees of a mounting of the great twelve-inch disappearing guns commonly used in the army, have never taken any profit from it. So heavy and so complicated is the mechanism that is necessary to rear and support these great guns while they are firing their ten-mile shots that it costs $50,000 to set up a single gun.

Some people contend that it would be to the advantage of the Federal Government to allow its inventors to profit handsomely by whatever they develop

while in the government service. The argument is that these profits would be a great stimulant to all government employees and would lead them to devise new methods of improving the service. The merit of this claim, however, does not detract from the credit that is due to the men who are contributing their inventions ungrudgingly under the present arrangement. They are giving much and asking nothing. They are doing it for a principle and are therefore set aside into a class of particular distinction. Their scorn of money and fidelity to their work is one of the bright spots in the public service.

T

THE MARCH OF THE CITIES

PHILADELPHIA'S WOOLEN STOCKING

HE city of Philadelphia has sold three and a half million dollars' worth of bonds to its own citizens without the aid of banker or broker. It sold them direct, and in doing so showed the existence of a reserve of money among the people of that city that may fairly be compared to the famous "woolen stocking" of the French.

The city needed $3,500,000 but it found that the bankers, from whom it was customary to borrow, were not disposed to lend on the security of long term bonds, bearing interest as low as 4 per cent., which the law prescribed could not be sold by the city for less than par. The bankers said that few, if any, of their investing clients would even look at a 4 per cent. security.

A less determined mayor would have tried to get the necessary authority to raise the interest rate on the bonds, or would have given up the attempt until bankers and their clients were in a better frame of mind. Instead, Mayor Blankenburg decided to try his own hand at placing investment securities directly with the ultimate consumers. He announced that the bonds would be on sale at par at the office of the city treasurer, and that they would be available in denominations to suit small, as well as large, investors. He

knew no argument was needed to convince people of the quality of this investment, and he had sufficient confidence in the civic pride of his fellow citizens to believe that the bonds could all be sold.

At first the small investors were timid, but when they discovered many of the big bankers buying the bonds for themselves, the small investors brought their woolen stocking from its hiding place, and the savings it contained were poured into the coffers of the city. Subscriptions to the bonds amounted to more than $4,000,000.

This was not Philadelphia's first experience with the direct method of dealing with investors but, considering the times, it was the most successful one. Other cities have experimented with this method at times when they have found it possible to get around the law requiring them to offer their bonds at auction and sell them to the highest bidders. But they have found in the results little encouragement for a general adoption of the plan because they have not their own "woolen stockings" to depend upon to furnish money for their public works, and because investors in other communities have been taught that it is best to deal through responsible investment bankers when lending money away from home.

T

FORWARD TO THE LAND

THE VALUE OF GOOD NEIGHBORS

HERE is an army going forward to the land in the Southwest. It is not as large an army as it was in the boom times of 1909, but it is of better character and purpose. It is estimated that between 175,000 and 200,000 settlers will go into the Southwest this year to make farms.

Eighty-five per cent. of this human stream are American farmers, chiefly from the high priced lands of the Middle West. The other 15 per cent. are foreigners, though most of them have been in America for some time. This is a healthy advance forward to a new land. The character of the settlers and the kind of land they are buying shows that the movement is a fair combination of capital and labor. Mr. C. L. Seagraves, the general colonization agent of the Sante Fé Railroad, describes them in this way:

We are quite satisfied with the present movement, the superior character of the new farmers much more than offsetting the decrease in their numbers. We would rather see one good farmer buy a few acres than a speculator buy as many sections. Farmland prices have been pretty steady since the hysteria period of 1909-10, and in some places they have advanced. Mixed farm land ranges from $10 to $100 in Kansas and Oklahoma, while irrigated land sells from $75 to $250 an acre. The demand is drifting to irrigated land, where farmers can control the moisture.

In the main these people are well equipped mentally, physically, and financially to succeed in their new homes, to achieve a prosperity for themselves, and to add a new area for the food production of the country. They settle with the help of the railroads, too, for it is to the particular advantage of the roads that this country be settled successfully.

The hundreds of thousands of people who go to farms in the Northwest and the Southwest attest the soundness of this landward flow.

Yet there is another side to the question. A little while ago some of the traffic men of one of the Eastern railroads asked the road's agriculturist why farm freight did not increase more.

The agriculturist pointed to advertisements of cheap homeseekers' rates to the Pacific Coast, that were scattered broadcast along the line. The eastern road's profit on every passenger that these advertisements induces to go West is only a few dollars. Its loss from every farmer that leaves its territory is as many hundreds. And it is the best farmers or farmers' sons that go. The slothful ones have not the ambition to cross the continent for a new opportunity. It is the men with "get up and go" in them that do that very thing.

Of course, there are the many thousands who have benefited by the change. But there are many others who succeeded no better in their new environment than they would have succeeded at home, and others still who do less well.

From a national standpoint there is little profit in depopulating one rural community to populate another, for there is practically no rural territory in this country that has too many people in it.

Under certain conditions the man who does the moving betters himself. When he moves from land that he has built up to a high state of productivity and a high price to cheap land that he can in time. build up likewise he is making a profitable move. There are many thousands who have done this. Some have moved from Illinois to lowa and from Iowa to Nebraska, others move from the Eastern seaboard to the Pacific Coast, others merely move from one county or district to another, for in every state there is undeveloped land which will yield large returns to a man who can turn it into high-yielding farms.

But where a man moves from an undeveloped farm in one part of the country to an undeveloped farm in another sec

tion he has not gained much in land. But perhaps he has in neighbors, and they are as important influences on the profits of a farm as the land itself. Neighbors who have the money and the willingness to spend it for good roads and good churches, who have the patience and wisdom to work together for their common advancement such neighbors add many dollars to the value of every acre of land a man has. There are two ways of getting such neighbors. One is to move to a place where such people live. In that case the newcomer will have to pay for their company in increased land values. Another way is to go to a new district and grow up with it, helping to mold it into

progressive lines. This is the long, hard path to profits that the pioneers have been going these hundred years. The third way is not to move at all but to stir up the old neighborhoods. For every farmer who has a chance to make a profit by moving there are ten who can make more money by stirring up their own communities. For every dollar that the eastern railroads can make hauling farmers West as passengers they can make ten by increasing the value of the land along their lines, by awakening the old communities. The unearned increment of good neighbors will double the value of many a farmer's property, and the quickest way to get a good neighbor is to be one.

D

HOSPITALS FOR

R. E. E. MUNGER, of Spencer, Ia., has for several years advocated the establishment of county hospitals that should serve especially the rural population of the state. Dr. Munger was one of the men who were of great help to President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission, and the report of that commission greatly aided him in carrying out the purposes he had in mind in his hospital plan, by enlisting national sympathy for the improvement of rural life. His plan was that the state should pass a law to permit counties to bond themselves for the erection of hospitals in the farming districts.

Dr. Munger conducted a dignified but striking campaign of education to bring about the passage of such a law. He pointed out in the newspapers that whereas Des Moines had one hospital bed for every 275 inhabitants, thirty-seven counties in lowa, containing more than half a million inhabitants, had no hospital advantages of any kind. That two million people of rural lowa had access to only 799 hospital beds, or an average of one bed to every 3,000 people. He showed also that the average yearly death rate from the diseases and accidents incident to childbirth amounted to nearly one per cent. of the

COUNTRY FOLK

female population of the state; and that these diseases and accidents are especially frequent in the country, away from proper medical attention, and that they are largely preventable and curable under hospital care.

Dr. Munger wrote his rural hospital plan into a bill which the legislature of Iowa enacted into law. The first county to take advantage of this new law was Washington County. The people voted $30,000 worth of bonds, a public spirited citizen bought eleven acres of land and donated it for a site, and the board of trustees, after visiting most of the hospitals in the upper Mississippi Valley and after consulting more than a hundred hospital workers, agreed on plans. The building was completed and opened to the public last July. It is fireproof and is equipped with every convenience for surgical, infectious, and maternity cases.

Kansas and Indiana have recently passed laws based upon the law of Iowa, and legislators of other states are studying the plan with an interest that will probably soon show results. In lowa itself, Jefferson County also has under construction a county hospital under this Act. ger's vision and effective enthusiasm have created a new and helpful agency for the betterment of life on the land.

Dr. Mun

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT FARM LANDS

91.-Q. Is the Delaware-Maryland peninsula well adapted to the growing of white potatoes commercially?

A. Only for the raising of early, shortseason types. The soils are generally too light and the climate too warm for the production of a main, all-summer crop, which is the more important from the commercial standpoint.

92.-Q. I am offered 400 acres of cut-over land in Hernando County, Florida. Can this be used for general farming or grazing? What would be a fair price per acre?

A. We know of no reason for the failure of either of these types of farming on such land, but the census figures for 1910 suggest that they are at present less important than horticulture. There were in 1910 only 554 dairy cows, 49 calves, and 807 head of other cattle in the county. The value of the hay and forage raised was only $7,243, whereas it was $27,437 for fruit and nuts, and $37,207 for vegetables. The cereal crop, valued at $41,280, of which about eight ninths was for corn, suggests, however, the possibilities of such crops.

The average value of farm land is about $22, but whether the acreage you have in mind is better or worse than the average, you can tell only by examining it.

93.-Q. Where are the best apple-growing regions of the country?

A. Passing from the West to the East, the sections that have become renowned as apple producing localities are: certain valleys (Hood River, Rogue River, Bitter Root, Boise River, etc.) in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana; sections of Colorado; the Ozark country of Missouri and Arkansas; the lake shore district of Michigan; the uplands of Ohio and West Virginia; a belt of counties lying along Lake Erie; the central part of the state and the Hudson River valley in New York; southwestern Maine; and the foothills of the Appalachian range, from Vermont and New Hampshire, southward into northern Georgia, including the upper altitudes of New Jersey and Delaware.

94.-Q. What proportion of the land in Ashley County, Arkansas, is cultivated, and what are the principal crops?

A. According to the census of 1910, 39 per cent. of the county was included in its 3,421 farms, of which 1,457 were occupied by whites and 1,964 by non-whites. Forty-five per cent. of the farm land was improved. The chief crops for 1910 were cotton (44,024 acres), corn (29,070 acres), hay and forage (2,579 acres), and fruit, chiefly peaches, plums, and apples.

95.-Q. Some time ago I read that the price of farm land in New York was, in a general way, $7 an acre. What is the situation at present?

A. Your source of information must have been rather antiquated, for although there may yet be some land that may be bought for $7, the average for the state in 1910 was $32.13. In every county but twelve the figure ranged between $10 and $50. In four of the exceptions, along the Great Lakes, the development of orchards keeps the average price between $62 and $85. In the eight others, grouped around New York City, average values of farm land, according to the 1910 census, range from $124 on eastern Long Island to $2,591 in Kings County.

96.-Q. Can you tell me of any man of firm who can inspect and report on 70 acres of land at the north end of Lake Worth, Florida. or can you tell me about the suitability of the section for orange growing?

A. We know of no one who makes it his business to examine and criticise land, but the State Experiment Station at Gainesville, the Commissioner of Agriculture at Tallahassee and the United States Bureau of Plant Industry (Washington, D. C.) through its Florida demonstration agent may be able to help you. In the section you refer to the mean annual temperature is 73 degrees Fahrenheit, and killing frosts occur, on the average, between November 18th and April 7th. We would consider it therefore a rather dangerous location for citrus fruit growing, although 8,510 orange, 6,840 grape fruit, and 84 lemon trees are reported in the county (Palm Beach) in the census of 1910. Pineapples represent the bulk of the $259,700 worth of fruit raised, but that vegetable growing is a more important industry is indicated by the sum of $530,728, the value of the truck crops grown.

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JAMES MIDDLETON 420

C. M. KEYS 427

B. F. HARRIS 433

HOW CANADA PREVENTS STRIKES - - W. L. MACKENZIE KING 438
A WOMAN OF ACHIEVEMENT (Illustrated) - SARAH COMSTOCK 444
MORE SHIPS THAN EVER BEFORE (Illus.) EDWARD NEVILLE VOSE 449
ABRAHAM CAHAN, A LEADER OF THE JEWS FRENCH STROTHER 470
TOO MANY CHURCHES
EVERETT T. TOMLINSON 475

THE MARCH OF THE CITIES

479

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Published monthly. Copyright, 1913, by Doubleday, Page & Company.

All rights reserved. Entered at the Post Office at Garden City, N. Y., as second-class mail matter

Country Life in America The Garden Magazine - Farming

CHICAGO

1118 Peoples Gas Bldg. DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY,

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GARDEN CITY
N. Y.

S. A. EVERITT, Treas. RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY. Sec'y

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