The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE M'HENRY PLAINDEALER PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY IT F. G. SCHREINER Offlcs la Bask Building TritphoM *-W TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: OM YMT $1M Six MMHU, 79C Thra* MMOU, #C Thursday, February 24, 1916 THE COUNTY AGENT WORK WOULD BE SERIOUS MISTAKE TO ABANDON WORK M. J. Wright Writes Moat Interest­ ingly About the Farm, the Dairy and Farmer It will be a serious mistake for any county to abandon county agent work. Every farmer should be vitally inter­ ested and in favor of every agency, either of national or state aid, that contributes to better education of the farmer, or puts him in a closer touch with the demonstration work. All these enactments will prove to be landmarks in the history of agricul­ tural developments of our state. There will always be an increasing interest and co-operation between state and nation in educational work among the farmers. The passage of the Lever act demonstrates the truth of this assertion. Under it the na­ tional government proposes to appro­ priate many millions annually to the various states to be used in actual demonstration work. This vast ex­ penditure will be made as far as pos­ sible to the county agents of the several states. The department of agriculture has, indicated its prefer­ ence for the county agent work, and you have only to attend these annual meetings at Urbana, where these men meet with the local men, to be im­ pressed with the existence of this fact. They are perfectly willing to deal with the county agent with reference to their agricultural extension work. That is, they look to these organized counties for the best they have in agriculture. It would certainly be a serious mistake for any county to abandon the work when it is once started. The work of the agent is exacting and open to the criticism of many, and it is a hard task to please all, and a certain degree of tolerance must be exercised in passing judgment upon the county agent. Anyone engaged in public service long enough will agree with me that charity is the greatest of all virtues, and I will venture that as time passes and the full measure of benefit is re­ alized it will be generally admitted that county agents form one of the most powerful forces now at work to better farm life and improve rural conditions, and it is the only way to keep abreast on the mighty progress which is now taking place on the farms of our nation. We are at this time entering upon a new era of wonderful opportunity. Th§ next ten years is to be the golden decade of agriculture. Happy will be the future of that man arid his family who embraced to the fullest extent the possibilities open to the progres- ssiv® American farmer. The world is ^hungry and is asking the American farmer for food. Let us face the fu­ ture with confidence. We should em­ ploy every agency and exert all of our energies to increase the crop yields; we shall thus feed the hungry, enrich the nation, our families and ourselves, but as farmers we have many prob­ lems to solve, and these are multi­ plied in the various counties of the state, but to localize them as they manifest themselves upon the demon­ stration plate of our own county should be the early task of oar coun­ ty adviser. The county farm should be the place of demonstration in each coun­ ty especially. There should be check plats of small areas to show the suc­ cess of any project that they might encourage or endorse. It is there that a comparative test of different seeds adapted to this locality and treatment for insects and fungus growth should be worked out. If this demonstration work could be carried on there by the county agent he might increase the production of the county to a. large extent and increase its earning power many times his salary. It has been a pleasure to me to at­ tend every annual meetings of the county advisers at Urbana since this work commenced. Each year the at­ tendance is doubled and a meeting just held the last week in January was no exception to the interest taken and the scope of the work outlined. New counties are coming in and more in­ tense interest taken. Four years ago, when DeKalb county started its work, it was an experiment, and Mr. Eck- hart was nervous about undertaking it, but now it is conceded beyond question by every man in the depart­ ment that it has passed beyond the experimental stage. The dean of the agricultural college told them at their banquet that the weakest link in this extension work was the research work at the university. He said that there is a whole world of agriculture that is undiscovered. We are only on the borderland after years of work, and if the plans of those who have the development of permanent agriculture at heart realize it, it will mean that experimental stations will have to do ever so much more than they have ever been able to do. Sci­ entific facts are needed and the ex­ periment stations must prepare to supply the facts. As to the speedy success in the attainments of the as­ sociation, Dean Davenport was most optimistic. - Certainly, with such a representa­ tive body of men as were represented in that convention something has got to give way. He said that men of landed interests, capitalists, bankers, tenants, university men, public and other interests united in the work the next ten years are bound to accom­ plish more than has been accomplished up to this time. J. C. Salor, speaking of the farm and farmer, told of the many benefits that have come to the farmer since the adviser system had been in operation and hoy-i^ had paid a hundred times what it had^ost. D. S. Brown of Genoa said that the state's greatest resource was the gathering of such people at such a place as the University of Illinois. He said it is the most representative body of men that ever met and it is bound to win. The banquet at the Beardsley hotel was certainly a success, more than one hundred attending it. It was found necessary at the last minute to make preparations for the overflow meeting. I am writing more fully at this time in regard to this meeting that the people in McHenry county should know of the general interest tak$n thruout the state, and if Mc­ Henry county will give its support and be loyal in every way as students of this movement, it should mean more to us in the next ten years than we ever dreamed of. It would add a wealth of education, comfort and suc­ cess to every industrious citizen of the county, elevating the standards and ideals of country life and localiz­ ing the best demonstration work of the state. In closing do not forget that the in­ spirational work of this movement should be the larger part of it. The ideals formed and the resolutions made in regard to scientific facts are of more value than the facts them­ selves, and that life's greatest prob­ lems and resources cannot be com­ mercialized in dollars and cents. M. J. Wright. Dairy Interests A few reasons why the dairy farm­ ers should not delay in an active campaign to conserve their interests and large investments upon the dairy farms of the Chicago districts. With due respect to all the investments and service of the t>ottling plants as buy­ ers and distributors of milk, for they have done much to improve the con­ ditions and have been a strong factor in the evolution of better standards, but in doing so they have driven out of business their competitors, namely, the co-operative creamery, and we as dairymen are forced to sell to them at their prices offered and service rendered, thereby making only one party to the contract, and as a result the dairymen of the district are mak­ ing milk and marketing it at a much lower comparative price than any other product marketed upon the farm, and along with this condition is the advance in supplementary feeds, labor and investments in equipment and all accessories that we are com­ pelled by ordinance and statute to comply with that we can market the product at all. • Now, Mr. Dairyman, how are you to get out of this strug­ gle? Surely, you cannot blame them if they buy their milk as cheap as they can, with the butter fat as high as they can get it, and the temperature and bacterial count as low as possible. You must not think for a moment but what they are organized to fix their own prices, for they are human the same as the rest of us. We might be guilty of two arbitrary measures if we had the chance. Now, I think it is high time the dairymen of McHenry county began to realize that it is up to them to pay attention to this con­ tract. That means so much to the successful and progressive agriculure of McHenry county. There is no time to lose; put your field men right out in the territory adjacent to the bot­ tling plants and meet the dairymen at their own fireside, get their sig­ natures to a good, courageous resolu­ tion that would have the integrity of the man at the milk pail behind it in such a spirit that he would not dis­ turb his relation to it until the object sought could be obtained. If v.e get after it right, should gel ?0 per cent of the men at the milk pail to endorse this movement, and then alter this strength has been secured, appoint delegates from these same dairymen, not lawyers and other allied activities, but men who milk cows or have their investments underneath their courag­ eous act. Let these men try and pry something loose in this conference with the corporations who are dealing with us in this contract. Those delegates may not be directors of milk producers' associations, as I understand the directors have so far failed to get into conference with them, but I believe when a strong ma­ jority of the men vitally interested ask for a conference and ask only reasonable demands, it will be grant­ ed. Time has gone by when you can correct these matters by calling bad names and drawing comparisons that are reasonable in debate. Now let us drop^ all these -feicendiary and an­ archistic discussions that may only emanate from the health department. These questions will adjust them­ selves after a while, and let us get down to the last analysis of the mar- <J9AO)