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About The gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925 | View Entire Issue (April 8, 1915)
HOME AND FARM MAGAZINE SECTION A Page of Editorials for the Home and Farm Magazine Section 4 TO ADVERTISERS Advertisers in this locality who wish fully to cover all sections of Oregon and Washington and a portion of Idaho will apply to local publishers for rates. General advertisers may address C. L. Uurton, Advertising Manager Home and Farm Magazine Section, Oregonian Building, Portland, Oregon, for rates and information. TO READERS Readers are requested to send letters and articles for publication to The Edi tor, Home and Farm Magazine Section, Oregonian Building, Portland, Oregon. Discussions on questions' .and prob lems that bear directly on the agricul tural, livestock and poultry interests of the Northwest and on the uplift and comfort of the farm home always are welcomed. Xo letters treating of re ligion, politics or the European war are solicited. ' We proclaim neutrality on these matters. Comparatively brief 'contributions are preferred to long ones. Send us also photographs of your livestock and farm scenes that you think would 'be of general interest. We wish to make this magazine of value to you. Help us to do it. DECLARING WAR. LET'S have a little war of our own, while the powder burns and smoke flies on the fields of Europe. What's the matter with a campaign started at once against the foes besieging your farm? The European war has taught us the uselessness of depending on sta tionary fortresses' to repel the at tack of an enemy. Stationary meth ods will never do in this little war we are going to start. We are going to get out and be the aggressors, never giving the enemy an oppor tunity to be safe within our domain. This is to be a cruel, a relentless war, and no flags of truce will be observed. It will be a war of blood and iron, of sweat and work, and no compromise will be 'tolerated. Who is this war to be against? Our foes are many. There is, for instance, that obnoxious weed that is seeking "a place in the sun." We must deny jts ambition fulfilment. There is the cutworm that must be cut down before its career has be gun. There is the codling moth that has designs upon the Fall ap ples. Spray it. There is the sick hog that must be brought back to health ere disease advance upon the remainder of your swine. Oh, there is plenty to do don't .forget that. The main thing to keep in mind is that now is the time to do it. It must be a war in which there is no time for parleys, a war of action, and of results. To the vic tor belongs prosperity. TEACHERS AND HIRED MEN. WHEN a man has more work than he can do he hires a man to do some of it for him. He sets aside a certain portion of that work for the hired man and a certain portion for himself. But after he has made this division, does he go on about his own work and pay no attention to the way in which the hired man does his? Not he! lie keeps a close watch on that man to see that he does his share of the work in the way in which it should be done. Especially if the man's work includes the care of live stock, the employer keeps in close touch with the way the work is done. And why shouldn't he? The live stock is valuable ; the proper care of it is important. When our children become old enough to need an education we hire somebody to do that work for us; we do not have time to do it for our selves. Now surely those children are just as valuable to us as are our horses, hogs and cattle. And yet there is not one of us in a hundred, or probably even in a thousand, who ever pays the least bit of attention to how our hired man or hired woman is doing this vitally import ant work of educating our children. There are, in fact, many of us who do not even know who these hired helpers are, let alone knowing any thing about how they are doing their work. Consistency, thou art a jewel ! IDLE TEARS. ONCE upon a time tears were woman's strongest weapon. That they are so no longer is a wonderful tribute to the stronger personality of both sexes. Since women are now the true helpmates of men, they no longer attempt to rule them with the weapons of weakness. Women with personali ties don't weep, except alone. In great grief they cannot cry. Weep ing in solitude restores the balance of the soul, but the easy weeper has never a strong personality. Idle tears belong to weakness and sentimentality. Tears that are red with th6 "sweat of anguish are never seen and never spolcen of. It re quires a trained will-power and gen uine emotion to hold back the tears that gather in the eyes, a stronger will-power than that that carries the soldier through a rain of bullets. TOO MUCH ROPE. (Kilitoriul in Western Farms, .Spokane! TWO bold explorers were desir ous of examining a deep can . yon that was impossible of ac cess by any path they could discov er. They found that the only way to gain entrance into that coveted position was to descend the steep, rocky walls by a rope. They were cautious. The lighter man was to be let down, but before doing so must know that the other could pull him up. So several times the larger man let his companion over the precipice a little way and pulled him back. Yes, he could draw him up when the explorations were finished. But alas! When the time came the man at the top could not lift his companion ! They had not reckoned on the weight of 800 feet of rope! He could just raise the man without the additional burden of many pounds of rope. Many a fanner gets into just such a predicament as that. He can easily carry on a faim that-involves 1G0 acres. Thinking another section would increase the income two-fold he buys, only to find that he has as sumed a greater burden than he can bear. The increased fencing, the need of more help, more machinery, the mortgage and all, is just a little "too much rope" and he can't make it go. Many a man has become enthusi astic over some new line of effort and, unwilling to start in a small way and gain experience, has dipped in too deeply. The losses have been . heavy, the outcome of the venture discouraging, lie couldn't pull him self out of the hole because he had not reckoned on all the points in volved. Sometimes a man takes desperate chances on the board of trade, or in a bucket shop, or on the regular market. He thinks the matter over and sees no reason to fear the ven ture. But he has not seen the lon'g coil of rope that the other fellows have slipped about him to weight him down and hold him while they fleece him. You may be strong, you may be well fixed, but beware lest you be come "land poor" or fettered by ob ligations that you could easily avoid. THE COST OF THE WAR. STATISTICIANS are busy guess ing at the cost of the war in Europe. It's all wasted effort, for figures cannot compass nor the human mind comprehend the appalling cost of this civilization-wrecking conflict. The cost of the-war is not measur able, and even those details of it that can be estimated will exceed all esti mates. The cost of the war involves these items, some calculable, some incal culable: 1. The cost of equipment guns, ships, ammunition, unforms, horses, forts, etc. 2. The cost of maintenance sub sistence for men and beasts; pay of officers and men, etc. 3. The cost to industry through the withdrawal of men of the high est productive capacity. 4. The cost to society in the loss of social efficiency through the kill ing and maiming of men. 5. The cost to future generations in the loss of those fittest to carry on -the species, who are those chosen for war. The Napoleonic wars, mere skirmishes compared with this holo caust, had a marked and shocking effect on the French race because war took tlue fittest and left the unfit to breed succeeding genera tions. 6. The cost in property destroyed in the process of warfare a cost measurable by money only in part." Who shall count the value of a Rheims cathedral? 7. The cost of human heartbreak, in the woe of widows and orphans. 8. The cost in brutalizing human ity, in debasing civilization. Every item in this list is a definite charge upon war, a definite count in the indictment of civilization against war and militarism. WHAT SPREADS HOG CHOLERA THE responsible causes for the infection of nearly 8000 herds of hogs with cholera presents an Interesting angle of the question, showing how this serious disease is spread. These figures have been kept by .the Federal investigators in their recent studies of the chol era situation. The largest number of cases, more than a third, were carried by men either in exchang ing labor or in visiting on neighbor ing farms. Birds are charged with over 17 per cent of the cases, this being the next highest figure. In 16V& Per cent of the cases it was Re lieved that the infection was har bored on the farm from previous outbreaks. Dogs carried 9Va per cent of the cases, and 8'2 per cent were caused by direct exposure to sick hogs of the neighbors. - The bringing in of new stock started only 3 per cent of the cases. Cannot farmers develop some sys tem of guarding their livestock from infection brought by the neighbors, since this is found to be the most serious method of infec tion? One Illinois farmer keeps a box of sawdust saturated with dis infectant at his front gate. Every visitor is expected to disinfect his feet before entering. Why isn't this a practical and thoroughly scientific method which could well be widely employed? With the passing of the old cattle ranges many changes are taking place. The contrast is well illustrat ed by the modern method of .Louie Dulski, a rancher in McKenzie Coun ty, North Dakota, who uses an auto mobile to herd his cattle. Dulski found that his automobile enabled him to traverse as much ground as could be covered by two men with horses, and he has since used his car almost constantly on the ranges in Southern McKenzie County. . THE FERTILE MIND. WE ARE all the time talking about adding to the fertility of the soil, but how can we do that unless we have a fertile mind? Ah! there's the rub. Fertility must first start in a mind well stored with sound knowledge of the laws and principles we are dealing with, for out of that knowledge comes the sound judgment that en ables us to deal wisely with that mystery of all mysteries, the soil. No farmer is fitted to grapple with this mystery unless he has a teach able mind. That utterance of the great teach er, "Exeept ye become as a little child ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven," does not apply primarily to the innocence of the child. Nor is it limited in its appli cation to the Heaven beyond this life. It applies now and everywhere. Its real meaning is teachableness. Except as we ai"e as willing to learn the meaning of things as is a little child, we can in .no wise enter into an understanding of them or obtain mastery over them. It is such knowledge and such a spirit of teachableness that gives us the fer tile mind. With that and only with that can we cope with the soil and wisely minister to its fertility. Starved minds among fanners have produced starved farms. There can be no enrichment of the one without first enriching the other. We don't see why the newspaper should make such a noise about the attendance at the San Francisco Fair exceeding all previous fairs' attendance. Everybody expected it to exceed all others in attendance, and, in fact, in every way. "Seattle jitney driver's license re voked because of six accidents in twenty-four hours." "Portland jit ney driver's license revoked because of five accidents in twenty-four hours." Portland wins. A state's popularity is not always determined by its good laws. With a six months' divorce law, a twenty round prizefight law, and legalized poker, Nevada is said to be the most popular state in the Union with some people. "Kaiser Bill's throat overworked and seriously affected" yet Bill Sunday and Bill Bryan are still able to articulate. Why don't he try grape juice?