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About The gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1922)
VACtV, FOUR THE GAZF.TTlvTIMF.S, IIE1TXER. OREGON, THURSDAY. FEB. 2, 1022. L. MONTERESTELLI Marble and Granite Works PENDLETON, OREGON Fine Monument and Cemetery Work All parties interested in getting work in my line should get my prices and estimates before placing their orders All Work Guaranteed Maybe She'll Snub Dempsey The Byers Chop Mill (FonMrijr ICHEMTP'S MUX) STEAM ROLLED BARLEY AND WHEAT After the 20th of September will handle Gasoline, Coal Oil and Lubricating: Oil You Will Find Prompt and Satisfactory Service Here ,.. v :" X V If Champion Jack i : . x, -f- "J Pcmpsey nukes a trip tv i-- " ij Europe this spring, as f " V i - 4 planned, he very like! v will F ' s ? , le snuhhfd hv this little x 3 J V " - ' 'v S lly ot France. She is - Jacqueline Carpentier, one- o : y f year-old daughter of ? X w-SV f 0 rB Ca'pentier This . ' sS V . . photo was taken on her I) ; : fllllUlM P" titiJltilllililA-tA ' tAi..tlti.lAHll ti.lAAAAAAllllA ; , T ttttttttTTTtTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT I 3 Community Service I ' '"'''H"""''mn-i . J I GUI OF I El AlER IS BETTER V Holds American Farmer Is In Death Valley Period. s One Dollar The Auto Repair Shop wishes to announce that our work on big cars will be ONE DOLLAR per hour instead of $1.50 per hour, as you formerly paid for your car repairing. CONTRACT PRICES ON FtRD WORE Estimates Cheerfully Given All Work Guaranteed Fell Bros. One Block East of Hotel Government Agricultural Head Gives Hopes for a Better Future, However. Declares Farms Must Be Plac ed on Scientific Production Basis for Results. s If a Bank Draft Is LoSl Your Money Is Not cA bank draft need not be sent by registered mail so far as safety is concerned. The person to whom a draft is made payable must endorse it before it can be cashed If a draft purchased of us should miscarry or be stolen, notify us and we will trace it up or issue a duplicate. We pay 4 per cent on Sayings Accounts. FARMERS & STOCKGROWERS NATIONAL BANK By H. C. Taylor, Chief of the Bureau of Markets, U. S. Department of Agriculture. Editor's Note. H. C. Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Markets for the United States Department of Ag riculture, is both a scientific and "old fashioned" farmer. While his years of specialization and intensive study have given him a wide background on which to base theory and practice, he has also undertaken the task of un derstanding the actual conditions ivhich confront the American farmer. He is recognized as one of the men nho will light the way for the Ameri can agriculturist to a future of great er production and ever reducing ov erhead. The American farmer is now pass in? through a barren and inhospit able waste, a sort of Death Valley arong his landmarks. Having been through such experiences before, we may confidently count on coming through as we always have in the past, but we are living in a fool's par adise if by that token we hope to come out at the same place we went in. We might as well admit once for all that the "good old times" of American agriculture, the free and easy times of cheap land, continually advancing in price, are gone forever. The change of base was inevitable. Henceforth, instead of an agriculture conducted loosely, with one eye on the increment in land value, we must have a tight and rational agriculture cased upon sound agronomy and ani mal husbandry and a knowledge of the cost of production and of market conditions. Henceforth we must con-j ouct our tarming operations so that they will yield profits on a farming nasis, rather than as a side line in a speculative deal in real estate. This being the situation, what of the outlook? Worst Is Past. From the purely economic side the outlook is dark enough, though mere is reason to believe that the worst is now past. The consuming public seems to have no conception of the plight in which the farmer has been left by the slump in farm prices. All that the consumer knows is that retail prices have not come down to anywhere near the pre-war level and he may assume that the farmer is still getting high prices, when, as a matter of fact, he is geting smaller net returns for his product than he fcot in 1913, and in dollars that will buy only about half as much per dol lar as would his 1913 dollars. Take a concrete example. The U. S. Department of Agriculture has made an annual analysis of the busi ness of 1000 representative farms in central Indiana for the past eight in 1913 the average net hv - IF YE HAVENT SUFFERED YE HAVENT LIVED . j J Rxt-- situation from that of human life on the farm in its relation to what we call economics, we find that the situa tion holds promise strangely in con trast to the present unhappy condi' tions. It may sound paradoxical to say that the economic crisis through which we are now passing promises in the long run to make for better farm homes and a higher standard of living on the farm, but there is an aspect in which our present loss seems to foreshadow decided gain in mat respect. We are all familiar with the farm er, of that type so familiar in the past, whose only idea of efficiency is to rob the soil to the limit.-and whose c-nly idea of a way to use profits is to invest them in more land, and still more land. Strangely enough, this course, which would seem to lead at least to financial prosperity, serves tn defeat its own end. The continual effort to invest farm profits in more land tends to bid up the price of land beyond the level justified by return rom the land, and thus to increase years. come of these farms, the return forj'he cost of production by increasing both labor and capital, was $1,503. In the charge for the use of land. At 1920 the net income was only $1,269. i the same time the effort to justify However, this falling off does not tne investment tends to increase pro- measure the actual decline in the far mer s income, tor in 1920 wholesale prices of commodities other than farm products averaged more than two-and-a-half times as high as the corresponding prices in 1913. That is, it took at least $2.59 of this 1920 income to buy what a dollar would have bought in 1913. Consequently with a total smaller by over $200, and a dollar shrunk to forty cents. the average 1920 income of the group or tarms in question would cuy not more than one-third as much would the average for 1913. Since the current year, thus far, certainly has been no more favorable to the farmer than was 1920, we may gain from the plight of these Indiana tarmers a fairly good idea of the plight of the American farmer at large. It should be borne in mind in this connection that the above com parisons are drawn on the basis of wholesale prices, that the farmer cus tomarily buys at retail and sells at wholesale, and that retail prices are still relatively very much higher than wholesale prices. It is also important to note that, though wholesale prices have fallen since 1920, the prices of farm products hace tallen much tai-, ther than those of other commodities. With these facts in view, it is clear that we have not shown the condi tion of these Indiana farmers in its worst possible aspect. Some farmers have doubtless done better in the past year and a half than have these men; many, especially in the South certainly have not done so well. On the whole.I think we may say that the above is a conservative statement of a representative situation. Is it possible to glean any comfort from such a situation? From the strictly economic stand point it takes very close study of the price curves, and perhaps a bias to ward optimism, to detect signs of im provement, but it begins to look as though the farm price curve has dipped as low as it is going on this swing. More Optimistic. There is another point of view, however, from which the outlook is more definitely encouraging. If we turn for the time from the cold, sta tistical viewpoint, and consider the duction irrespective of market de mands. Thus we have a vicious cir cle about which the farmer chases the will-o'-the-wisp of profit, only to find that his effort has increased the price of land and lowered the price of the products of the land. The day of this kind of farming is about over. The farmer of the new day knows that such tactics are those of the dog chasing his tail; that in effect they serve to put him in com petition with himself, and that they lead periodically to agricultural de pression. He knows that farming is a fundamental industry, that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and that he is entering upon an era in which sound agronomy and sound business practices must prevail over the hap hazard methods of the soil-exploita tion era of American agriculture Knowing this, he will realize that the steady flow of profit necessary to the successful prosecution of his busi ness and the happiness of his family will depend on the way in which he gauges his production with reference to demand, and on the efficiency with which he grows and markets his products, rather than on his skill or luck in handling real estate. Slump Brincs Good From this viewpoint, at least, the agricultural slump is not an unmixed evil, since its tendency is to shake out of the running the type of farmer whose influence has tended to keep down the prices of farm products and lower the standard of living on the farm. To the progressive farmer, who certainly has been hard hit by the slump, this may seem poor consola- tion now, but as the situation devel ops it seems likely that the advantage will swing more and more on his side. The farmer who is fitted to cope with the new situation is the farmer who is able to adjust himself promptly to the new conditions, and who sees that, in the long run, the cause of agriculture and of rural life in genep al is served by maintaining or raising the standard of living on the farm, rather than by using all surplus profit to bid up the price of land when there are more bidders than the profits of tne son will justify. After all, better living is the true goal of the farming business. There i Poem ty yjUncle John " ' " " THE NATIONAL TARGET. it tne resident is silent hes a sneak. . . If he does a lot of talk m , he's a fool. . . . If he hap pens to be honest, he's a freak, or hasnt got the jedgment of a mule! If he irritates the bosses he's a crook. If he does a thing, he never gets it right. . . Whichever way he turns he sees a spook, and dreams about the devil every night. . . . If he hould get to feelin' jestly proud of any noble plan that he has sprung, it brings the maledictions from the crowd, that figgers every day to get him hung. . . And, when he sends a message to the whelps that prac tice all the deviltry they can, the pea nut press pulls off is coat an' helps tc crucify that poor, tormented man! ... I reckon that there never was a soul, that gets so little comforts out of life, when every moral polecat leaves his hole, to hurl a batch of venom at his wife. . . . I'h hate to be the President-elect; I wouldn't be the President that was. . . . I'd be so hard to deal with, I expect I'd make 'em go an' wash their dirty paws. k . I wouldn't be mal-' treated by the mob, that every brand of hellishness creates. ... I'd sooner tackle any other job, than President of these United States. is no more biting commentary on our modern life than that cvnical anhnr. ism to which it has given currency ousmess is Dusiness. I hat business should become "its own svnonvm " as some one has put it, is a shameful tning, and the farmer who thinks of the farmine business as fiavin? nn object beyond mere financial success is in a tair way to miss the best of life. There is a ereat class of forward. looking farmers in this countrv who know better than that. We may rest assured that these men. in workino out the vexing problems that the ag ricultural slump has spawned, will not be so foolish as to forget that the question of the financial future of American farming is inextricably connected witn tne Question of h. tei living in the farm home and the farm community. Max Gorfkle, PenJleton business man, was in this city a short time on Saturday last, attending the meeting of Morrow county sheepmen. Max reports that business with him has (been very dull during tre past year, the bottom dropping out of hides and junk, and he is experiencing a hard time "coming back." He is happy, nevertheless. He is the father of a bouncing boy, now one month old, and is making no complaint. Tom Boylen, one of the leading sheepmen of Umatilla county, was in Heppner on Saturday attending the meeting of Morrow county wool growers. Miss Margaret Crawford, who is teaching near Morgan, visited with her parents in this city on Saturday, returning to her school work on Sunday. you're a fine loomng boy '. ! fCW" C'HON IN AN WAIT fj I J I POP'LL BE HOME f . ii- - SWEET AIM C83 L TtOr f "1 DO VOU TAKE AFTER I ll PTT' BUT H5 TAKES 1 1 I I YOUR rATHER?? AFTER ME 50METIMLS! Hardware IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII We have it, will get it, or it is not made Gilliam & Bisbee nam ll d.& A V w This new sugar-coated gum delights young and ol It "melts in vour ' mouth" and the cum in the center remains to aid digestion, brighten teeth and soothe mouth and throat. There are the other WHIG LEY mends to choose from, too: Heppner Oregon
