Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1916 — FARMS AND BILLBOARDS [ARTICLE]

FARMS AND BILLBOARDS

Why in the w r orld will farmers lease to advertising concerns the right to erect lines of billboards along railroad rights-of-way. It is one of the most excuseless and un profitable disfigurements of the country. It breaks up the tilling plan of the field and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the railroad travelers.

The farmer who lets his barn be used as a signboard for pills in consideration of having bad paint put. on it advertises himself as thriftless. The man who cuts into a good field in order to get a few dollars from a liver cure or a blend of booze is losing sure money to get what he foolishly regards as easy money.

One of the advantages of owning a farm that thousands of railroad passengers see every day is the possibility that some of them will fancy and want to buy it. If statistics on the subject could be had it would be astonishing that so many sales come this way. Well, the farmer who plasters his land over with circus paper and patent medicine propaganda is in effect saying: “I can’t make this land pay just farming it.”—Farm and Fireside.

John O'Mara, president of the Order of Railway Conductors, at a meeting of railroad men at Indianapolis last week, said: “I have just returned from an extended trip over the state organizing Wilson clubs among the railroad men, and find that better than 90 per eent of the transportation men were for Woodrow Wilson regardless of politics.” Modesty is a jewel—but, like most jewels, in this day it is hard to find.