Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1918 — LETTERS FROM OUR READERS [ARTICLE]

LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

THE DUTY THAT CONFRONTS THE FARMER. It is evident to everybody that tenant farmers and others are “up against it” in putting in and harvesting their necessary crops this season. Wages are high, S4O to SSO per month, with board and a horse to keep in many cases, and owing to the severe winter the farmer could not get the corn out and quite a number are husking now, hauling it to market to prevent it rotting on their hands, when they should be sowing oats at this time. This is one of the springs an 1 summers in which the farmer must put in his every minute to accomplish his undertakings, to raise the mammoth crops to feed first the Americans and, secondly, her allies •in war. This is the only time the farmer has had this burden to bear, and he will do his utmost to make it, but one must know he can not do more than he can. That there are many farmers who cannot put out their crops and attend them with proper cultivation, is evident, and the school boy proposition is not well received by many farmers. In a number of cases, no doubt, they will be qualified to do their share, but while this is true, many are not built, that way; and, _ too, some farmers will do without F help, and this will result in less * acreage and, one might say, with

less proper tillage to the crop they have in. Now I am only talking of the farmer who wants to raise a good crop without having a hand to help, or of one who cannot get one when wanted. My idea in such cases is to have cooperation in the family first, and secondly have cooperation with your neighbors, say as a threshing unit, and all work together for the good of all. Let the Golden Rule be with them during this war crisis and if it necessary, call on some of their friends —retired farmers or any others they can who know how to farm from actual experience. You may have to work earlier and later during the cropping season to make ends meet, and the women are ever ready in any good work—some *n the best families worked in the fields in ’6l and ’6s—and then, if this is not enough, work on Sundays as you think you need to. However conscientious you may be in regard to wmrking on Sunday, conditions have almost unbounded influence in This matter. When we used to. have “prairie fires” threatening the homes of the neighborhood almost everybody tried ever so hard to extinguish them, regardless of whether it was on .Sunday or some other day. It was a necessity. How about those brave boys in khaki over the sea? They fight on Sunday to battle for

the right, for true liberty and true democracy. They are fighting for us, our agents, while we are under contract to do our full duty here on the farms, raising all that we can to make their lives less miserable and that of their comrades in arms. Your son and your neighbor’s son are laying down their lives that the world may have freedom and x democracy for all time. So let us do our fullest duty here ou the farms while they are doing their fullest duty over there. W. H. RITCHEY.

Cavalrymen have a superstition of their own. A mounted man firmly believes that he will come through the deadliest charge 'unscathed if he carries on his person the tooth of a war horse, the only conditions being that the horse itself has at some time been through a charge unhurt.