Market Advice

The lot of business adviser has long been recognized as an unhappy one. If business profits through good advice, it pats itself (not the adviser) on the back; in case the opposite occurs, the adviser gets all the blame.

Recently, an episode in the West showed that the farmer is just as difficult to advise as the investor or stock trader. The Department of Agriculture, after an investigation, reported that the decrease in potato acreage would amount to about 6% this year.

This was not at all to the liking of C. W. Peterson, manager of the Farmers' Produce Association of North Branch, Minnesota. Mr. Peterson wired the Department of Agriculture, anent the oncoming 1925 potato shortage, to "keep your mouth shut." Afterwards, in calmer mood, Mr. Peterson explained that no insult to the Department was intended, that his frank advice arose from the farmers in his vicinity promptly planting so many potatoes that a 10% increase over 1924 was now imminent.

"That means we won't get anything for our potatoes," he concluded sadly. "If the Department of Agriculture hadn't said so much, the farmers wouldn't have planted so many potatoes."