Farmers' Friends

Helena Springer Green Raskob is the mother of eleven children, is the wife of a man who made 80 millionaires and who now manages the Brown Derby. She is also a farmer. Several years ago in her native Queen Anne's County, Maryland, she decided to turn two worn-out farms into a paying proposition. Patiently she coaxed the barren soil with flax seed. This season her determination was rewarded by 101 acres of flax, characterized by famed Flax Expert George Lowry, as "the finest flax I ever saw." Neighboring farmers were, in turn, skeptical, respectful, imitative; flax raising has been raised from an experiment to a county industry. Were more farmers like Flax Grower Raskob, the U. S. Department of Agriculture would not need to keep repeating, stressing its points. Hundreds of keen chemists, bacteriologists, plant pathologists bend busily over microscope and petrie dish in the many mellow brick laboratory buildings of Washington. Eagerly they experiment with farm problems; clearly, carefully they describe new methods, send bulletins to farmers. Recent free advice: "Permanent pastures perpetuate parasites. Change your stock from one pasture to another, and change the kind of stock on the same pasture as far as possible. Follow sheep and cattle with horses and swine." "This is a good time to dip your sheep for sheep ticks. Write for Farmers' Bulletin No. 798-F."

"Chickens and turkeys are a bad mixture. Turkeys convey gapeworms to chickens, and chickens convey blackhead to turkeys. Raise one or the other, but not both unless you can keep them well separated." "$2,500,000 worth of cabbages went into sauerkraut in a recent year. About one-seventh the whole commercial cabbage crop made 18,000,000 gallons of sauerkraut; sold for more than $3,500,000.* "Hog mange affects the choicest parts of hogs; hams, shoulders, bacon; forces disastrous price slashing. Farmers' Bulletin 1085 gives full, explicit direction for control and prevention. Statistics on hog cholera discloses an average loss of $30,000,000 a year for 40 years. Immunization of suckling pigs is strongly urged, especially if the swine are pastured in lots with running streams, since these may be a dangerous .source of infection." Chemists and advanced agriculturists met last week at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., as the second American Chemical Society Institute. They, too, admonished the farmer. Farm Relief. The day of farming for food alone seems over. It cannot be made to pay unless supported by government crutches. Always it is a hazardous gamble, depending on the turn of a tide or a rainfall in Russia. Scientists would make the farmer see his farm not as a source of food alone but as a vast storehouse of potential petroleum, paint, tiles, silk, synthetic lumber. Let him turn oat chaff, cottonseed hulls, corncobs into money to buy Fords, phonographs. New Products. Professor Orland Russell Sweeney, of Iowa State College, called the Corn Belt a great sponge soaking up the energy of the sun. Nowhere else in the white man's world is there another such trap for solar power. This energy is stored in chemical compounds; not lost. True to the laws of physics it is merely changed, can be released again by chemical cunning. Meanwhile, the potential energy of hundreds of millions of tons of industrial raw materials is wasted. This waste material is full of cellulose. Already cellulose is made into many an industrial product by chemists: paper, rayon, wall board, fireproof tile materials, synthetic lumber, insulating materials. Dr. Henry Granger Knight pointed out that it rests with the farmer to decide whether it is more profitable to sell his waste products in bulk to industrial concerns or to exploit them himself. He discussed the manufacture of alcohol from grain, potato, fruit residues; utilization of unfit lemons for making citric acid, working up steam waste into carbon, illuminating gas, acetic acid, furfural;* new methods of using lactose, casein, starch, sucrose, dextrose, etc. Old Foes. Molds have always been considered food destroyers, ruining bread, milk, fruit, everything on which their furry hairy mycelia develop. Dr. H. T. Herrick of the U. S. Department of Agriculture explained the disciplining of these molds to the service of man. Since Biblical days molds have been used for fermenting alcoholic drinks, they have long given character to cheese, now they may rival the lemon in making citric acid. Italy's high export tax on citrate products prompted the chemist to set the mold to work. Moving In. Industrialization of farm waste would mean a reshuffling of factory sites, said the scientists. The source of supply would be the base, plants using waste products would be constructed in rural districts with the additional advantage of cheaper, more accessible food for workers. Already Corn Products Refining Co. has factories in Beacon and Argo,Ill., and in Kansas City. Dupont Rayon Co. is in Old Hickory, Tenn., and Viscose Co. in Marcus Hook, Pa.

* Research indicates that sauerkraut, despite its Teutonic name, originated not in Germany but in Asia. Tartars ate it first, introduced it to the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe, who fed it to their German friends, who brought it to the U. S., where it was first made commercially in St. Louis. Some physicians recommend sauerkraut for constipation, intestinal putrefaction, because the lactic acid responsible for the sour taste keeps down the birthrate of putrefying bugs. * Furfural, a chemical compound made from corncobs or oat hulls, once a museum curiosity, is now used in the preparation of synthetic resin as bakelite; in the preservation of railroad ties, telegraph poles, shingles; in the flavoring of tobacco; the solvents of shoe dyes and leather dressings. Furfural, if necessary, could substitute for gasoline.