And so it goes. If the train is in one of the great fruit-growing districts of western New York, fruit is the theme of the lecturers. There is no product that the soil may give, directly or indirectly, that is too humble for the attention of the farmers’ special. All the roads in Western New York have taken part in the campaign—the New York Central, the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, and the smaller roads have sent out the train over the lines, each in due turn.
The idea has gone into the Middle West and back to Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which creates traffic from every conceivable source, has operated since November, 1908, four agricultural specials and two fruit-tree and shrubbery specials. The agricultural schools of the great territory it traverses have furnished the lecturers and the material. Now it is preparing to establish down in the Eastern Shore country between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a development farm, in which it will show the farmers of that agricultural district the greatest use that they can make of their land, the greatest results that it can be brought to yield. It has gone down into the sandy southern part of New Jersey and made the potato crop for New York and for Philadelphia into a vast yield,—a profit both for the farmer and for the railroad which has created the traffic.
The first of these development farms in the East was that established by H. B. Fullerton, under the auspices of the Long Island Railroad, at Wading River, N. Y. The Long Island possesses a territory that particularly needs development of that sort. It has a good suburban territory adjacent to New York City, but after that there is not a town of importance the entire length of its lines. There is no manufacturing of consequence out upon its line and it has been driven to the necessity of making traffic.
Fullerton’s Farm is another traffic-maker by educational process. He has taken the worst of the sandy soil that makes thousands of acres at the east end of the Island, and he has created from it a model farm. The farm has had to pay its way. It has not been nurtured under any extensive appropriations from the railroad, but it has had to win its success under the same conditions that would confront the farmer who measured his capital in hundreds, rather than in thousands of dollars. It is teaching the lesson that it has sought to teach. Arid soil, on the very hearthstone of a metropolitan city, is being given over to profitable truck-farming; and the Long Island Railroad for its modest farm investment is beginning to harvest appreciable traffic returns.
The New York Central, under the guidance of its president, W. C. Brown, who is keenly interested in the revival of farming in the East, and who personally directed the operation of the “farm specials” over its lines, has purchased two demonstration farms—one in Central, the other in Western New York. It has hired a competent farmer to have charge of them—T. E. Martin, of West Rush, who made a famous record for himself in growing 300 bushels of potatoes to the acre on land that had never before grown more than sixty. They will also serve as object lessons, and when they have been developed to their capacity, they will be sold at a far higher price than the song for which they were purchased in rundown condition. The proceeds will be turned over to the purchase and development of neglected acres in other sections along the lines of that system.
The New York Central is also making its own special development of the “farm special” idea, by taking two coaches and making them into “agricultural cars” at its West Albany shops. These cars will not run sporadically on special trains but will be in use the entire year round, being dropped at one little town after another for a day or two days or three days, in order that the farmers from the surrounding district may drop in to receive a little practical information.
Through the schools of a number of corn-growing States, into which this work has spread, boys and girls are being stimulated by prizes to plant little patches of corn. Out of each community where such an exhibit is held, ten prize-winning ears are sent to the country fair. From this the best ten ears are sent to the State fair, and interstate competition is already being developed.
There is another side to this. The railroads are making more than a new traffic for themselves, they are making a new wealth for the communities through which their rails are stretched. It has been estimated by a Pennsylvania agronomist that the value of the staple farm crops in the Keystone State in a single year exceeds $170,000,000; and that some 224,000 farmers entered into this production. If by training and education each of these farmers can increase his yield of corn one bushel to the acre, the additional corn revenue from that one State would be $1,044,000. Further than that, he says that $780,000 would roll into the pockets of these farmers if they would choose their seed corn carefully and thus add ten kernels to each ear of corn grown by them in the course of a twelvemonth. That sort of thing looks like a cooperative benefit from almost any angle from which you may view it.
The Rock Island Railroad has begun to preach dry farming down through the Southwest. Wheat six feet in length is exhibited by that railroad in its offices throughout the East as sample of what the farmers in its territory do, under its help and supervision. That sort of thing silently makes traffic every day in the year. It is worth a dozen times what it costs the railroad.