MAILING LISTSthatMAKE MONEY

Almost every farm can use mailing lists to advantage. In buying, the lists help locate the cheapest and the most suitable article at once. In selling, they drum up trade, add new customers, and help obtain the highest market prices.

SELLING SEED CORN

A farmer who had made a hobby of growing sweet corn — cultivating it for years until he had developed a superior strain — found that the local stores were glad to handle his seed but offered a low price. He compiled a list of nineteen seedsmen operating in his territory, securing the names from farm paper and newspaper advertisements and from personal knowledge. Some of them sold seeds by mail, some through retail stores, and others were city wholesalers.

Using a typewriter, the farmer wrote a businesslike letter to all nineteen seedsmen, telling them what he had to offer and forwarding samples. His results were typical of mailing-list work. Eight businesses did not reply at all, and seven answered that they had adequate supplies arranged for. Four firms offered $1 a bushel more than the grower had been offered at home.

SELLING NUTS

Another farmer with a big crop of hickory nuts used a list of entirely different character. During a trip to town he borrowed several city directories and wrote down the names of professionals, manufacturers, and others chat he believed had better-than-average buying power. These were classified in the directories and were easily copied. To every one of the several hundred families on his list, he mailed a printed catalog, with 1-cent postage, describing the superior sort of produce he had to offer and quoting prices in bulk lots. The prices were somewhat below what the city fruit stores were charging. He easily sold his entire crop in this way and had a fine beginning toward a parcel-post trade in other farm products.

SELLING WOOD

A third farmer obtained a list of pulpwood buyers and secured a price 50 cents a cord better than that which he was about to accept for his wood.

Purchasing agents of corporations send form letters to every business manufacturing articles they are in the market for, giving specifications and asking for samples and prices. Farmers who are making purchases of considerable size can follow the same plan. From the local farm newspapers a list of businesses can be readily complied. It is well to get prices from the local dealer, too. Whether the articles to be bought are fence posts or farm implements, it pays to feel out the market thoroughly, and the mailing list is a cheap, effective way of going about it. The fellow who buys without comparison is often the disappointed one.

Mailing lists for most farm purposes can be compiled at home. There are businesses that make a specialty of furnishing lists, their charges running from about $2 for every thousand names with a guarantee of accuracy. If the list written to is a long one, it is oftentimes good business to use a printed form letter. With smaller lists, a typewriter will do. The typewriter lessens the labor in correspondence, and every farmer who does a great deal of writing should have one.

LEADINGtheBULL SAFELY

Where a bull is kept on the farm great care must be taken that he has no chance to do any one an injury. No chances should be taken. A rope attached to a ring in the nose serves as an extra hitching arrangement in the stall, but the bull should not be led by this alone. He can charge on the one leading him at will. Put an extra ring in the rope near his nose and have a stick with a snap in the end, and then the bull can be led anywhere in safety, the rope and the stick being taken together in the hand.

STOP CHICKEN EATING

Here is a cure for that old hog that eats up all the chickens. Use a piece of stiff leather wide enough to cover the hog's face within an inch or so of the snout, and secure it with a hog ring to the lower edge of the ears. An old bootleg will do.

ANOTHER HEN DISCOURAGER

Hiram Hogg: "At last my owner has solved the hen problem to my entire satisfaction by hinging the door to my sty so that :t will always swing shut. When I leave my house to roam in the alfalfa I push it open with my snout and need not worry about any fussy old hen and a host of chirping chickens scratching in my nest. Nor will I again waken from my afternoon nap to find that same fussy old hen hovering her brood on my back."

HOMEMADE HOG SCRATCHER

Here is a device that will take the lice off the farmer's hogs as they are sound asleep. Drive a stake in the ground, wrap an old rope around the stake, and tack with shingle nails. Saturate the rope with equal parts of coal oil and lard once a week, or use one of the commercial coal-tar dips. Drive the stake near the hogs' sleeping quarters. This is so effectual that the hogs will stand in line waiting their turn to rub against this homemade hog scratcher.

SIMPLEST KINDofMILK STRAINER

Good butter making begins as far back as the milking, if not further. The process of milking must be clean if sweet butter is to be made. Fit a funnel, with strainer in the bottom, to the milk pail and milk into this. This will keep out much floating dust and will also assist in keeping the milk closed to odors while it has to remain in the stable.

RAISING GUINEA PIGS

The guinea pig is a native of Brazil and comes in three different colors — white, black, and fawn. Some of the white ones have red eyes.

Before starting in the business of raising guinea pigs, you should carefully consider several things:

If you have hay, apples, and similar feed on the home place, it is all right; if not, it may be a mistake to start in the guinea pigs business, as these feeds cost too much. Grain must be purchased, but that is a small expense compared with the other feed.

Then there must be a good place to keep the little animals. They won't thrive down in the cellar, nor out in the shed, nor up in the garret. They must have a place where a fire can be kept in cold weather.

They must be attended to as regularly as other farm animals. They must be watered once daily, fed two or three times, and have their hutches cleaned out every day.

When you get two hundred or three hundred guinea pigs, which would be necessary to have a steady income, you will find it work — not hard labor, but work you cannot shirk.

SCIENTIFIC HAND MILKING

ITS IMPORTANCE OFTEN OVERLOOKED

Too little attention is paid to the subject of scientific hand milking. A poor milker may easily do enough harm in a herd of cows in one year to equal in loss the amount of his wages. In other words, it would pay to hand him his year's salary in a lump sum and buy him off instead of allowing him to milk poorly ten or twelve cows each night and morning. Such a milker, if he is rough, cross, noisy, unclean, irregular, or imperfect in his milking, may quickly or gradually dry...