Part 39 (1/2)
In 1917 Western New York produced the biggest crop of peaches in its history, and in the face of the greatest labor faer of spoiling on the trees and on the ground Peet anticipated the crisis by converting the farm bureau into a veritable county labor departh-school boys ere to help in the peach harvest and ere to be cleared through a central office in Buffalo
Manager Peet worked out arrangeically located The camps were to accommodate thirty boys each The farmers had asked Peet for 4500 hands He applied for 1500 boys and had every reason to expect these But at the criticalin Buffalo headquarters and of the 1500 asked for he got only 200!
”I was in Buffalo at the ti to me, ”and my first impulse was to jump off one of the docks!”
Here was a nice kettle of fish!+ The fruit was ripening on the trees, and the phones in the bureau offices were ringing their plating off with calls from frantic farmers Peet didn't jump off a Buffalo dock; he juot a Federal Department of Labor man to help him They plastered appeals for help all over Western New York--on the walls of post offices, railroad stations, on boarding houses They worked on long-distance phones, the telegraph, the ht city irls from cities to work in the orchards over week-ends Labor, attracted by the flaring posters, drifted into the bureau's offices in Lockport and ined to farms; and hundreds of laborers who seven days a week and often without meals and with cat naps for sleep the bureau cleared 1200 laborers through its office, to say nothing of the loads brought overland by motor truck and which never came near the office Business houses in the towns closed down and sent their help to the orchards Lockport's organization of ”live wires”--lawyers, doctors, bankers--went out and worked in the orchards
”Well,” was Peet's comment, ”we saved the crop, that's all!”
Last year the bureau placed 1095 ara County In addition, 1527 soldiers were secured on two-day furloughs froara to help harvest the fruit crops ”We did this,” said Manager Peet, ” persistently at it with the War Department, in order to cut the red tape”
This fall there will go into effect in New York State an a to do ers that could have been crowded on its acres under forh the fare in this county one e which forara Falls, and which extends across the county from east to west In each plateau the land is very level, there being but few places in the county having a difference in elevation of twenty feet within a radius of a e is very necessary and in the past has been very hard to secure
”Practically noconcerned in the drainage of his neighbor's land,” said Mr Peet ”If the neighbor objects the situation is coe laws have been woefully inadequate to handle these problems”
But recently the farents of New York to get the ”state leader” to appoint a state coislature to e law The plan went through, and one of the laws passed co property owner to open drains which are necessary for the relief of his neighbors This law goes into effect next fall
Far and repairing of soe ditches constructed in the past under the county-commissioner plan But the records on file in the county clerk's office are in bad shape The fare all this material so that it is available on a minute's notice, and as a result has drawn up petitions to the supervisors for the cleaning out of three of these ditches
Cooperating with the New York State Food Commission, the farm bureau had a power-tractor ditcher placed in the county last sue, and the le day as a result of lack of supervision It has dug over 4000 rods of ditch for tile on twenty-eight farara County far to of soured the cost of production The average cost for 1917 was found to be 85 an acre; the estie crop was set at six tons to the acre A joint committee went out of the conference and laid these facts before the canners The result was that the growers got 20 a ton for their crops in 1918
These are so features of the service rendered its farara bureau Here are soricultural census by school districts of each far the job in one week
Effecting an interchange of livestock and seed
Distributing 1000 bushels of seed corn a 383 far sixty-two farar to fifty beekeepers for wintering bees
Indorsing 200 applications forLiberty Loan ca in the delivery of twenty carloads of feed, fertilizer, far twelve des, attended by 602 far two tractor schools, attended by 125 farht far a Federal Farm Loan association which has loaned 125,000 to nineteen faroing on in the county and what the bureau is doing through the es The best feature of the handling of this publication is that it costs neither bureau nor members a cent The advertisees of ads in each issue settles the bill
The bureau's books show that last year it spent five dollars in serving each member The membershi+p fee is only one dollar The difference comes from Federal, state and county appropriations
The success of this bureau coht viehat a faranization works with the local chamber of commerce--the one in Lockport has 700 members--which antedates the farm bureau and which always has supported the bureau Peet's policy has been to keep the bureau not only before the farmers but before the city people as well
The ”live-wire” committee of the Lockport chamber, composed of lawyers, doctors, bankers, er Peet an _ex-officio_ et together with the Lockport chamber and the farm bureau and talk over problems of inter-county importance These conferences have worked out a unified plan for road developara Falls city administration to secure the services of a Federal market inspector In this way all rivalry between different sections and towns in Niagara County is freed of friction
About the only criticisara County was that Peet was the wrong er But some of the best members hinted that Peet will not stay because he's just a bit too efficient They seeet hianizer and executive, youin this
_(Detroit News)_