There are nearly a fourth of a thousand farm papers in the United States, all bent on teaching the farmers how to attend to their own business. Some of these papers are good, many are bad and the others are awful. The good ones may be had for a dollar and the others for the asking. Looking the literary field over, everybody seems to be entitled to something good but the farmer. From the roasts and broils of the intellectual feasts of to-day he will get the leavings, next week, in the shape of a stale hash, served on cheap paper, flanked with guessing contests and patent medicine advertisements and surrounded by the green, green cresses of the same old thing.

And yet a large and most respectable majority of the people of these United States are farmers or interested in the soil. Their daily needs include all the things the man in the city needs and much more, for the man in the city does not plow, neither does he reap nor sow. These people of the soil are progressive to the extent of their chances, honest, and seekers of the truth and better ways, lovers of the good in fiction and in fact. They constitute about seventy per cent of our population and commit about two per cent of our crime. Why should not they have a literature? Why should not a magazine laid around the soil, come into their homes, as it comes into the homes of the dwellers in the strenuous city, not to teach them their business but to help to amuse, to interest, to uplift?

This is the object of Trotwood’s Monthly. If it does not tell you when to plant your beans and when to eat your potatoes, it hopes to give you a literature that will help you to be satisfied with your diet of potatoes and your burden of beans. For in truth, the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly does not know all about potatoes nor beans nor corn. Indeed, he is willing to admit that any good farmer in all this country who knows his business knows more about it than the editor of Trotwood’s Monthly. For his business in life is literature. He has made it his profession, as the farmer or stockman has made farming and stock-raising his, and he has toiled at it through years in the heat of the noonday sun and often—often—while the world around him slept, by the light of a sleepless lamp. He will not try to tell you, therefore, of the things he knows but little about, neither will he attempt to carry intellectual coals to a new castle of newly mown hay. He will not attempt the impossible and the ridiculous; but if, in looking over his handiwork month after month, you find something to make you forget for awhile the burdens and problems of life; if through his magazine you learn to realize the unseen sweetness and independence of the life of him who claims kindred with the soil; if you are shown nature with truer eye, and learn to love her and all that is hers; if you catch, now and then, a spark of that finer spirit that burns so brightly in true literature, lighting the lamp of ambition in your boy or girl, and carrying you for a moment from the world of soil to the world of soul; if something in it uplifts you, and something amuses you and something in the special features by experts in the classes, who know, instructs and helps you, then you may know that Trotwood’s Monthly has done for you what it started out to do.

Trotwood’s Monthly will, each issue, contain special expert articles on subjects relating to its scope. There are four in this issue, and we have reason to be proud of all of them. This is an age of concentration, of specialization. It is the man who concentrates that accomplishes. Knowledge to-day is so vast and covers so great a scope that Solomon’s wisdom would scarcely attract attention unless the saffron press wrote him with pictures of his wives, and that might make some think he was not wise at all.

LINES TO AN AUTOMOBILE.

This is the page where all of those who wish to, or who have a message to tell, may come in and talk with Trotwood. Do not be backward—you are welcome. But be sure that what you write shall be of general interest to our readers. Remember that they are paying for the Monthly to be interested and instructed. So come in, but come in with something to say, something that will help others.

For, indeed, Trotwood is optimistic. He believes in men and women; he has faith in humanity. He would have men look up, not down; forward, not backward. He is too busy doing to garner doubt and discouragement, those twins which come chiefly from idleness and unclear thinking.

Therefore, think clearly and live purely. For one depends upon the other. Believe in the men and women around you and they will soon begin to believe in themselves. Get into the habit of thinking and speaking kindly, for character as well as life is made up of habits. Believe in humanity. Try to be patient with fools. It is the most difficult of all things to do. Believe in humanity. Sometimes you will get a jolt, but when you come to weigh your own life, you will find that, taking it all in all, the world has been kinder to you than you have deserved.

We may be pardoned for being often personal in this, the first issue of Trotwood’s Monthly, but we beg you to bear in mind that this issue was created hurriedly, and while we are not ashamed of it by any means, we did not have the chance to give it the scope it will soon attain. This is not a sectional monthly. Its aim is to cover the whole country North and South. We are selling farm literature—not farm products—and we will see that all sections, Michigan as well as Alabama, Maine as well as Texas, is represented. If you are not in it it will be your own fault.

A bright literary woman—one who has written novels that have sold—in a personal letter, says: “The publication of a book figures to me as a marriage, in which the author is the woman, the publisher the man, and it is not well to let one’s heart ache too much over mistreated offspring in the way of books. Be glad that it is for a year. Just a year, that the contract is not for life, and that in it divorce is no disgrace, and with the optimistic belief that there is always to be better luck next time.”

Was ever anything better said?

The most encouraging news comes from the bedside of that veteran breeder, Capt. M. C. Campbell, of Cleburne Farm. Capt. Campbell has been very ill for over a month, and once it looked as if the owner of Brown Hal and the breeder of more great Jerseys and pacing horses than any living man, would not recover. But the life he has led has been clean and pure, and his strength was great. Like the great Tennessee pacers he has bred he proved game, and his friends, and they are counted all who know him, are happy to think he is now on the road to recovery. No man in the State has made a higher mark for honesty, manhood and all that makes a man than Capt. M. C. Campbell, and may he live long and prosper.

In a personal letter from his son, Mr. Allen Campbell, who is also manager of Cleburne Farm, he writes that they have some of the greatest colts and Jerseys ever seen at that famous nursery. Several of their colts are showing extreme speed, among them being the young son of Brown Hal, dam by Bay Tom, that Cleburne Farm has reserved to take Brown Hal’s place. He is showing 2:10 speed as a three-year-old. Two colts by Direct 2:05 1/2, one out of the dam of Twinkle 2:06 1/2, are showing up very fast. Trainer John Walker has a dozen head of Mr. Geers’ stable training them at Cleburne’s famous mile track.

Speaking of John R. Gentry’s influence at Ewell Farm Mr. Geo. Campbell Brown writes:

“It is the aim of Ewell Farm to breed beauty and let speed stand as a secondary consideration, and for this reason it continues the use of McEwen, one of the grandest individuals in the country, as shown by his long list of showing prizes and of John R. Gentry, a horse of perfect conformation and unbeaten in the show ring.

“The Hal strain at Ewell Farm is being perpetuated by Hal Brown, certainly one of the most successful young sires of that breed.

“The brood mares at Ewell Farm are in proportion to the numbers owned there, the greatest collection of producers in the United States. No less than four have produced four each to beat 2:30, and ten are producers of 2:10 or better horses, while one has thrown a world’s champion.

“The blood of Sweepstakes, dam of Star Pointer, is better represented at Ewell Farm than at any other farm in the country. Two of her granddaughters, Mabel Best and Windsweep, daughters of Villette, sister to Star Pointer, being owned there, and both have foals by John R. Gentry.

“Of the dozen yearlings at Ewell Farm by John R. Gentry, only one has been trained, and he a trotter can now show a 2:52 gait. He will certainly make a great trotter.

“A three-year-old trotter by this great sire has beaten 2:20, and a three-year-old pacer, Gentry’s Star, can pace a mile in 2:10. The unparalleled beauty and speed of the youngsters by John R. Gentry foreshadows his future fame as a sire, and it is a safe prediction that he will more than equal his sire, Ashland Wilkes, that has for several years been the leading sire of new 2:30 performers. Analysis of records in John R. Gentry’s pedigree show him to be the fastest and best son of Ashland Wilkes. This horse is in turn the best representative of Red Wilkes, the greatest speed sire of all the sons of George Wilkes, whose strain has been preeminent in the trotting world for twenty-five years.”

Trotwood can vouch for every word of the following letter. He visited the great Dakota prairies last fall. Such vastness, such fertility, such lands!

Fargo, N. D., August 15.

Editor Trotwood’s Monthly:

When I was a resident of your country I thought then that there was only one God’s country, and that was the Central Basin of Tennessee. My reason for arriving at such a conclusion was the land in the Central Basin, but more particularly in and around Maury County, had maintained its fertility and wonderful productive power for a hundred years with only the ordinary American style of farming. That is, taking all out of the land and putting nothing back again. But since that time a discovery has been made which accounts for the land in your section of country maintaining its wonderful endurance for raising such an excellent quality of wheat over a period of seventy years, without rotation of crops, and that is the almost inexhaustible deposit of phosphate rock that underlies so much of your lands. But I have found another God’s country. While it cannot boast of being underlaid with phosphate rock like your lands in and around Maury County, but when this country was opened up for settlement in the ’70’s it was as rich in all the constituent elements of fertility as the lands in the Central Basin of Tennessee. This Red River Valley is a wonderful country, and Fargo, N. D., is the center of this granary of the great Northwest. Although Fargo is not a very large city, the population is about twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants, it is a live town, and full of enterprising business men.

This town is the third largest farm implement distributing point in the world. That’s saying a good deal. Moscow, Russia, comes first; Kansas City second, and Fargo third. According to the Bureau of Statistics, United States Department of Agriculture, for 1904, the State of North Dakota produced some fifty-four million bushels of wheat and the set counties in the Red River Valley raised of the above amount nearly twelve million bushels. This is not counting the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley. The farmers in the Red River Valley seem to be pretty well fixed. The great Dalrymple farm is in this county of Cass. These gentlemen farm about 30,000 acres of wheat land. The soil in this valley is a rich, black, glacial drift, and though it is not corn country, not being warm enough, yet all other farm products do fine (there is an immense crop this year), as wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, flaxseed, hay and the most excellent Irish potatoes are raised here, and 200 bushels per acre is a fair crop. But the farmers in the Red River Valley have been raising wheat almost exclusively for the past twenty-five years, and wheat of fine quality. But if they want to maintain the reputation of this land as a wheat-growing country, the farmers will have to put on their considering caps and ask you Maury Countians to send them up some acid phosphate to put and keep their land in balance, so that they can go on and again raise No. 1 hard wheat.

WM. DENNISON.

TO MY FRIENDS:

Pardon this final word as the magazine goes to press, but Trotwood is gratified to see that subscriptions are pouring in from every corner of the United States, from Canada and from Mexico. Far away Halifax, N. S., sends a good list in the same mail with New Braunsfels, Southern Texas.

I am indeed proud of this, for it is the work of my personal friends, whose loyalty and friendship have no measure; who in the past have sent me words of comfort and cheer, in my fight through the columns of that great turf journal, “The Horse Review,” for what I conceived to be clean living, clean thinking, clean racing and clean and hopeful literature.

I have longed for this day when I might talk to my many friends through the columns of my own publication, and in the department “With Trotwood” I want to meet you often, and I want you to meet each other.

To my old tried and true friend, John C. Bauer, of the Chicago Horse Review, whose firm and lasting friendship has helped to make life pleasant, and whose sterling manhood and unfailing courtesy in the twelve years that I was associated with the Horse Review, has endeared him to me and given me greater faith in man, I extend my hearty and sincere thanks for the unselfish way in which he has so cheerfully and willingly helped in starting us down the track of literature toward what promises to be a successful goal.

To my many other friends who have responded so liberally with their dollars and who have been so free with their expressions of loyalty and good will, I thank you one and all, and I wish that I could meet each and every one of you, and with a hearty handshake tell you how much I appreciate your friendship and your encouragement.

With my very best wishes and regards to all, I am sincerely yours,

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

A word from the Business Manager:

If you feel friendly toward Trotwood, no doubt you feel just as friendly toward “Trotwood’s Monthly.” I want every reader of this monthly to write us a letter, sending us the names and address of your friends whom you think would be interested in this monthly. I will mail them a sample copy with your compliments, and ask them to join us in making what we hope to make—The greatest farm and horse magazine in the world. Respectfully,

E. E. SWEETLAND,
Business Manager.

TRAFFIC

A large tree has just been cut from the land of Mr. J. R. Marshall, four miles from Columbia. At its base it was sixteen feet in diameter, and out of it five logs ten feet long were cut, containing 7,650 feet of lumber. The top of the tree made thirteen cords of wood.—Columbia (Tenn.) Herald.

Fortunate is the man who has found his lifework, and—his Jonah.

Build—for if you build at all you will build better than you know.

1:59 1/2 EWELL FARM 2:00 1/2