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Magazine (cover price: 20 cents), and here’s what farmers and their wives and kids were reading 60 years ago.

“Farm labor costs are coming down and efficiency is going up. Smart farm hands will hang onto good jobs. Hogs will make money for another nine months. Top cattle prices will drop as usual at this time of year. Buy seed and fertilizer now for next spring. Order turkey poults and baby chicks early. Sheep will payoff over the long pull. Make a budget and balance it with expected income; maybe the government can get away with deficit financing — but you can’t.

“As to foreign affairs, Washington is hopeful, as usual. The cold war is proceeding. It’s expensive, but we seem to be losing no ground. West Germany is steadily reviving. In China, the outlook is bad and getting worse. The Communists are at the frontier of French Indo-China, and if the USA keeps from getting involved in the mess we may consider ourselves lucky.”

New farm machinery

New farm machinery for 1950 included the Oliver Model 8 automatic wire-tie pick up baler, an optional hydraulic header lift for the Allis-Chalmers Allcrop harvester, a Ferguson 3-point, PTO driven, six bar side delivery rake, and the big, 2-cylinder diesel John Deere Model R.

Case introduced their “Eagle Hitch” on the VAC tractor, Minneapolis-Moline the self-propelled “Harvestor” that could be fitted to mount a corn picker, combine or forage harvester and International Harvester the Farmall HV high-clearance tractor.

There were articles on the advantages of feeding “low-grade spuds” to beef and dairy cattle, hogs and sheep, as well as how to cull chickens “like the experts do.”

Controversy

There was controversy about government price supports then, as now. The 1949 “Brannan Plan” had just been put into place which supported prices at various percentages of “parity,” depending upon the surplus of that particular product.

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