X b ay i it Pages from the Note Charter members of the East Town line Smelt Chowder and Marching Society held their annual meeting on Monday night a meeting which extended until milking time the next morning Present were Sheldon Try over there boys Walker Bill Leaky Boots Bales Allan Cigars Harry Did hear this one Walker and John Pencils Meyer recording The occasion was the annual smelt run along the Georgian Bay shore and the date was set tailor considerable con sultation with the Fishermans Guide and Moon and Tide Tables The meeting got underway with a motion moved by Walk er and seconded by Walker that the society dip its nets in a little known cove at Vic toria Harbor where it was said the smelts were so eager to be caught that they were piled up in layers on the beach But when the society reached the little known cove the traffic was so thick the Provincials were out in their waders Also the smelt for some unknown reason had decided not to wait and had gone away somewhere Your scribe did however manage to snare one smelt and with it safely tucked away in a bushel basket safe although the society adjourned to the Sturgeon River where re freshments were served but still no smelt were found After sounding the banks of the Sturgeon where Mr caught one smelt making a grand total of two fish the society threw away its copies of the Fishermans Guide and Moon and Tide Tables they can be found by the big rock under the Sturgeon River bridge and consulted a local youth who after some persuasion agreed to lead the society to where the smelts were sure to be running The weary but game little caravan went forth from Duf fys Diner with renewed hope took the road to Honey Harbor and after much winding over rocks abandoned smelt nets and abandoned fishermen ar rived on the shores of the Sev ern where the smelt were in deed runnning The trouble that the best fish ing vas from an island of rock From the Files of L k and muck and between the island and the bank of the river the water level rose higher than the members boots Mr Bales had the only pair of waders on and he gallantly agreed to ferry the other bers over the creek Messrs Baldsdon and Meyer scorned such safe tactics and splashed across on their own In Meyers case it didnt matter- because the water ran out of a hole in the toe of the boot as fast as it came in Balsdon however daintily dried his feet before putting them back into his wet boots On the island the members baled manfully and after much effort succeeded in filling a bucket of smelts and with dawn hinting at an early ap pearance eventually betook themselves home After reviv ing the fish in the mudholes on an East side- road division was made and the boys dispersed Something new has been add ed to the usual spring sight ings of first robins first daffo dils etc with reports that on Sunday the iOQO-miles-per- hour mystery plane was seen north and east of Newmarket The mystery plane was re ported to have streaked over the northern horizon of west ern Ontario shortly before noon leaving an extensive vapor trail Planes of the City of London Squadron which were aloft at the time were ordered to intercept the strange craft but although travelling in ex cess of they were unable to come near the un identified aircraft We saw a Vampire jet to the north about the time of our in formants sighting but he insists that what we saw was no jet It was travelling too fast and he described it as a dark cylindrical shaped object A later report had it that the mystery plane was Britains new jet bomber the Canberra which is capable of extraor dinary speeds The bomber was on its way to Omaha Down Toronto way on Sun day night there were reports of dim orange lights flying in formation over the city They were judged to be at a great height and there were some or of them a and Swrvtng Newmarket Aurora districts of North York fho Ire Th Harold ISM Published every Thursday at Main St Newmarket by the Newmarket and Express limited Subscription for two tor oft fa advance Single copies arm Member of Class A of Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association and the Audit Bureau at Circulation Authorized as Second Class Mail Post Office Department Ottawa i JOHN it ION Womens j JOHN Hew Sport IAWRENCE Jab Printing and Production THE EDItmRIAL PAGE 25 50 Years Ago APRIL A small army of girls will ingly solicited the sale of vio lets last Saturday and succeed ed in collecting 19537 which shows the people are in sym pathy with the continuance pi the hospital in Newmarket A most delightful dance and social evening took place at the King George Hotel on Thursday the when Mr and Mrs Lewis enter tained the junior hockey team and invited guests to the num ber of about The radial cars well patronized on Sunday Last Sunday an ideal spring day The were humming especially in the af ternoon A large number took a trip to the lake Town council Some discus sion took place as to the men ace of dogs and cats roaming about the gardens uprooting bulbs and seeds and discourag ing the citizens and also open ing garbage cans April flowers are as beautiful as ever Egypt the weather is still more springlike and the frogs are singing once again their old familiar chorus Sutton West Our students attending college in the city were home for the Raster holi days APRIL The farmer will soon be the busiest man on earth A great many people visited the cemetery last Sunday and many of the graves were dec orated with cut flowers The walks and entrances to St Pauls church are undergo ing extensive repairs this week Baldwin Fall wheat on low ground is looking fine and green Corners Some of our young people are very profi cient in the art of making kites The house on Queen St adjoining Mrs Geo Lun- dys is having a hew woodshed added to it The entertainment given by the Ladies Aid of St Pauls church at the town hall on Friday night was very sue Toronto A further advance in the retail price of meat with in a few days is now expected Another meeting of the butch ers will he held next week Keswick Reception service in the Methodist church last Sunday morning Over united with the church Mr Simpsons sermon an able and very appropriate one for the occasion Miss of Newmarket has recently been appointed teacher of the Holt school OPERATION CEASE FIRE PAGE FOUR THURSDAY THE TWENTYFOURTH DAY OF APRIL NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTYTWO POULTRY MARKETING VOTE The vote on the poultry marketing organization which was held on Thursday Friday and Saturday last week appears to have been quite light in this district at least What the outcome of the vote will be is still unsettled but there is initial disappointment for the votes organizers in the small number of poultry growers who marked their ballots It is difficult to understand just why the vote was so light The poultry grower is facing uncertain future Egg prices are not as high as they should be and with a heavy surplus in the making there is no chance that they will improve The poultry marketing organization offered a chance to improve that situation but comparatively few took advantage of it Marketing organizations are by no means the per fect answer to the farmers need for orderly marketing methods and greater control over his product The biggest fault of group marketing schemes whether for eggs milk or hogs is the compulsion inherent in them But as imperfect as they may be such schemes repre sent the only way so far advanced by which the producer can improve marketing conditions It is possible that the full significance of the poultry marketing organization escaped the producers An effort was made to reach all producers through group meetings under the sponsorship of the Federation of Agriculture through press statements and advertise ments But as is the case in most such efforts the mis sionary work evolved upon the shoulders of a few and they simply couldnt reach the many We think too that there was a good deal of misunderstanding about the organization all of these could have contributed to the light vote But while they may have caused a light vote they do not excuse it If the poultry business is in such parlous straits as the figures would indicate there is no excuse for any poultry raiser not to have made the effort to acquaint himself with the issues involved in the vote He offered a proposition which could have helped him if he chooses now to ignore it he has little excuse indeed for wanting assistance six months from now should the poultry business really break down CHANGE IN ROLES The farmers have long suspected that their political influence was slowly waning At one time their num bers were sufficiently large that a politician thought twice before he made a move that might displease the farm population Nowadays there is no second think ingof any sort political or rational The politicians just go ahead in the direction which pleases the most With results like the recent milk fiasco in Toronto if therewas any doubt about where the farther stands that doubt is dispelled by the census figures which show that in the last years or so the ratio of rural dwellers to urban dwellers has just about re versed itself A half a century ago the farmer led over the city man by six to four Today its the city man over the fanner by the same number There are several reasons for the change none of them particularly happy The growth of industry with its comparatively better working conditions is a major cause There are other reasons but they pale before the appetite of the cities for footloose farm folk or those who arc just plain discouraged with dawn to dusk labor at a paupers payment DONT LOOK NOW BUT Now that things in the air apart from jet planes showing vapor trails have been reported in Canada with reasonably reliable veracity Canadians are generally prepared to concede that there is some thing to it that there just might be visitations from space The government is presumed to know a good deal more than it is telling and so is now coming under fire for not issuing news releases and generally letting the public in on the secret After witnessing the mass excitement over appearance south of Newmarket of a jet plane vapor trail on Monday we are inclined to think it would be better for the government if indeed it does know any thing about flying saucers little men from and like phenomena to continue to keep its mouth shut it goes against the grain for a newspaper editor to Office Cat Reports Catnips By Ginger advise silence but if a vapor trail can throw otherwise normal individuals into a tizzy there would be no tell- What might happen if the government were to an- that flying saucers are real and might be drop- ping around any day now for a visit or to warn the citizenry to look twice that may not be a fireplug after all It could be a man from Mars TAX COMPARISONS Comparisons which have been made between Tor- ontos tax rate of mills and Newmarkets rate of mills are misleading The milt rate means nothing for purposes of comparison unless the basis of assess ment is also given Newmarket for example assesses at only percent of the value of a house and full value of property Toronto assesses a much higher proportion of the value of a house There is another form of comparison which is far more acceptable the cost per capita of municipal opera tions In Toronto the current cost is In New market the cost is around per capita even though the Newmarket mill rate is almost mills higher These figures expose another common fallacy that the larger a municipality the cheaper its operation This belief is a product of the age of mass production which has demonstrated that the more units produced I ho less the cost per unit But while this may hold true for refrigerators and cars it does not apply to munici pal operations The bigger the city the more it costs each taxpayer That fact is sufficient argument against encouraging growth of cities ENCROACHING AUTHORITY In municipalities used to collect cents of every tax dollar the province 22 cents and the federal government cents Today the municipalities collect cents the provinces 20 cents and the federal gov ernment cents These figures represent a trend towards the centralization of government which is raising hob with our practice of selfgovernment The increase in the federal governments share of the tax dollar is understandable with the growth of defence subsidies and welfare spending The drop in the provincial portion of the tax dollar in Ontario at least is more than compensated for the increase in the number of tax dollars It is the municipalities which are most seriously hurt They are collecting more money than ever before but their requirements are exceeding their income to such a degree that with out provincial aid theyd founder In Newmarket for example despite a record mill rate the province paid last year something like ten percent of the general taxes in the of grants to various departments almost percent of the public school costs and over percent of high school costs in the province paid millions in the form of grants to municipalities and in paid out millions The current budget allows for grants of millions As necessary and as welcome as these payments are it is a bad business for the municipalities to be placed in the position where they are so dependent upon provincial help The is obligated to rota in some sort of control over the money given municipalities but in the process it has encroached upon lite authority of the municipal governments td a degree that they no longer of their own This is the mix of the matter The independence of local governments was a valued asset which con tributed much towards making them the most effective form of self government which we possess truth the local government is the of democratic process But with the weight of the province ever upon them these local govern meats are losing the selfasser tion and common sense which makes them so different from the I a rge rand complex provincial and federal governments Some form of lax reform is needed before local governments are erased completely It would be we imagine a federal ami provincial undertaking And it would be a complex undertaking But some measure must 1x3 taken to provide taxing powers for each level of government which will give them tho funds they within their own jurisdiction without aid from outside Tho sooner the reform is undertaken the better Tho alternative is the loss of local self govern- and in its place the centralized authority of the civil servant the servant not the master of state Is their guara agai on tights riwfr agent fe international and issue net of state to assume direction of those which en Individual choice Long jaunty congenial Slim returned today after making his own independent survey in the wastelands of New Mexico Yes it took a big man to find a little man for Slim Bliggens is reported to be the first to have interviewed one of the little men I shook hands with a little- man said Slim as he stepped off the plane at Maltanhops airport early this morning And then he was gone com pletely disappeared in them wastes of New Mexico he added to reporters Probably took off in another flyin soc cer As reports came in last week of 16 little men being found unofficially when they crash ed in a flying saucer type air ship in the southern States Slim in the interests of science decided to go down and see for himself It was reported that the little men were all dead ranged from two to four feet in height and resembled humans It was said that it would take six months of investigation by military and scientific people before we would hear whether they were from another planet or not Fraught with a strong urge to seek to find and satisfy his scientific appetite for know ledge Slim went to New Mexi co to see for himself If them scientists is going to keep se crete well jest have to find out ourselves said Shin on his departure Back at his piano box man sion your favorite correspond ent learned much from the big man found him sitthV on a big rock cry in into a cup of tea related Slim Beside him was the wreckage of his soc cer but his was tuned into a local station the voice of Parch ed Gulch New Mexico on which was some top tunes of the day He was to Little White Clouds That Cry and he was into his tea said Slim Little man little white clouds crying I said i said Slim What a this fellows name did he say Satd it was Smith only with a different accent than Slim What did he look like He was about three feet high and had big ears a round pug hose and wore sun glasses He had funny clothes on and it was a funny thing I noticed a cleaning and pressing tag on his pants that said Property of Olsen and Johnson Shows and that was something couldnt figure out- That proves that he must have been out in Hollywood on one of his visits to earth I said Yeah said Slim Tell me more about your first words I said Was the little man surprised when he saw you Wall he looked at me and took out his handkerchief and blew- his nose Then I offered him a Lucky Strike from a carton I picked up in Phoe nix He took one pulled out a Zippo lighter from his pocket lit up took a long inhale and made a generalization about the weather that day He brewed me some tea out of a can with Liptons on it and asked him how weather was on his trip He said the way to earth it was a piece of cake my auto matic navigator was bangon and although it was a bit duff viz with the area full of cosmic dust had the situa tion taped for a hot landing Then all of a sudden my port pipe conked and I pranged the ship on an outcropping of sandstone And now the ship Couldnt even trade it on a Model TV That the end of the conversation Then did he disappear Vl asked Yep Jest when I had a bunch of scientific questions to askliimLHe said you in the movies and he was gone Slim report pretty well bears out the fact that there really are little men by Dairy Farmer The Top Six Inches If we ask a farmer when he thinks seeding should be done he will tell you that as long as it is done in the first days of May he is happy He will even tell you in the winter time that he isnt in any hurry and that he doesnt like to sow- early But when the warm weather explodes the way it did the last few days all this philosophy is forgotten and there are only two kinds of farmers those whose laud is fit to work and those whose land is late and wet We often wonder what the value of early seeding is or to put it hi another way what the penalty of late seeding would be We have cen crops early that sort of stood there without growing while late seeding shot ahead of them We have also seen early sown grain that came and stayed ahead the late grain all the way Rightly or wrongly we think that the greatest value Kit the early seeding is the three weeks extra time that we have in the spring There are a whole lot of little things we should da ill the spring and some of them are forgotten if we have a backward spring There is no thing more frustrating than to watch day after day the grass getting green and Irish ami white too much rain is holding us off the land So along with the rest of them we gravely listen while some friend or neighbor holds forth about not wanting to sow too early and condemning early excitement and then go home and try to work as much land as we can and as fast as we can There is one point which we will concede to the group that favors later seeding And that is they are able to do their job more efficiently There old home town arent the wet corners and to go around as in case rf early seeding s One of the greatest of grassland farming is that the spring seeding is smaller than it used to lev Years ago it wasnt uncommon to have acres of spring seeding on a well cleared lOft acres With the advent 7 smut- free fall wheat and added emphasis on pastures and pastures there isnt A very much spring seeding left Neither is there too much spring grain But one figures- first of all that the smaller acreage we have will produce more per acre and secondly that it is more profitable to grow a good crop of wheat and oats All this of course is just rambling a little bit about thing The outstanding fact allpervading restlessness that comes with spring and Iheo warmer weather Fortunately we have a remedy for it ami that is to get out and work oft the land We watched a man yesterday out in his new hay field picking stones It a new field because the was still quite tall and thick but one could see the healthy green patches coming through it It was a nice looking field This man was picking stones in a pail and putting them on his waggon which was drawn by a good fat team of horses We are willing to bet that this was the first lint the lean did but haul manure for a long time The farmer and his team in the spring both proud and happy in a new field it was a pretty sight on that sunny afternoon It rep resented the hope of things to come and the resul of last years labor V By STANLEY j