Conflicting Advice from the O-W, R. N. Company
The town is perplexed by contradictory expert demonstrations from the railroad—one telling them to raise hogs, the other telling them to stop using lard in baking.
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Even our biggest institutions occasionally become mixed in their metaphors and crossed in their wires. Last year, the O-W, R. N. company sent a demonstration train into our midst with experts to tell our farmers how to raise hogs. Farmer Smith told us that from the viewpoint of a small farmer in the irrigated section, the earth’s axis was kept from squeaking by hog grease. Saturday, another O-W, R. N. special demonstration train was spotted on our sidetrack. This time, the expert was a lady whose mission was to tell our farmers’ wives how to bake apple pies. We failed to get the recipe, but we heard, 'Don't use lard, use Crisco.' What’s the use of the farmer raising a hog if the wife can’t use the grease for pie?
“What’s the use of the farmer raising a hog, if the farmer’s wife can’t make apple pie out of his grease?”
This reflects the early 20th-century transition from agrarian, self-sufficient diets to the rise of processed industrial food products like Crisco, a tension between local farm production and modern corporate marketing.
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