By placing this copy of the Clay County Directory and the Survey Map in your hands, the Nebraska Farm Journal believes it has filled a need that has been felt in this county for a long time. The intelligent use of this Directory and Map will be a tremendous aid in helping you to get acquainted with your county, its resources, its people, its schools, churches, and particularly with the topographical features of the county. No expense has been spared to make both Map and Directory as complete and helpful as possible. As you scan the Map in looking for the farm of an acquaintance, or locate a school house or church, or as you turn the leaves of the Directory, you will not realize the many months of research, and the numerous large and small items of cost, that their preparation involved. This total cost reaches a higher figure than the entire returns from our subscribers in Clay county who took advantage of the opportunity to secure the Map and Directory. However, it has always been the policy of the Nebraska Farm Journal to give the very best quality of service to its readers, and if the people of Clay county are satisfied with our efforts in making these publications available for them we shall feel repaid.

     Besides being of interest to you, and having an educational value not obtainable in any other way, you can turn the information available here to a value measured in dollars and cents. For instance, if you are in the market for a breeding animal, or for livestock for any other purpose, or if you are in need of any other object or article that some Clay county farmer could supply-you can find your man at once with the aid of this Map and the Directory. If he has a telephone you can easily find his number under the proper classification. Thus it will be possible in many cases to locate the man who can fill your want, and to close a deal with him, all within a few minutes of time. Otherwise you might spend the greater part of a day, or more in traveling around, looking for your needs.

     The New Survey Map (webmaster note: sadly missing in the copy I was able to obtain to scan for you) helps you to learn and know your own county --its every farm, highway, creek, river, school house, church, rural mail route, and so on. We need not point out to you the advantage of having all this information where it may be spread out before you at a moment's notice. Is there a stock sale, or Farmers' Union picnic to be held, we'll say, over near Fairfield? Just scan your Map and in a moment's time you have the best and most direct route laid out before you. Furthermore, some time previous you heard that Bill Jones over in the direction of Ong had some fine gilts to sell, or that Jim Smith had an unusually good supply of seed corn. You don't know exactly where they live but if you did you could plan your route so that you could go around that way without wasting time and gasoline, and look over their stuff. Just a minute's study of the Map will give you the exact information you want.

     The size and location of all farms is perhaps the most valuable of all features of the Map. It may be used in a beneficial way for a variety of purposes. Besides locating any farm, in case you should wish to visit it, you have its area, its location with respect to other farms, school houses, churches, post roads, creeks, etc. The Map will prove particularly valuable in the organization of local farm loan associations, farmers' elevator companies, farmers' union or grange locals. etc. If you belong to one or more of these organizations, take a colored pencil and mark out the district covered by them. The same thing may be done with your school district. A check of some kind will locate all your other members on the Map. But we need not take up space here to tell you of all the scores of different ways in which you will find this Map and Directory useful. You will work these out as you come to them as well as we could point them out to you.

     We believe that this Directory and Map placed in your home and made use of, will be the means of making yourself and the Nebraska Farm Journal become closer friends. This was one of the objects in publishing them regardless of financial returns. We sincerely hope you will remain a reader and friend of the Journal for a good many years to come and that you will feel free to make liberal use of its many facilities in any way that these may be of service to you. While getting all the information possible out of its pages as well as from the heads of its service departments, we invite you to send in any helpful information you may have gained that might be helpful to other readers to whom it is not generally known. The Nebraska Farm Journal is to a large extent a "readers' exchange" for the ideas, opinions, experiences, and suggestions for the men, women, and children who live on the farms. It is this feature, and the further fact that all is editors are or have been farmers, that has established the close relationship between the paper and its readers. 

Sincerely,

THE NEBRASKA FARM JOURNAL. Omaha, Neb.