RUSH 



5110 



RUSKIN 



of partial payments each year, so that when the 

 loan falls due the final payment will be small. 



3. It recognizes a number of purposes for 

 which money may be borrowed. These are : 



(a) To purchase land for agricultural pur- 



(6) For equipment, fertilizers and live stock. 



(c) For erecting or improving buildings. 



(d) For discharging a prior mortgage. 



Restrictions. The law places the following 

 safeguards around these loans: 



1. It will not make a loan on land that is 

 not occupied or tilled by the owner. 



2. Loans cannot be made for less than $100 

 nor for more than $10,000. 



3. The borrower is required to spend the 

 money for the purposes for which it was loaned 

 to him. 



4. The amount of the loan cannot exceed fifty 

 per cent of the value of the land and twenty per 

 cent of the value of the buildings and other in- 

 surable property on it. W.F.R. 



Consult Morman's Principles of Rural Credits; 

 Herrick's Rural Credits. 



RUSH, a reedlike plant of the sedge family. 

 The common rush is characterized by slender, 

 leafless stems which grow in clumps to the 

 height of two or three feet. Bushes are found 

 in marshes along the banks of streams and in 

 shallow water near the shores of lakes and 

 ponds. The stems are strong and flexible and 

 are employed in making baskets and mats, 

 chair bottoms and ropes. The stems of the 

 scouring rush contain particles of silica and are 

 useful in brightening tinware and other metallic 

 household utensils. In Shakespeare's time can- 

 dles called rushlights were made by dipping in 

 grease rushes stripped of the green outer coat. 

 See BULRUSH; HORSETAIL RUSH. 



RUSH, BENJAMIN (1745-1813), an American 

 physician, prominent in almost all of the great 

 public movements in the early history of the 

 United States. He was born at Byberry, Pa., 

 graduated from Princeton at the age of fifteen, 

 and in 1768 took his medical degree at Edin- 

 burgh University. In the next year he began 

 to practice in Philadelphia, becoming at the 

 same time professor of chemistry at the Med- 

 ical College in that city. He had a great 

 interest in all reforms or philanthropic move- 

 ments. Thus in 1774 he helped to found the 

 first American antislavery society, of which he 

 was for many years secretary, and later presi- 

 dent. The Rush Medical College, in Chicago, 

 was named for him. 



He was a member of the Continental Con- 

 gress, a signer of the Declaration of Independ- 

 ence, and during the first two years of the 

 Revolution saw active service in the field as 



surgeon-general. The founding of Dickinson 

 College was due largely to his interest in free 

 education, and the first dispensary in the 

 United States was established by him in 1785. 

 After 1787, when he was a member of the 

 Pennsylvania committee for the ratification 

 of the Federal Constitution and one of the 

 framers of the state constitution, he took little 

 part in public life, devoting himself to his 

 practice and to his professional duties at tin- 

 University of Pennsylvania. During the yellow 

 fever epidemic of 1793 he did extremely effi- 

 cient work, for which he received various hon- 

 ors. He was treasurer of the United States 

 mint from 1799 until his death. Rush's writ- 

 ings are numerous, and include dissertations on 

 topics of general interest as well as on medical 

 subjects. 



RUS'KIN, JOHN (1819-1900), a great Eng- 

 lish art critic, social reformer and writer, born 

 in London. His parents were well-to-do Scotch 

 people who attended most carefully to the 

 training of their son, securing for him the best 

 of private instruc- 

 tion and taking 

 him about with 

 them on their 

 extensive travels 

 through England 

 and Scotland. 

 Moreover, his 

 moral and spirit- 

 ual development 

 was helped by his 

 early familiarity 

 with the Bible, 

 and by the prac- 

 tical righteous- 

 ness that he saw 

 in the lives of his 

 father and mother. Surrounded by favorable 

 conditions, he began to write both prose and 

 poetry even before beginning his course at 

 Oxford (1837), and while at the university he 

 won the Newdigate prize for his poem called 

 Salsette and Elcphanta. In the year after his 

 graduation he produced the first volume of his 

 great work of art criticism, Modern Painters, 

 and other volumes appeared at intervals during 

 the next seventeen years. Ruskin's original 

 intention in this work was to prove that mod- 

 ern landscape painters, and especially Turner, 

 were superior to the old masters, but his design 

 broadened as he went on until the work came 

 to be a comprehensive discussion of art. Be- 

 fore this work was finished Ruskin published 



JOHN RUSKIN 



