232 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 14 



GEORGE W. YORK. EDITOR. 



PnBI.ISHT WEEKLY BY 



118 Michigan Street, CHICAGO, ILL. 



[Entered at the Post-office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail Matter.] 



UNITED STATES BEE-KEEPERS' UNION 



Organized to advance the pursuit of Apiculture; to promote the interests of bee- 

 beepers; to protect its members ; to prevent the adulteration of honey; and 

 to prosecute the dishonest honey-commiseion men. 



Executive Committee— Pres.. George w. York; Vice-Pres.,W. Z. Hutchinson; 

 Secretary, Dr. A. B. Mason, Station B. Toledo, Ohio. 



Board of directors— E. R. Root: E. Whitcomb; E. T. Abbott; C. P. Dadant; 

 W. Z. Hutchinson; Dr. C. C. Miller. 



General Manager and Trbascker— Eugene Secor, Forest City, Iowa. 



VOL. 38. 



APRIL 14, 1898. 



NO. 15. 



' y ¥ T » y 1 



' T T T » * » 



Note.— Tlie American Bee J'lnrnal adopts tne OrthoKraphy of the following 

 Rule, recommended by the Joint action ot the American Philological Asso- 

 ciation and the Philological Society of England;— Change "d" or "ed" final 

 to *'t" when so pronounced, except when the *'e" affecta a preceding sound. 



Farmers and tbe Price of Honey.— In the 



Canadian Bee Journal Dr. Miller having referred to the opin- 

 ion that farmers hurt the honey market by selling at a low 

 price, C. H. Dibbern asks hlin if he ever knew " a farmer who 

 didn't get all he could for his honey ?" Dr. Miller disclaims 

 paternity for the opinion which he calls a tradition, and says : 



"Bat as I understand the tradition, It doesn't matter a 

 bawbee If It should be fully establisht that every farmer from 

 Cain down, always got the last cent he could for his honey. 

 The point is, that his honey Isn't worth a price proper for a 

 good article, but there is such a general feeling that honey Is 

 honey, that when a farmer sells a dirty mess at five cents, 

 that does a great deal towards establishing five cents as a 

 proper price for everything that comes under the name of 

 honey. Now, mind you, I don't say that's true. I am only 

 trying to instruct you in the tradition. I never had any prac- 

 tical experience In the matter." 



Incidentally the Doctor takes occasion to ventilate his 

 long-unmentioned theory — a theory too unpopular to be men- 

 tioned on his native soil — that the moral right that a bee- 

 keeper has to a certain territory should be made legally secure. 



Eat More Honey.— Mr. P. H. Dow, of New York, 

 has the following excellent recommendation of honey in the 

 Orange Judd Farmer : 



"There Is no more delicate or wholesome a sweet in ex- 

 istence than the nectar of flowers, so skillfully gathered and 

 stored by the honey-bee. Its use ought to be more general. 

 Indeed, honey should be used as common as butter. Children 

 usually like honey, and theyshould be allowed to us6 It freely. 

 It Is healthful, and In all cases of colds, sore throat and the 

 like It acts as a medicine. Whenever you purchase a cough 

 medicine, honey is usually one of Its principal Ingredients. 

 My two children have nearly always had all the honey they 



cared to use, and I am confident it has been beneficial to them. 

 On our table we consume large quantities of honey, and I 

 actually believe Its free use Is conducive to the family health." 



It would be a good thing to get your local newspapers to 

 publish such testimonials for the use of honey. Suppose you 

 take the above paragraph, with a sample of your nicest honey, 

 to your local editor, and see if he won't be glad to publish the 

 one and eat the other. And he will likely say, also, that you 

 have the best honey he ever tasted. 



-*-.-* 



Xlie Bee Journal and Spelling Reform Is 



toucht on by Mr. C. P. Dadant In his very sensible article on 

 another page. One would conclude, from the way a few of 

 our readers have written to us in opposition to the contem- 

 plated reform In spelling, that they were entirely Ignorant of 

 the fact that the English spelling of to-day Is entirely differ- 

 ent from what it was a ceutury or so ago. Just look at the 

 following — the way Shakespeare spelt in the 17th century : 



Sunne (sun), cuppe (cup), fysche (fish), musick (music), civill 

 (civil), horrour (horror), duckcoy (decoy). 



Say, don't some of the old-foges want to go back and learn 

 how to spell? We should think they would, or else try to 

 help continue this wise reform in our spelling. Many bee- 

 keepers don't know it, but Dr. C. C. Miller — whom all know, as 

 well as admire — Is right with us in trying to have the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal do what it can toward simplifying the spell- 

 ing of English words. 



Some people think that the whole thing is simply a /ad, 

 or the Idea of a few crazy-headed, would-be reformers. For 

 all such, as well as for some others, we are glad to reproduce 

 here a portion of an editorial in a recent Issue of the New 

 York Voice, with this heading : 



IS SIMPLER SPELLING A MERE FAD ? 



It Is amusing always, but sometimes, we confess, a little 

 provoking, to note the dense prejudice, aud often downright 

 ignorance, that are encountered by any attempt at the simp- 

 ler spelling of English words. Is it nothing that men like 

 Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, Noah Porter, for years 

 president of Yale College, W. D. Whitney, the editor of the 

 Century Dictionary, Dr. Murray, the editor of the great Oxford 

 Dictionary, now In progress of publication. Prof. Max Muller, 

 Prof. W. W. Skeat, the famous etymologist. Prof. Lounsbury, 

 of Yale, and other leading English philologists of England and 

 America, earnestly advocate this reform, and give very sub- 

 stantial reasons for their faith In it? Is it nothing that 

 William T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Educa- 

 tion, declares that this reform. If carried out fully, would 

 save two years in the school life of every child, telling us that 

 he has demonstrated this by actual experiments ; and that Dr. 

 J. H. Gladstone, member of the school board of London, says? 



"The average English child spending eight years in school 

 spends 3,320 school hours in spelling, reading, and dictation, and 

 720 hours of spelling lessons might be dispenst with if our spelling 

 were simplified. The child-life of no other nation is so clouded 

 with the misery of such absurb and antiquated spelling." 



And that thereupon Max Muller pertinently asks ? — 



" Is every English child, as compared with other children, to 

 be mulcted in two or three years of his life to learn it ?" 



Is it nothing that so level-headed, big-brained a statesman as 

 William E. Gladstone should say ? — 



" I often think that it I were a foreigner, and had to set about 

 learning English, I should go mad. I honestly can say I cannot 

 conceive how it is that he learns to pronounce English, when I 

 take into account the total absence ot rule, method, and system, 

 and all the auxilliaries that people usually get when they have to 

 acquire something difficult ot attainment. There is much that 

 may be done with advantage in the reform of spelling as to the 

 English language." 



Is it nothing that some of our leading merchants and 

 manufacturers declare that a very serious drawback to the 

 extension of trade Into countries of other tongues Is the grave 

 and needless complexities of English spelling ? Is It nothing 

 that the great matter-of-fact and scholarly German govern- 

 ment, by an Imperial decree, has ordered the dropping of all 

 silent letters in German words, and that these words be pho- 

 netically spelt — "Express every sound you hear in correct and 



