XIV 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1908 



To Good Housekeepers! 



SHABBY piece of furniture never looks worth send- 

 ing out to be refinished — It really is worth it. You 

 forget that it isn't the wood that is worn — it is the 



/Replace the finish — the piece is as good as new. When 

 you do this yourself, the expense is slight and the labor 

 nothing. 



You must first remove the old finish. Varnishing over it 

 looks cheap — shiny — home-made. 



The old finish is a coat. Johnson's Electric Solvo takes 

 this off quickly, easily. The piece is then left "in the 

 white" — new wood — to be finished as you like. 



Choose one of Johnson's Wood Dyes (14 shades). A 



shade to suit you. If too dark, add alcohol, if not 



dark enough, add our Flemish Oak Dye, No. 172. 



^ You'll find the dye thin like water. It enters the 



wood pores evenly — it brings out the beauty of 



the grain — the lights — the darks. 



Artistic Wood Pmsmes 



You cannot make a "spotted" job if you try. ' 

 It contains no varnish to cover the beauty of 

 grain. It is a dye that accentuates the effect you 

 want. Each shade is always the same. 



The finishing is equally simple. Johnson's 

 Prepared Wax is pastelike. It is applied 

 with a soft cloth. It dries instantly. 

 Rubbing with a dry cloth then gives a 

 velvety protecting finish of great beauty. 

 The same treatment will refinish your 

 woodwork and floor. This is worth your con- 

 sideration for Johnson's Wood Finishes do 

 not mar, scratch nor peel. 



Every paint dealer carries these three 



simple necessities — Johnson's Electric Solvo — 



Johnson's Wood Dyes — 14 shades — 30c and 



50c — Johnson's Prepared Wax — 10c and 25c. 



48-Page Illustrated Book Free — 

 Edition AH- 11 



Our text book on "The Proper Treat- 

 ment for Floors, Woodwork and Furni- 

 ture," will be sent you or your friends 

 free for your names and addresses. 



S. C. JOHNSON & SON, Racine, Wis. 



"The Wood Finishing Authorities" 



No. 62. UNIVERSAL WOOD WORKER 



ARE YOU LOOKING 

 FOR A MACHINE 

 THAT WILL 



plane outof wind, sur- 

 face straight or taper- 

 ing, ra bbet door 

 frames, rabbet and 

 face inside blinds, 

 joint, bevel, gain, 

 chamfer, plow, make 

 glue joints, square up bed posts, 

 table legs, newels, raise panels, 

 either square, bevel or ogee, 

 stick beads, work circular mould- 

 ings, etc., rip, cross cut, tenon, 

 bore, rout, rabbet, joint and bead 

 window blinds, work edge 

 mouldings, etc. ? If so, drop us 

 a postal card, and we will send 

 you a descriptive circular show- 

 ing two views of our No. 62 

 Universal Wood Worker. 



Write 



209-229 West Front Street 



J. A. FAY & EGAN CO. 



CINCINNATI, OHIO 



emphasis on this matter of waste. Driving 

 about among the homes and farmsteads, I do 

 not find many exceptions to the general rule 

 that there is enough waste in orchards and 

 fields to prevent all the bankruptcies, and to 

 add a neat little bank account. Take a look 

 along the roadside first, and you will see that 

 there is aftermath in sight, enough to keep up 

 the milk flow of at least one cow for each 

 home all through the country. The fact is, 

 this is the very best possible feed for milk pro- 

 duction, unless it be early June-cut hay; but 

 instead of cutting it, the owner of the cow, 

 or cows, lets it winterkill, while he buys mill 

 stuff. The result is a good bill to pay and a 

 lessened income. Take a look in your orchard, 

 and you will see that there are many bushels 

 of fruit left on the trees, and more bushels 

 wasted on the ground. My rule is that not 

 one apple shall remain — neither stored for sale 

 or for home use, or, if inferior, turned to cider. 

 No one should own more fruit than he can 

 care for, or, in other words, he should thor- 

 oughly care for all that he possesses. 



Now go into the corn fields, and you will 

 find that Mr. Putoff has a very large family 

 everywhere, and that the husking of corn, 

 instead of being wound up in October, has 

 been delayed, until the stalks are nearly ruined, 

 so far as feed value in concerned, and the corn 

 itself not a little molded. Hens, rats and 

 mice have put their work in, and this has de- 

 preciated the value of the corn crop from one- 

 fifth to one-third. I suppose that some people 

 would put off husking until July of the next 

 summer if the winter delayed as long. At all 

 events they will sit down to strip off the husks 

 in the cold wet November, and themselves 

 suffer as badly as their crops. Nearly all of 

 this delay can be avoided by keeping a memo- 

 randa of all the work to be done, little items 

 as well as large, and seeing to them exactly 

 when they should be done. 



I have made an item of gathering autumn 

 leaves. I mean by this that nature works all 

 summer to prepare for us a storage of soil 

 stuff — material out of which to make humus 

 first and then permanent soil. Leaves repre- 

 sent one of the most important items of prop- 

 erty, and one of the most valuable crops that 

 nature can give us. To burn them up is to send 

 back the equivalent of thousands of tons of 

 commercial fertilizer into the air. This is 

 done heedlessly, but it is all the same a terrible 

 loss. The little pile that you may burn stands 

 for only a small sum of cash, but if you will 

 take pains to gather autumn leaves and put 

 them into compost with your winter manures, 

 and then add to these compost piles all the 

 weeds and waste of next summer, you will 

 have by next , November a mass of the most 

 valuable plant food — far ahead of the best 

 commercial fertilizers. The latter can only 

 be used as a kind of stimulant, and used once. 

 But your compost piles, costing next to noth- 

 ing, add immensely to the wealth of your soil 

 — because they can not only be used once, but 

 are of even more value after that — meanwhile 

 serving as humus and cover crop; that is, all 

 this stuff helps to equalize the temperature of 

 the soil. The very first law in agriculture and 

 horticulture is to increase the humus. 



November brings us to the time most con- 

 venient for doing a large amount of trimming, 

 training, and putting in order. I am fre- 

 quently asked if it will do to trim apple trees 

 in the winter. It will do no harm at all to 

 cut all the suckers out of your trees, and at 

 the same time remove decayed limbs. This 

 stuff should be burned up, not left to be rub- 

 bish in the way of culture. If you have berry 

 gardens, you probably have not yet entirely 

 cleaned them up. The old canes must be 

 gathered, and they also should be burned. 

 The wiring of your trellises and berry gar- 



