218 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Juke, 
Then a narrow cut should be made on the top of 
the log with the ax, for a starting point, and with a 
Baw properly set and sharpened, it will be easy to 
follow the guide and saw a square cut. 
Hay Beds, or Sigging— Be Ready. 
. Now is the season for making hay beds, or racks, 
for use in the hay harvest. If delayed later, the 
Luny of the haying will be so pressing that there 
E 
Fig. 1. — IOWA HAT KIGGING. 
will be no time then to make preparations. We 
here give illustrations of two kinds of Iiay beds, 
which are easily made, and are very handy in use. 
For that shown in figures 1 and 2, we are indebted 
to Prof. Geo. Morrow, of the lov/a Agricultural 
College. It is the invention of the 
Farm Superintendent of that institu- 
tion. It is made of light timbers, put 
together with carriage bolts, and has 
curved guards to cover the wheels. 
The chief feature of this bed is the 
tapering frame at the bottom, which 
permits the front wheels to turn very 
sharply. A standing rack, shown at 
figure 3, is fixed to the front, both 
to help support the load and to 
hold the reins while the driver is loading. At 
figure 3 is shown a form of rack common in some 
parts of the country, and this is probably on the 
whole the lightest, strongest, and best of any in 
use. It consists of a bottom frame, upon which 
Fig. S. 
Fig. 3. — COMMON HAT BACK. 
two hoards may be laid, a front and hind cross-bar 
raised hy sloping standards, and from these bars to 
others beneath the bed, are bent laths, which act 
as guards over the wheels. 
Pure Milk for Villages. 
One of the family troubles with those who live 
in villages, and especially in those where the popu- 
lation is chiefly employed in factories or work- 
shops, and where the amount of money to be spent 
for the family supplies is very limited, is the very 
unsatisfactory quality of the milk. Now there is 
nothing more important to the welfare of a family 
of children than the purity of the milk they use. 
Nothing more certainly carries with it unwholesome 
or poisonous taints than milk. The taints of 
typhoid diseases have, in many well authenticated 
eases, been carried from the family or house of a 
milkman, to those of the consumers of the milk. 
Hundreds of deaths in the outskirts of the city of 
London, in England, were not long ago traced to 
impure or infected milk, and in one notable case, 
70 deaths from this cause were proved to have oc- 
curred from typhoid fever, carried from a farm- 
house with the milk, to a large school. This is but 
one, although the wor.5t, of the unfortunate results 
of the use of bad milk. To procure milk fit for the 
food of young infants, is always difficult, and in 
many cases impossible, under the present system of 
milk supply in cities, towns, and hamlets. Rural 
villages are no better furnished than large cities ; 
but those are not so unfortunately situated as re- 
gards a remedy as the cities and larger towns. A 
system of milk supply, brought into operation in a 
small manufacturing town in England, during the 
past five or six years, offers an interesting example 
of what may be done in similar cases here. The 
village of Beckwith, in the northern part of Eng- 
land, is inhabited chiefly by colliers who work in 
the adjacent coal mines. Previous to 1871, the 
supply of milk in the village was both deficient and 
defective, and disease and mortality 
amongst infants and children were very 
frequent. In 1871, the owners of the 
principal colliery, with a view to benefit 
their work people, procured some cows 
and established a dairy on novel prin- 
ciples. A milk-route was opened, and 
the milk-wagon stopped at appointed 
places, at stated times. At these times 
and places, milk was delivered to the 
customers who called for it, the price 
being 5 cents a quart. The cheapness 
should be noticed, as reference will 
be made to this with other matters presently. The 
demand for the milk at once exhausted the supply, 
the children coming in crowds with their cans to 
the delivery places. The sales of the milk the first 
year, were over S2,000, increasing lo nearly S3,300 in 
1S75, when 22 cows were kept, and in the latter 
year the average income from each cow was thus 
nearly -5160. The dairy is stocked with Short-horn 
cows, as these, when dry, are readily turned into 
beef. We might here add, as our own experience, 
that cows of this breed furnish the most palatable 
and satisfactory milk for such a dairy, and whatr 
ever may be the advantages of other cows for other 
purposes, none can compete with Short-horns for 
the milk dairy. The management of the dairy, as 
may be expected from the results, is of the best 
kind, the cows being well fed and well eared for. 
The following figures, the account of the dairy for 
1875, should be well noted : 
PvECEIPTS. 
Jlilksokl lit 5 cciil.3 pi^iqn;u-t $3,282.8.3 
4co\v9i?iil(l 4f)3.00 
11 calves sold 110.00 
One bull sold 157.50 
$-l,013.a:j 
EXPENSES. 
Rent of 31 acres pasliirc $ 412.50 
31 tons of hay, @ $30.00 1,040.00 
Meal 180.00 
Grains 31S.00 
Keep of horse 65.00' 
2 cows purchased .3-30.00 
3 cows purcliased 270.00 
BmII purchased 315.00 
Wflges C50.00 
Interest on ciipitiil, lit 10 per cei:t 2S1.03 
Balance profit (101.83) 133.g3 
$4,015.33 
These figures are interesting, because they go to 
show tliat a similar enterprise could not fall to be 
successful here, if managed only moderately well. 
It will be obscr\-ed that the- expenses include a 
balance of 8310 for purchase of stock, over and 
above receipts for sales ; that the rent of pasture 
was about §13.50 an aero ; the cost of hay was veiy 
high, as compaj'ed witli that prevalent here, and 
that the allowance for interest was ample, and that 
the profit in addition was respectable. If all this 
could be done, in this ease in England, it is not easy 
to see why it could not be even surpassed here. 
Certainly, our rural villages ought to be supplied 
with pure milk, at the very reasonable rate of 5 
cents a quart, and a handsome profit left to the 
dairyman, who would have the enterprise and skill 
to manage it. Otherwise a cooperative dairy might 
be established profitably. 
Legal Protection for the Dairy Interest. 
o 
A bill was some time ago introduced into the 
New York State Legislature, by Senator Starbuck, 
of Jefferson Co., entitled : "An act for the protec- 
tion of dairymen, and to prevent deception and se- 
cure fair dealing in sales of butter and cheese." 
After various amendments have been made, the bill 
provides that any article manufactured or sold in 
semblance of butter or cheese, that is not made 
1 wholly from mUk or cream, but into which animal 
fat or oil enters as a component part,' shall be dis- 
tinctly and durably labeled " Oleo-margarine," and 
that all cheese made from milk deprived of cream 
by skimming, shall be labeled "Skimmed Milk 
Cheese." It is hoped that this bill will become a 
law, with the necessary amendment noted below. 
It is what the American. Agriculturist has ad- 
vocated for years, or from the very first appearance 
of " oleo-margarine " as n fraudulent substitute for 
butter, and as afraicdulent substitute for cream in 
cheese. We emphasize the word "fraudulent," 
because many interested in passing off the substi- 
tute upon unwitting persons, have pretended that 
our objections were directed against the substance 
itself, and not against the fraudulent use of it, and 
its unfair competition with pure dairy goods only. 
There can be no possible objection to the manufac- 
ture and sale of oleo-margarine in an honest way, 
and none against the purchase and use of it by any 
persons who are inclined to it as an article of food, 
or for preparing food. But the objection lies 
wholly against the sale as butter, of something that 
is not butter, and wholly inferior to it in value, at a 
low price, both on the general principle that it is a 
swindle of the public, and that it positively de- 
presses the market value and deteriorates the legit- 
imate character of butter. The dairy interest has 
suffered greatly from this fraudulent competition 
of an article that cannot stand upon its own naked 
merits, but only when clothed in the guise of dairy 
butter, or full milk cheese. It people wish to buy 
a tub of fat, distinctly labeled "Oleo-margarine," 
or a box of cheese with the label " Skimmed Milk 
Cheese " plainly before their eyes, no harm is done 
to any one, and we should be the last to question 
the propriety of every person doing as he pleases 
about it. It is the foreign market, which opened 
so auspiciously for American dairy products, that 
has been flooded with the fraudulent butter and 
cheese, and the term " American," as appUed to 
these false dairy goods, has become Icnown as a 
brand covering a quality fit only for the very poor- 
est trade. A vast injury has been done to the 
American dairy interest in a quarter where it will 
be very difficult to counteract it, and many years 
will hardly suffice to restore the good name of 
American dairy goods in the foreign markets, in 
consequence of this deception. The various dairy 
Boards of Trade must sec to it that this law, if it 
should be enacted, (of which at the present writing 
there seems some doubt, from a useless and em- 
barrassing clause in it, forbidding railroads to carry 
illegitimate goods), shall be enforced, watching 
especially the foreign markets, and tracing any in- 
fring«fcent to the perpetrators. It is not to be ex- 
pected that so profitable a business as selling cheap 
tallow for costly butter and cream, will be relin- 
quished without a struggle ; but if dairymen per- 
mit it to continue, to their detriment in profit and 
reputation, while there is a law to protect them, 
there will be no blame but to themselves. 
Lessons from Russian Agriculture for 
American Farmers. 
We recently referred to the fact that the Rus- 
sian Government had bought a great number of 
American plows for shipment to the wheat growing 
regions of Southern Russia. We understand that 
large purchases of other implements and machinery, 
including portable engines and thrashing machines, 
arc contemplated, and that a Russian agent is in- 
vestigating the merits of various machines for the 
purpose of selecting the best of them. All this 
shows that the Russians do not intend to give up 
the foreign markets for wheat which they have held 
so long, without a struggle, and that rf we, who 
have been able to undersell and displace them from 
these markets, do not meet them with equal enter- 
prise, we may be compelled to relinquish the advan- 
tages we have gained. Now it is well that we 
should know something of the agriculture of the 
people with whom we are brought into so direct 
competition, and this we may learn from the re- 
turns collected by the British Board of Trade, and 
recently published, relative to Russian agriculture. 
These returns, although published in the volume 
