1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
containing a great variety of Items, including many 
good Hints and Suggestions which we throw into smaller 
type and condensed form, for want of space elsewhere. 
Postage 12 Cents a Year in Ad- 
vance. —The postage on the American Agriculturist 
anywhere in the United States and Territories, paid in 
advance, is 3 cents a quarter, 12 cents a year. If not paid 
in advance, twice these rates may be charged. 
How to Remit :— Checks on Wew- 
Ifork Banks or Bankers archest for large sums; 
made payable to the order of Orange Jiuhl 6c Co. 
Post-Office Money Orders may be obtain- 
ed at nearly every county-seat, in all the cities, and in 
many of the large towns. We consider them perfectly 
safe, and the best means of remitting fifty dollars or less, 
as thousands have been sent to us without any loss. 
Registered Letters, under the new 
system, which went into effect Oct. 1, 18GS, are a very 
safe means of sending small sums of money where P. 0. 
Money Orders cannot be easily obtained. Observe, the 
Registry fee, as well as postage, must be paid in stamps at 
the office where the letter is mailed, or it will be liable 
to be sent to the Dead-Letter Office. Buy and affix tlie 
stamps both for postage and registry, put in the money, and 
seal tfie letter in the presence of the postmaster., and take his 
receipt for it. Letters thus sent to us are at our risk. 
Bound Copies of this Volume will 
be ready this month. Price, $3, at our office ; or $2.50 
each, if sent by mail. Any of the previous thirteen volumes 
(1G to 29) will also be forwarded at 6ame price. Sets of 
numbers sent to our office will be neatly bound in our 
regular style, at75 cents per vol., (50 cents extra, if return- 
ed by mail.) Missing numbers supplied at 12 cents each. 
CI ul» s can at any time be increased by remitting 
for each addition the price paid by the original members ; 
or a small club may be increased to a larger one; thus: 
a person having sent 10 (subscribers ami $12, may after- 
wards send 10 more subscribers with only $8 ; making a 
club at $20 ; and so of the other club rates. 
FREE.-The very Best Table Cut- 
lery—Silver-plated Table Articles 
— Gold Pens — Children's Toys — 
Flower and Garden Seeds — Nursery 
Stoclt— Sewing and Washing Ma- 
chines and Wringers — ITIelodeons — 
Pianos— American Watches — Shoot- 
ing Irons — Tool Chests — Drawing; 
Instruments — Barometers — Astral 
Oil — Hay Mowers — Horse-Forks 
and Hoes— Pumps— Family Weigh- 
ing Scales— Cyclopedias — Diction- 
aries — Books — Grape- Tine* — Toy 
Steam Engines — etc., etc., etc., 
are among the things that we are distributing very largely 
all over tlie country to our friends who send in clubs of 
Subscribers. Some report getting as many as fifty Sub- 
scribers a day. Others get one, two, three, or more 
as opportunity serves. Some make this their sole busi- 
ness, and sell their premiums received.and thus get laTge 
wages. There iB no humbug, or clap-trap about this. At 
least Eleven TJtousand persons have received these pre- 
miums with great pleasure, and still, not one in ten of 
those who ought to read the American Agriculturist and 
Hearth and Home for their own pleasure and profit, are 
yet supplied with it. So there is abundant room for 
thousands of others to obtain these valuable premiums. 
This work can go on all winter. Full particulars will be 
found in the Advertising Columns, pages 33, 34, and 35. 
It Will Pay to supply yourself, your 6ons, 
and your workmen, with good papers and books. $10 to 
$20, or more, expended, in this way, will come back every 
year. Your sons will be kept from idleness and mis- 
chievous company; they will understand and respect 
their work more ; they will gain new ideas and learn to 
think and reason better; they will learn to make their 
heads help their hands ; they will labor more intelligently 
and be happier because their minds will be developed, 
and they will have something to think about while at 
work. Better sell an acre of land than not to have these 
mind cultivators. Any intelligent man will make more 
off from 9 acres than the unintelligent one will from 10 
acres. Think of this in planning and providing for your 
sons in the future. Store their growing minds with use- 
ful ideas, or the devil will fill the vacancies with very un- 
desirable tenants (ideas). (The premium list on page 33 
will afford to many an opportunity to get some books free 
of expense ; and plenty of good books, to be delivered by 
mail or otherwise, will be found in the advertising pages.) 
ICeliable Advertisements. — It is a 
standing rule to admit no advertiser into the columns of 
this paper to whom we would not be willing to send cash 
in advance orders if wanting his goods at the price asked ; 
also to exclude advertisements of a deceptive character, 
and of wares believed to be injurious. We believe our 
readers may more confidently patronize as a whole those 
whose advertisements are admitted into this paper, than 
it would be safe to do in any other paper published. 
Beware of Silver-Plating Ped- 
dlers. — Last month a man pretending to be an English 
silver-plater called at our neighbor's, and claimed that he 
had brought over with him a valuable plating powder. 
Tie exhibited some work, and plated a copper penny in 
half a minute. The lady of the house paid him for re- 
plating a lot of spoons, and allowed him to polish up 
some pure silver ones. He directed her to wrap them in 
paper and let them lie four days for the plating to harden 
well. When the four days expired, and he was at a safe 
distance, she examined the articles and found them en- 
tirely blackened, and the silver spoons ruined. We sup- 
pose he and others are ou their travels elsewhere. They 
should be arrested as swindlers. We often see venders 
of similar powders and liquids on the city street corners, 
brightening the boys' pennies, and selling their vile ma- 
terials, which consist of a little cheap mercury, mixed or 
held in solution with clay or other substance. The mer- 
cury or quicksilver is deposited on the surface of the 
metals, and when fresh it rubs up as bright as a mirror ; 
but it quickly tarnishes, and when applied to silver, gold, 
and some other metals, it eats into them and destroys their 
texture. Applied to door knobs or any other articles 
plated with silver or gold, it ruins the plating in a day. 
Mercury (often called quicksilver) dissolves gold, silver, 
tin, lead, zinc and bismuth the same as water dissolves 
Bait or sugar. It is largely used by miners who crash the 
gold and silver bearing rocks, and mix them with the 
mercury, which dissolves out the precious metals. The 
mercury is then evaporated by heat, leaving the gold or 
silver behind. The mercurial vapor is cooled, and caught 
in a condenser, and used again and again. This is called 
the "amalgamation process. 1 ' 
Cheap Advertising. — Every Advertise- 
ment in the American Agriculturist, we have good reason 
to believe, is read by at least 300,000 people. To print 
300,000 cheap circulars, and mail them to the same num- 
ber of persons, would at least cost for printing $300 ; 
envelopes, $400 ; addressing, $300 ; Post-office stamps, 
$600. Total, $1,600. A whole page in the American 
Agriculturist, at $666, would certainly be a better invest- 
ment, not only as costing less, but as being in a form to 
insure preservation and frequent reference. 
One of the Orand Enterprises of 
the age is the Northern Pacific Railway, which is not 
only to open a second Pathway across the Continent, but 
to bring into occupation and cultivation a region of fer- 
tile country capable of supporting an enterprising popu- 
lation exceeding that of many single European Nations. 
The entire people of Norway and Sweden might well 
come in a body and possess this region, with a mani- 
fest gain in climate and soil— and there would still be 
room for another Nation or two. Our attention was spec- 
ially calj^d to this by the announcement on our last page 
of a New 7-30 Loan, now being negotiated by Messrs. 
Jay Cooke & Co. Few will forget the immense benefit 
conferred upon our Nation by this same firm, in securing 
for our government the first really large sum raised dur- 
ing the war— which was then, we believe, the largest 
single amount ever borrowed by any people in the world. 
The New Loan is in very convenient form for any amount, 
from $100 upwards, pays a large interest, and the securi- 
ty would seem to bo ample. It will be worth while to 
read the advertisement, and to send for the descriptive 
maps and pamphlets. 
Drive Him Out.— In our humbug" column 
last month, wc mildly alluded to one calling himself I>r. 
Jesse Wright, as a disgrace to the good people of Salem, 
Ohio. On further examination of his circulars, and read- 
ing some letters from correspondents, we arc convinced 
that it is the duty of the people there to take some mea- 
sures to expel from their midst this yillainous being who 
is coining money through private circulars which propose 
to diminish the increase of population, and which allure 
the young on to vice. He ostensibly addresses only 
married people, and tells a semi-plausible story, but ad- 
dresses his private circulars to " att" Such a man is 
more dangerous to a community than forty thieves and 
burglars. We have too high an opinion of the people of 
Salem, and all that region, to believe they will tolerate 
any such trafficker in the souls of men. A villain, call- 
ing himself Mrs. M. Wood, recently hailing from Wil- 
liamsburg, now from a N. Y. P. O. Box, is in the same 
line of "business. 11 
$UNI>RV HUMBUGS.— The newspa- 
pers just now contain, under displayed head-lines, quite 
sensational reports of the overhauling and conviction of 
two of the pretended money swindlers. Passing over the 
fact that some of these same newspapers are particeps 
criminis, having opened their advertising columns to all 
the bogus operators who would pay for space, does it not 
show an unworthy timidity to keep silent over these 
swindles until the fellows are safely in jail? It looks 
like locking the stable door after the horse is stolen. In 
one prominent New-York Journal that "pitches in" 
to these swindlers, we counted the advertisements often 
different humbugs. If one-fourth of the newspapers of 
our country had followed the outspoken course of the 
American Agriculturist for a dozen or more years past, 
the whole people would have been so thoroughly informed 
that there would have been no verdant victims left to be 
preyed upon by thieves iu disguise, We venture to say 
that very little of the vast sums that have gone into the 
pockets of these operators has come from any^of the mill- 
ion readers of this journal ; and we do not mean any 
thing shall be obtained from them, in this way, if a per- 
sistent continuation of our notes and exposures will se- 
cure the end An alphabetical list of the humbugs dis- 
cussed in these columns during the year just closed, 
contains no less than 217 references I The letters and 
circulars received from all parts of the country would fill 
many large baskets. We can not of course acknowl- 
edge beyond a small portion of these, by pen or in type, 
but they have served a very useful purpose. As soon as 
one of these new schemes or new names comes to hand, 
the delivery of letters to parties is stopped at the Post- 
Office, and tens of thousands of dollars have been returned 
to the unwise or over trusting senders We are happy 
to report that two of the photographic money, [saw-dust- 
parcel swindlers have come to a little grief: they arc 
sent to prison on Black well's Island for six months. 
They ought to have had at least sixty years in state- 
prison ! We refer to Dailey and Waters, who operated 
und u r the names of William Howard and William H. 
Jackson, alias "Logan A Co.," alias "Owen Brothers," 
alias "Howard & Co.," alias "Fisher & Co.," alias 
"Williams & Co.," alias "Joseph K. Lee," alias "Holt," 
"Kane," "Allison," and twenty or thirty other aliases. 
There are two other prominent operators, under a great 
variety of assumed names, whom we hope to see soon 
brought up. An examination of the "shop" of Dailey 
and Waters (Logan & Co.) brought some curious revela- 
tions to light. Their memoranda showed they had taken 
in as much as $7,000 in a single day ! Many letters, 
sending for counterfeit money, were found, several of 
them from persons in different parts of the country, who, 
while keeping up a hypocritical show of honesty at home, 
were none too good to slyly engage in circulating the 
"queer." We have a list of names of such persons, which, 
if published, would create a commotion in many a neigh- 
borhood. We will withhold them for the time being, 
hoping that the parties will reform in manners and 
morals. Perhaps it may yet be deemed best for the 
people at large to print the names of a few hundred of 
those whose letters are proof positive of their wish to 
palm off bad money upon laborers, upon "frecdmen," 
and upon their neighbors generally As we predicted, 
the California Library Lottery has helped to start lip 
sundry other similar enterprises J. C. Derby is bring- 
ing reproach upon the publishing fraternity; we are 
sorry to see some newspapers puffing his "Gift Enter- 
prise" on the ground of his connection with the press. 
We fail to see how his "Aiken Land Scheme" differs 
from a "Havana" or "Kentucky Lottery." True, he 
offers a picture to each subscriber of $5. Sujtpose, for 
argument, the picture to be worth $4. In that case the 
investor pays $1 for the chance in the lot, or lottery, dis- 
tribution of land. The Havana Lottery would accom- 
plish the same thing by reducing the price of their tickets. 
Mr. Derby asks us to " see what $5 will do." We can 
tell him, that however much he may give for each $5 
sent to him, every $5 invested will do something towards 
creating a taste for lotteries. The good sense of the coun- 
try has long since put a ban upon lottery dealing, and 
justly bo We have hundreds of letters received within 
