474 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
July  23 
Getting  Weary  of  the  Erie. 
.JUST  DEMANDS  OF  MILKMEN  IGNORED. 
The  Rural,  New-Yorker  on  its  first  page  calls  the 
cartoon  to  its  aid  in  voicing  the  demands  of  milk  ship¬ 
pers  along  the  line  of  the  Erie  Railway  for  better 
shipping  arrangements.  This  great  corporation  owes 
more  to  the  milk  traffic  than  to  any  other  special  in¬ 
terest  on  its  line.  The  milk  business,  more  than  any 
one  other,  has  made  the  success  of  the  company  a  pos¬ 
sibility.  The  unfortunate  road  is  loaded  down  with  a 
vast  bonded  indebtedness,  not  the  result  of  legitimate 
expenditures,  but  of  the  combined  stealings  of  the 
earlier  administrations  which  cursed  this  great 
thoroughfare.  The  road  has  to-day,  probably  for  the 
first  time  in  its  history,  an  administration  that  is  try¬ 
ing  to  run  it  in  the  interest  of  the  stockholders. 
Previous  administrations  were  never  concerned  as  to 
the  interests  of  the  legitimate  owners  of  the  road. 
All  they  were  looking  after  were  schemes  of  plunder 
and,  to  the  permanent  detriment  of  the  road,  they 
were  very  successful.  This  much  is  due  the  manage¬ 
ment  of  the  road  to-day. 
Without  its  milk  traffic,  the  road  would  be  in  a  sorry 
condition.  Its  receipts  from  this  traffic  for  the  year 
1891  were,  in  round  numbers,  about  $600,000,  and  of 
this  amount  nearly  or  quite  half  a  million  dollars 
were  net  profit.  An  interest  which  pays  $500,000 
profit  per  annum  to  any  line  of  railway  is  certainly 
entitled  to  a  decent  degree  of  consideration.  But 
what  are  the  facts  ? 
Under  pressure,  the  company  has  put  on  a  few  cars 
for  remote  shippers,  with  arrangements  for  ice — 
arrangements  of  an  inferior  character — but  the  ship¬ 
pers  must  furnish  the’r  own  ice,  if  ice  be  used  ;  but 
for  the  great  bulk  of  the  milk  brought 
into  market  over  the  line,  common  box 
cars  are  deemed  good  enough  for  the 
traffic.  It  is  an  outrage  on  the  milk 
producers  that  cannot  longer  be  en¬ 
dured.  The  company  can  well  afford  to 
give  them  refrigerator  cars,  well  stocked 
with  ice,  so  that  the  milk  will  come  into 
market  as  cool  as  it  left  the  farm. 
This  great  corporation  has  given  the 
farmers  any  amount  of  taffy  when  it 
needed  their  shipments.  It  knows  full 
well  that  its  business  success  hinges 
largely  on  its  milk  traffic,  and  its  offi¬ 
cials,  chastened  by  repeated  financial 
failures,  have  more  than  once  stood  hat 
in  hand  to  the  farmers  and  begged 
their  trade.  But  when  the  shippers  ask 
to  be  treated  as  well  as  other  roads  treat 
their  patrons,  they  get  a  reception  that 
is  many  degrees  lower  than  the  tem¬ 
perature  of  an  Erie  milk  car  on  a  July 
night.  They  have  deserved  better  things. 
The  milk  shippers  along  the  line  of  the 
eastern  division  of  the  Erie  and  its 
branches  have  been  good  friends  of  this 
great  corporation.  They  want  better 
cars  for  their  milk,  and  they  want  them  supplied  with 
ice.  The  Erie  will  be  wise  if  it  proceeds  to  give  them 
what  they  ask.  It  is  bad  enough  to  charge  them 
for  transporting  their  milk  for  25  to  75  miles  just  as 
much  as  it  charges  those  who  ship  it  300  miles,  but  to 
give  the  long-distance  shippers  superior  accommoda¬ 
tions  for  the  same  price  is  rather  too  much  of  a  good 
thing.  Reform  seems  to  be  necessary. 
An  English  Jersey  Cow. 
At  Fig.  205  is  shown  a  picture  of  a  typical  Jersey 
cow,  as  the  breed  has  been  developed  in  England. 
While  she  has  the  marks  of  a  good  dairy  cow,  she  is  a 
little  too  fat  and  “beefy  ”  to  suit  the  best  American 
judges  of  Jersey  cattle.  The  English  believe  in  fat 
on  stock.  England  is  a  beef  country  first  of  all.  Her 
imports  of  butter  and  cheese  are  enormous,  largely 
because  her  farmers  do  not  *  ‘  take  ”  to  special  dairy 
breeds.  They  want  beef  in  a  cow  anyway.  Just  now 
meat  is  high  in  England.  We  have  shown  how  live 
cattle  that  sell  in  New  York  at  5  cents  a  pound  bring 
12  cents  when  delivered  at  Deptford 
With  meat  at  such  a  price  the  English  farmer  does 
not  care  to  have  an  animal  around  that  is  not  making 
more  or  less  of  it.  So  the  Jersey  in  England  has  been 
bred  more  to  a  beef  form  than  with  us,  and  we  find 
breeders  advertising  “  Guernseys  as  large  as  Short¬ 
horns”  and  “large,  thick  Jerseys.”  America  has  pro¬ 
duced  the  best  butter-cow  in  the  world  by  selecting 
the  old  Jersey  and  breeding  the  beef  all  out  of  her, 
and  inducing  her  to  put  her  food  in  the  pail  instead  of 
on  her  ribs.  This  is  the  butter-cow  that  pays  here, 
and  it  would  pay  in  England  too.  The  world  has  no 
use  for  a  “  beefy  ”  Jersey  cow.  England  has  not  yet 
produced  a  cow  that  can  lioldacandle  to  Signal's  Lilly 
Flagg,  because  her  breeders  don’t  seem  able  to  believe 
that  the  butter  cow  is  about  as  different  from  the  beef 
cow  as  the  race  horse  is  from  the  draught.  There  is 
mighty  little  reason  why  a  first-class  butter  cow  should 
ever  be  eaten  any  more  than  a  horse  !  It  ought  to  be 
so  hard  to  fatten  her  for  beef  that  it  would  be  cheaper 
to  turn  her  into  fertilizer  at  once  ! 
Something  About  the  Rye  Crop. 
Very  little  wheat  is  grown  in  northern  New  Jersey. 
A  fair  quality  of  grain  can  be  grown,  but  rye  pays 
much  better,  because  the  straw  sells  for  a  good  price. 
On  every  farm  where  a  rotation  is  followed,  rye  is  the 
grain  with  which  Timothy  and  clover  are  seeded.  It 
generally  follows  potatoes  which  are  heavily  fertilized. 
Sometimes  200  pounds  per  acre  of  fertilizer  are  broad¬ 
casted  on  the  rye  in  the  spring.  As  the  fields  are 
small,  the  rye  is  broadcasted  and  harrowed  in. 
With  us  rye  harvest  is  just  finishing.  We  generally 
begin  to  cut  about  July  4.  The  crop  is  mostly  cut  by 
reapers  and  hand-bound.  Farmers  do  not  all  own 
reapers.  Many  of  them  make  a  business  of  cutting 
for  their  neighbors  who  have  small  fields  and  do  not 
care  to  use  a  cradle.  The  rye  is  sometimes  stacked 
outside  in  covered  “  barracks,”  but  is  usually  hauled 
to  the  barn  and  carefully  stored  in  the  mows.  This  is 
necessary  because  clean,  bright  rye  straw  is  worth  as 
much  as  Timothy  hay — in  fact  the  straw  is  worth 
more  than  the  grain.  A  good  crop  is  15  bushels  of 
grain  and  1%  to  two  tons  of  straw— -of  the  two  an  in¬ 
crease  in  the  straw  being  most  desired.  During  the 
fall  and  winter  the  rye  is  carefully  thrashed  by  hand — 
the  old-fashioned  flails  being  used.  This  hand-thrash¬ 
ing  is  necessary  in  order  to  keep  the  straw  straight 
and  unbroken.  An  implement  house  at  Trenton,  N. 
J.,  has  devised  an  attachment  for  its  thrashing 
machine  which,  it  is  claimed,  will  hold  the  straw  per- 
An  English  Jersey.  Fig.  205. 
Reengraved  from  the  Mark  Lane  Express. 
feetly  straight  and  only  pass  the  heads  through  the 
thrasher.  This  will  be  very  useful  on  large  farms, 
but  most  of  our  farmers  find  ample  time  in  winter  to 
thrash  by  hand  and  prefer  doing  so.  The  straw  is 
tied  up  in  neat  bundles,  weighing  about  five  pounds 
each,  and  hauled  to  the  cities  for  sale.  It  is  used  for 
bedding,  for  packing  furniture  and  other  goods  and 
also  for  paper  making.  The  usual  price  for  first 
quality  straw  is  five  cents  a  bundle — though  it  has 
been  a  little  lower  of  late.  The  present  crop  is  a  good 
one.  Some  baled  rye  straw  comes  to  the  New  York 
market,  but  does  not  compete  with  the  near-by  product 
as  it  is  more  or  less  broken  and  crushed. 
In  the  old  farming  days  of  the  “Jersey  Dutch,”  rye 
and  corn  were  the  staple  grains  for  man  and  beast. 
Rye  bread  was  eaten  almost  entirely.  The  Dutch  did 
not,  like  their  old  friends  the  Puritans,  mix  the  rye 
with  corn  meal,  but  took  it  straight,  both  in  bread 
and  for  “coffee.”  Rye  and  corn  ground  together 
made  the  stock  feed  of  those  days.  Nowadays  the 
farmers  sell  much  of  their  rye  and  eat  more  wheat 
bread.  Much  less  bread  is  made  on  our  farms  anyway, 
for  the  baker’s  wagon  runs  over  the  country  con¬ 
stantly  selling  vast  quantities  of  wheat  and  rye  bread — 
the  latter  mostly  to  foreign  gardeners,  who  could  do 
full  work  on  a  diet  of  rye  bread,  lard  and  coffee. 
Rye  is  still  a  favorite  food  for  work  horses.  Our  mills 
generally  have  cob-grinding  attachments.  A  favorite 
mixture  is  a  bushel  of  rye  and  a  barrel  of  ear  corn 
ground  together.  If  the  sharp,  hard  pieces  of  cob  are 
carefully  sifted  out,  this  makes  good  horse  feed. 
Many  farmers  still  give  frequent  feeds  of  rye  heads 
chopped  fine  and  mixed  with  feed.  This  they  claim 
will  cure  a  horse  of  bots — the  theory  being  that  the 
sharp,  stiff  spines  on  the  rye  scratch  the  bots  off  the 
wall  of  the  stomach.  Certain  it  is  that  few  farm 
horses  anywhere  look  better  than  those  kept  on  these 
rye  farms — surely  few  wrork  harder  during  the  summer. 
Western  farmers  who  have  visited  us  often  smile  at 
our  small  grain  acreage,  and  call  it  “  penny  farming.” 
I  once  said  to  such  a  man  :  “  What  is  your  average 
yield  of  wheat  per  acre  ?  ” 
“  Well,  say  18  bushels  one  year  with  another !  ” 
“  What  is  your  average  price  ?” 
“  About  60.  cents.” 
6  ‘  Is  that  your  total  cash  product  from  the  acre  ?  ” 
“  Yes ;  there  is  no  sale  for  straw.  We  can  use  it  for 
manure  or  for  feeding  sheep,  and  call  its  value  per 
acre  about  $3.50.” 
“  Then  the  sales  from  an  acre  of  wheat  bring  you 
in  cash  $  10. 80 !  Now  an  acre  of  good  rye  will  bring 
us  in  cash  :  Fifteen  bushels  of  grain,  at  90  cents,  $13.50, 
and  IK  ton  of  straw  at  $20,  $30,  or  $43.50  in  all — or 
four  times  as  much  as  you  get.  In  other  words,  you 
have  got  to  plow,  harrow,  seed,  harvest,  thrash  and 
pay  taxes  on  40  acres  to  get  the  cash  returns  we  get 
from  10.  Not  only  that,  but  we  pay  ourselves  the  cost 
of  thrashing  and  hauling,  while  you  have  to  take  it 
out  of  your  small  returns,  and  pay  somebody  else ! 
Some  of  you  folks  off  in  Dakota  patiently  waiting  for 
a  ‘good  crop,’  had  better  come  back  and  farm  in 
New  Jersey  !  ” 
Of  course  the  question  to  be  considered  is  whether  a 
Western  farmer  by  wholesale  farming  —  using  all 
manner  of  improved  implements — can  farm  the  40 
acres  cheaper  than  we  can  farm  10.  jerseyman. 
Agriculture  in  Persia. 
as  they  farm  in  the  shah’s  land. 
An  Uncertain  Business. — Persia  is  no  less  a  re¬ 
markable  land  in  regard  to  its  agricultural  than  its 
political  condition.  Thousands  of  3'ears  ago  its  in¬ 
habitants  went  forth  to  conquer  the 
world,  but  to-day  they  have  relapsed  to 
the  condition  of  those  ancients  of  whom 
we  read — “for  the  earth  is  filled  with  vio¬ 
lence  through  them.”  The  farmer  sows 
his  grain  and  plants  his  vineyard,  but 
knows  not  who  will  reap  the  fruits.  In 
the  fall  when  the  crops  are  being  gar¬ 
nered  and  every  thrashing  floor  is  alive 
with  the  activity  of  men  and  beasts  tread¬ 
ing  out  the  grain,  and  every  breeze  is 
separating  the  wheat  from  the  chaff,  a 
band  of  Kurds  may  dash  down  from 
the  mountains  and  bear  away  all  the 
fruits  of  the  toilers’  labors;  or,  what  is 
much  more  frequent,  those  who  are  in 
authority  may  rob  them  of  all  they  have 
and  leave  them  only  too  glad  to  have 
escaped  tortures,  though  reduced  to  ab¬ 
ject  poverty.  Or  it  may  be  that  one  of 
the  princes  of  the  land  passes  through 
the  village  and  the  governor  is  obliged 
to  take  all  that  his  villagers  possess  to 
receive  him  with  becoming  presents  so 
as  not  to  lose  his  position. 
Underground  Irrigation.  —  Living 
thus  without  any  protection  or  security, 
the  agriculturist  provides  for  his  subsistence  in  the 
simplest  way  possible.  The  fertility  of  the  soil  de¬ 
pends  entirely,  in  most  places,  upon  irrigation.  The 
land  is  owned  by  the  villages  or  by  khans  (noblemen) 
who  own  the  villages.  Each  citizen  has  a  certain  por¬ 
tion  of  the  surrounding  land  to  work.  The  water 
from  the  mountain  streams  is  conducted  in  under¬ 
ground  channels  or  tunnels,  down  into  the  plain  and 
brought  up  to  the  surface  as  it  is  needed,  either  by 
small  ditches  or,  where  the  slope  is  not  sufficient  for 
that,  by  wells  and  buckets  which  are  worked  by  oxen 
in  a  most  primitive  manner;  an  inclined  path  is  pre¬ 
pared  and  as  the  ox  goes  down  he  draws  up  a  bucket 
of  water  which  is  dumped  into  a  reservoir  somewhat 
higher  than  the  surrounding  surface,  and  is  distributed 
by  little  ditches.  Two  things  are  gained  by  these 
underground  channels:  first,  usually  a  clay  stratum  is 
found,  and  as  the  water  is  conducted  above  this,  waste 
of  it  by  absorption  is  prevented,  and,  secondly,  evap¬ 
oration  by  the  sun,  which  is  never  sheltered  by  clouds 
in  the  dry  season,  is  avoided.  Sometimes  these  chan¬ 
nels  are  very  deep.  Some  of  those  under  the  city  of 
Tabriz  are  60  feet  below  the  surface  and  are  reached 
by  inclined  tunnels. 
Implements  of  Tillage. — The  plows  used  are  just 
such  as  w^ere  used  in  the  earliest  periods  of  man.  They 
consist  of  two  poles  coming  together  in  a  fork,  either 
natural  or  artificial.  One  is  cut  short  and  sharpened 
to  dig  into  the  soil,  and  the  other  is  left  long  enough 
to  be  attached  to  the  yoke  of  the  oxen  or  buffaloes: 
see  Fig.  206.  A  hole  bored  in  the  beam  holds  a  verti¬ 
cal  post,  which  has  a  peg  in  the  top  for  a  handle.  The 
yoke  is  a  straight,  round  stick  of  timber,  which  lies 
upon  the  necks  of  the  oxen,  with  simple  loops  to  keep 
it  in  place.  Thus  equipped,  the  Persian  scratches  up 
the  soil  to  prepare  it  for  the  seed.  Oftentimes  a  boy 
rides  backwards  upon  the  yoke  to  drive  the  oxen,  and, 
when  night  comes,  the  point  of  the  plow  is  hooked 
