494 
July  30 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER. 
Eastern  Illinois  Fruit  Notes. 
O.  K.  Lane,  Vermillion  County,  III. 
— I  think  that  success  with  fruit  depends 
more  on  the  proper  soil  than  on  the 
climate.  I  have  an  apparent  thin  white- 
oak  soil  of  a  clay  nature  where  shellbark 
hickory  and  black  walnut  grow  luxuri¬ 
antly.  So  do  the  plum,  peach,  apple, 
pear,  cherry  and  quince.  Two  miles 
west  of  me  I  find  sickly  fruit  trees  on 
prairie  soil — deep,  black,  loose  loam.  I 
use  about  eight  tons  of  unleached  hard¬ 
wood  ashes  a  year,  allowing  about  a  peck 
to  every  tree.  This  application  causes 
wonderful  growth  on  limestone  land  and 
all  trees  ripen  the  new  wood  to  meet  the 
winter.  Clover  makes  a  heavy  growth 
on  such  land  ;  but  small  grains  and  corn 
are  a  failure  unless  heavily  fertilized. 
All  my  orchard  land  is  heavily  seeded 
principally  to  Red  Clover  to  keep  the 
legions  of  rabbits  from  gnawing  young 
trees,  as  they  never  bother  a  tree  when 
clover  can  be  had.  Snow  seldom  lasts 
here  longer  than  a  day  or  two  at  a  time. 
In  the  past  three  years  I  have  experi¬ 
enced  great  benefit  from  winter  mulch¬ 
ing.  First  I  could  get  sorghum  bagasse 
for  the  hauling,  and  I  had  to  put  it  around 
young  trees  to  keep  turkeys  and  chickens 
from  scratching  the  mellow  soil  off  from 
the  roots,  so  it  remained  on  over-winter. 
Such  trees  kept  warm,  made  extra 
growth  just  as  an  animal  that  is  pro¬ 
tected  with  barn  and  blanket  comes  out 
in  spring  with  more  vim.  It  takes  half 
the  summer  for  a  half  dead  tree  or  animal 
to  recuperate  from  exposure  in  severe 
winter.  One  can  make  two  years’  extra 
growth  in  five  years  by  liberal  culture 
and  a  winter  mulch.  A  neighbor  mulches 
with  sawdust ;  this  makes  a  harbor  for 
the  May  beetle  and  other  injurious  in¬ 
sects.  Again,  I  have  to  use  a  winter 
mulch,  as  a  part  of  the  orchard  is  on  a 
hillside  with  a  southern  exposure.  Trees 
on  such  land  naturally  come  in  bloom  too 
early,  but  the  mulch  holds  them  back. 
Again  heavy  stalks  banked  up  around  a 
young  tree  in  windy  winter  prevent  the 
tree  from  swayipg.  which  is  sure  to  make 
a  funnel-shaped  hole  at  the  roots  to 
hold  water,  freeze  and  injure  the  bark  at 
the  collar.  To  study  the  temperature  of 
the  high  land  and  the  bottom  land  in 
zero  weather  I  borrowed  two  thermom¬ 
eters,  having  one  of  my  own,  placed  one 
on  top  of  the  hill,  one  half  wray  down 
and  the  third  in  the  bottom  land.  The 
low  land  was  very  much  colder.  Since 
that  experiment  I  notice  that  cattle 
which  stay  out  in  all  kinds  of  wind  and 
weather  never  go  on  the  low  lands,  as 
one  would  think  they  would  get  behind 
the  hill  so  as  to  make  it  a  wind-break. 
So  I  missed  it  in  planting  choice  tender 
varieties  of  fruit  under  the  hill  where  a 
jack  oak  would  perish.  Then  late  frost 
in  spring  unless  they  are  mulched  catches 
them  in  bloom  there. 
Are  Farmers  Being-  Bobbed  P 
F.  Grundy,  Christian  County!  III.— 
For  some  time  there  has  been  a  great 
doubt  in  my  mind  whether  the  cartoons 
and  other  slaps  at  capital  which  have  ap¬ 
peared  in  The  Rural  from  time  to  time, 
serve  any  real  good  purpose.  It  has 
seemed  to  me  that  they  are  calculated  to 
lead  many  farmers  to  think  they  are  be¬ 
ing  robbed  on  the  right  and  left ;  that 
the  hand  of  every  man  who  is  in  trade, 
or  possessed  of  some  money  and  seeking 
to  make  for  himself  a  living,  is  against 
them,  and  that  they  are  a  down-trodden 
and  run-over  class.  Now,  I  fail  to  see  their 
condition  in  that  light.  One  thing  we 
all  know,  and  that  is  :  every  man,  be  he 
capitalist,  merchant,  farmer  or  common 
laborer,  will  strive  to  obtain  the  highest 
price  for  whatever  he  has  to  sell,  and  to 
procure  at  the  lowest  prices  possible 
whatever  he  has  to  buy.  This  is  gener¬ 
ally  considered  business.  Now,  is  every¬ 
body  really  trying  to  especially  skin  the 
farmer  ? 
A  littte  bunch  of  capitalists  can  get  to¬ 
gether,  corner  a  product  of  which  there 
is  a  limited  supply,  and  whack  up  the 
price  thereof.  But  do  we  have  to  buy  it  ? 
Farmers  and  townspeople  have  annually 
burned  thousands  of  bushels  of  anthra¬ 
cite  coal.  The  barons  who  own  the  mines 
have  raised  the  price  too  high,  and  soft 
coal  and  wood  and  improved  burners  will 
be  substituted,  and  anthracite  will  no 
longer  be  in  it.  I  have  long  noticed  that 
when  an  article  is  cornered  and  the  price 
raised,  invention  is  stimulated,  and  sub¬ 
stitutes  soon  take  its  place.  When  the 
manufacture  of  any  article  yields  a  great 
profit,  how  quickly  somebody  else  goes 
into  the  business  and  offers  the  same,  or 
something  equally  good,  for  a  little  less. 
Farmers  are  constantly  kicking  the 
middlemen,  yet  I  notice  that  many  of 
these  same  middlemen  are  going  to  the 
wall  every  day  in  the  year.  If  their 
profits  are  so  excessive,  why  are  they 
not  flying  high  ?  In  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  when  a  middleman  goes  to  smash,  it 
is  because  his  expenses  exceed  his  profits. 
And  that’s  what’6  the  matter  with  ninety- 
nine  farmers  out  of  every  hundred  who 
are  hard  run  and  howling  about  it. 
Owing  chiefly  to  miserably  poor  man¬ 
agement,  their  products  cost  more  than 
they  bring,  and  they  will  be  in  the  swim 
with  gilded  cabriolets,  high-stepping 
steeds,  pianos,  and  the  latest  improved 
implements.  When  we  will  be  stylish 
we  must  put  up  the  sequins.  If  we  will 
“dawnse”  with  McAllister  we  must  wear 
cut  clothes  and  pay  the  violinist. 
If,  however,  we  don’t  care  to  do  these 
things,  but  prefer  to  live  soberly,  quietly 
and  honestly,  and  to  become  more  skilled 
in  the  cultivation  of  our  brains  and 
farms  than  in  our  mustaches  and  bangs, 
then  we  can  easily  make  our  incomes  ex¬ 
ceed  our  expenses. 
To  get  out  of  the  billows  and  return  to 
first  principles,  many  a  farmer  sells  out 
what  remnants  he  has  left  and  cuts  for 
the  wild  and  woolly  West,  to  dwell  in  a 
sod  house  among  the  ants  and  fleas  and 
things  that  creep  and  crawl,  and  to  live  on 
corn-bread  and  fat  pork  almost  exclu¬ 
sively  for  many  melancholy  years.  He 
hadn't  the  sense,  or  sand,  to  practice  a 
rigid  economy  for  a  few  years  on  his 
native  sod,  but  he  can  do  so  in  the  wild 
and  primitive  West,  because  he  lias  to. 
In  going  up  and  down  the  earth  I  find 
that  the  middleman  and  capitalist  rarely 
trouble  the  dreams  of  the  farmer  who  is 
wise  in  his  day  and  generation — who  is 
skillful  in  plying  his  vocation,  knows 
how  to  economize,  and  is  possessed  of  a 
good  supply  of  business  sagacity. 
A  Republican  Senator  on  Kansas  Mort- 
g-ag-es. 
B.  W.  Perkins,  United  States  Sena¬ 
tor  from  Kansas. — The  letter  from  The 
it.  N.-Y.  dated  May  3,  came  to  hand  in 
due  time,  but  in  some  way  was  mislaid 
by  one  of  my  clerks  and  overlooked  by 
me  until  now.  Inclosed  in  it  is  a  copy 
of  a  letter  written  to  the  paper  by  Mr. 
Jackson,  ofCjmanche  County,  Kansas — 
see  page  284— giving  the  particulars  of 
a  farmer  who  has  a  mortgage  upon  his 
place,  which  he  is  unable  to  pay,  and  he 
submits  a  proposition  which  he  says  the 
farmer  made  to  the  holder  of  the  mort¬ 
gage,  and  The  Rural  asks  me  what  I 
think  of  its  fairness. 
I  know  nothing  personally  of  the  trans¬ 
action,  and,  of  course,  know  nothing  of 
the  habits  and  integrity  of  the  farmer  : 
but  if  he  is  an  industrious  and  hard¬ 
working  man,  and  one  who  desires  to  do 
what  is  fair  and  right,  I  think  that  the 
proposition  made  by  him  is  an  eminently 
fair  one,  and  I  am  surprised  that  the 
holder  of  the  mortgage  did  not  accept  it. 
Eleven  per  cent  is  a  very  high  rate  of 
interest,  and  I  doubt  whether  the  holder 
of  the  mortgage  receives  that  interest 
on  his  obligation.  It  may  be  that  there 
is  a  holder  of  a  second  mortgage  who  gets 
a  part  of  this  interest :  but  any  man  who 
has  a  mortgage  upon  a  farm  in  Kansas, 
drawing  11  per  cent  interest,  is  getting  a 
very  high  rate  of  interest  for  his  money, 
and  he  ought  to  be  willing  to  accept  a 
fair  proposition  such  as  is  made  by  the 
Kansas  farmer,  and  I  am  surprised  that 
it  is  declined. 
Of  course  the  legislature  of  Kansas  can 
do  nothing  in  the  premises,  as  it  cannot 
enact  legislation  that  will  impair  the  ob¬ 
ligations  of  a  contract,  and  these  cases 
must  be  left  to  the  conscience  of  each 
individual  who  is  interested  in  the  mat¬ 
ter.  I  know,  however,  that  the  people 
who  hold  the  Kansas  mortgages,  as  a 
rule,  at  least,  are  very  anxious  to  get 
their  money,  and  do  not  desire  to  fore¬ 
close  their  mortgages  or  to  take  the  land 
in  payment,  and  they  are  willing  to  grant 
any  concessions  that  are  reasonable,  and 
that  will  in  time  give  them  the  money 
they  have  honestly  advanced  with  the  ex¬ 
pectation  that  in  time  principal  and  in¬ 
terest  would  be  returned.  I  believe  that 
the  farmers  of  Kansas  are,  as  a  rule,  meet¬ 
ing  their  obligations  in  a  manly  way,  and 
I  know  that  they  are  reducing  their  in¬ 
debtedness  more  than  §1,000,000  a  month, 
and  I  think  that  the  credit  o  f  our  State 
will  be  again  as  good  as  that  of  any  other 
State  in  the  Union. 
Is  the  Wineberry  a  Humbug-  ? 
M  T.  T. ,  Rio  Vista,  Va. — Having 
noticed  in  The  R.  N.-Y.  that  it  and 
others  have  bad  reports  about  the  Japan 
Wineberry,  I  would  say  that  I  have 
fruited  it  here  this  year  for  the  first  time 
and  have  never  seen  a  bush  make  a  better 
growth  in  one  year,  and  as  to  the  fruit, 
the  bush  was  just  loaded  with  berries,  a 
sight  worth  seeing,  and  I  was  very  agree¬ 
ably  disappointed,  as  it  was  so  much 
better  than  I  expected  from  reading  The 
R.  N.-Y.  I  cannot  say  how  it  does  with 
others,  but  I  can  say  that  with  me  it  is 
no  humbug  or  fraud,  but  a  very  pretty 
fruit,  just  as  represented.  It  is  very 
sour ;  so  are  gooseberries  and  currants. 
I  wish  I  had  more. 
II.  N.-Y. — The  R.  N.-Y.  has  never 
called  it  a  humbug.  On  the  contrary, 
we  have  said  and  do  now  say  that  it  is 
an  odd,  interesting  plant.  It  was  intro¬ 
duced  as  a  new  thing  at  a  high  price, 
whereas  it  has  been  offered  in  this  coun¬ 
try  for  10  years  or  more  at  40  cents,  or 
less,  per  plant.  Its  botanical  name  was 
concealed.  The  “introducer”  claims  that 
the  fruit  is  “very  sprightly  and  sweet” — 
“having  a  delicious  and  luscious  flavor 
peculiar  to  itself  and  superior  to  other 
berries.”  You  say  it  is  “very  sour.”  It 
was  the  way  in  which  it  was  introduced 
that  we  condemned. 
In  writing  to  advertisers  please  always  mention 
The  Rural  New-Yorker. 
A  Veteran 
Mr.  Joseph  Ilem- 
surrich,  529  E.  140th 
St.,  N.  Y.  City,  in  1802, 
at  the  battle  of  Fair 
Oaks,  was  stricken  with 
Typhoid  Fever,  and 
after  a  long  struggle  in 
hospitals,  was  discharg¬ 
ed  as  incurable  with 
Coiisumptiou.  Hehas 
Jos.  Hemmerich.  iate]y  taken  Hood’s  Sar¬ 
saparilla,  is  in  good  health,  and  cordially  rec- 
omn  ends  IIOOB’M 
as  a  general  blood  purifier  and  tonic  medi¬ 
cine,  especially  to  his  comrades  in  the  G.  A.  K. 
■^HARTSHORN'S 
Beware  of  Imitations. 
NOTICE 
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They  can  be  had  Japanned  or  Galvanized  at 
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DO  YOU  LIKE  ICE  CREAM  ? 
OF  COURSE  YOU  DO. 
Well,  then,  if  you  have  no  Ice-Cream 
Freezer,  or  a  poor  one,  read  this. 
Ice  cream  well  made  is  a  wholesome 
refreshment.  Almost  every  farmer  now¬ 
adays  has  his  own  ice,  and  can  spare 
a  little  milk  and  cream  now  and  then 
In  fact  the  farmer 
who  does  not  pro¬ 
vide  ice  cream  for 
his  family  at  least 
once  a  week,  does 
not  live  up  to  his 
privileges.  We  have 
arranged  to  offer 
this  wonderfully 
effective,  yet  very 
low-priced  freezer. 
The  stirring  motion 
is  applied  by  means 
of  the  Keystone 
Whip  Beater,  which 
may  also  be  used  in 
whipping  cream, 
beating  eggs,  fruit,  etc.  A  cook  book, 
giving  many  recipes  for  ice  creams,  water 
ices,  and  many  new  dishes  for  the  table 
by  aid  of  the  freezer  and  the  beater  which 
accompanies  it.  Price,  §1.50.  Given  to 
any  present  subscriber  sending  two  new 
subscriptions  to  The  R.  N.*Y.  from  date 
to  January,  1893,  and  §2. 
THE  RURAL  PUBLISHING  CO., 
Times  Building,  New  York. 
