VOL.  LI.  No.  2240. 
NEW  YORK,  DECEMBER  3i,  1892. 
PRICE,  FIVE  CENTS. 
$2.00  PER  YEAR. 
HOW  SOME  FOLKS  LIVE. 
WHERE  KING  WATER-MELON  REIGNS. 
We  Americans  are  not  supposed  to  be  a  king-loving 
people,  but  we  are  often  bossed  about  by  habits,  foods, 
methods  and  traditions.  Food  is  a  stern  boss,  and  the 
more  of  a  monopoly  any  one  food  gets  the  lower  the 
rate  of  intelligence.  Our  picture  this  week  takes  us 
to  the  South  among  the  subjects  of  the  water-melon 
king.  The  row  of  picaninnies  in  the  photograph  with 
the  older  members  of  the  family,  compose  a  scene  of 
perfect  contentment.  The  old  friend  of  the  negro — 
King  Water-melon — has  done  his  best  for  them.  Their 
light-skinned  neighbors  begin  to  breathe  easier  when 
the  water-melon  season  opens.  The  luscious,  cheap, 
abundant  fruit  acts  as  a  check  upon  the>i  ebullient 
spirits  of  the  colored  race,  and  draws  their  attention 
away  from  occasional  though  rare  depredations  upon 
more  valuable  property.  The  water-melon  is  not  only 
an  excellent  filler,  it  is  a  blood  purifier  and  a  tonic. 
In  no  location  in  the  South  can  so  much  chemically 
pure  water  be  bought  for  a  dime  or  be  toted  for 
nothing  as  in  the  vicinity 
of  a  ripe  melon  patch. 
See  how  the  big  fellow 
has  gorged  himself ;  he 
is  in  condition  now  to 
sweat  out  his  lunch, 
working  or  resting  in  the 
hot  sun.  The  log  house 
is  an  exact  copy  of  a 
cracker  cabin  ;  there  are 
the  battered  logs,  the 
split  palings  on  the  fence, 
the  same  bare  yard,  and 
a  rice-mortar  in  the  fore¬ 
ground.  The  whole  group 
is  an  average  type  of  the 
Southern  problem.  The 
average  negro  is  happy 
in  temperament,  but  an 
enraged  animal  in  a 
1  i  q  u  o  r-drenched  mob. 
Bright  and  intelligent, 
yet  woefully  ignorant ; 
hard-working,  but  inter¬ 
mittent,  he  saves  his 
money  to  spend  it  all  in 
a  day,  and  often  fool¬ 
ishly.  He  often  finds  his 
true  senses  only  as  a  re¬ 
sult  of  an  empty  pocket 
or  stomach.  The  South¬ 
ern  problem  is  one  which 
time  alone  can  solve.  The 
race,  as  a  whole,  is  rising  as  rapidly  as  can  be  expected. 
Here  and  there  all  over  the  South  the  colored  man 
is  accumulating  property,  exercising  the  rights  of 
citizenship,  and  filling  positions  of  public  trust.  That 
some  are  in  extreme  degradation  hardly  possible 
under  the  old  regime  is  equally  true. 
The  negro  though  brought  to  our  shores  against  his 
will,  is  here  to  stay.  The  South  cannot  do  without 
him.  He  can  do  more  work  there,  and  do  it  better 
than  the  average  poor  white.  He  knows  how  to  scrape 
a  living  where  a  white  man  cannot;  his  redeeming 
feature  is  his  ability  to  take  care  of  himself ;  others 
are  his  strong  religious  sentiments  and  native  desire 
for  education.  The  colored  man  with  proper  super¬ 
vision  can  and  will  solve  the  problem  for  himself. 
Whatever  the  faults  of  the  negro  as  a  man  and  worker 
may  be,  the  fact  is  that  as  a  race,  his  labor  has  made 
the  South.  Without  him  it  would  be  a  “big  brier 
patch  and  a  swamp.”  Negro  labor  produces  the  cotton 
crop,  by  far  the  most  important  of  our  agricultural 
exports.  Surely  such  a  race  has  possibilities  worth 
developing.  a.  d.  warner. 
WHAT'S  THE  MATTER  WITH  THE  FARMER 
AND  HIS  HEN  ? 
Partnership  ivith  “ the  Business  Hen;"  Why  Hen  Part¬ 
nerships  Fail ;  How  to  Make  Them  Succeed. 
C.  H.  WYCKOFF. 
Part  I. 
Why  Are  Hens  Kept  at  a  Loss? 
How  many  of  our  farmers  who  keep  hens  actually 
realize  a  profit  from  them  ?  From  my  own  observa¬ 
tions  of  their  flocks  and  methods,  and  talks  with  them, 
I  believe  that  less  than  half  ever  receive  a  dollar  above 
the  cost  of  their  keep.  Now  when  it  has  been  fairly 
proved  in  many  instances  that  there  is  no  other  stock 
commonly  kept  on  the  farm  that  can  be  made  to  pay 
so  large  a  profit  as  the  hen,  there  must  surely  be 
something  wrong  in  the  management  of  the  owners, 
and  the  fault  is  not  entirely  with  the  hens,  as  the 
average  farmer  would  have  us  believe.  What  are 
some  of  the  most  common  causes  of  failure  to  make 
the  keeping  of  laying  hens  a  success?  First,  there  is 
a  class  of  farmers — and  I  am  sorry  to  say  a  large  one — 
who  keep  hens,  yet  insist  that  there  is  no  money  in 
the  business,  and  that  it  is  all  nonsense  to  try  to  get 
anything  out  of  them.  A  little  investigation  into  their 
methods  will  usually  reveal  the  fact  that  they  have 
never  made  even  a  decent  effort  to  induce  the  hens  to 
lay,  and  when  questioned  regarding  the  matter,  they 
excuse  themselves  with  their  old  argument :  “There 
is  no  use  fussing  with  them,  there  is  no  money  in  them 
anyhow.” 
Bad  Management  of  Hen  Mixtures. 
Their  flocks  usually  have  the  appearance  of  being  a 
mixture  of  everything  in  the  hen  line  that  could  be 
brought  together,  and  whenever  new  blood  is  in¬ 
troduced — which  is  very  seldom — it  is  usually  taken 
from  a  flock  no  better  than  the  one  expected  to  be  im¬ 
proved  by  it;  their  accommodations,  if  they  may  be 
called  such,  are  generally  such  spaces  about  the  barns 
as  are  left  unoccupied  after  the  other  stock  are  housed. 
Sometimes  they  have  only  an  open  shed,  and  some¬ 
times  an  old  stable  so  rickety  and  dilapidated  from 
long  use  as  to  be  considered  unsafe  for  other  stock, 
but  ‘  ‘  plenty  good  enough  for  hens.  ”  The  roosts  here 
are  usually  cleaned  out  regularly  once  a  year— about 
corn  planting  time.  The  result  is  that  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  time  the  hens  are  confined  to  them 
as  they  are  at  night,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  time 
in  winter;  besides  being  subjected  to  the  discomforts 
of  cold  and  darkness  and  being  overrun  with  vermin, 
they  are  compelled  to  occupy  perches  immediately 
over  a  mass  of  their  own  droppings — the  accumula¬ 
tions  of  months,  and  from  which,  when  not  frozen 
hard,  is  constantly  rising  a  stench  that  would  kill 
any  other  stock  on  the  farm  if  subjected  to  it  half  as 
long  as  the  hens  have  to  stand  it,  and  then  when, 
as  often  happens,  cholera  or  some  similar  disease, 
sweeps  off  half  or  more  of  the  flock  in  a  few  days, 
the  owner  can  usually  be  heard  bewailing  his  bad  luck 
with  hens. 
Their  feed  generally  consists  entirely  of  corn,  or  if 
they  get  any  other  grain,  it  is  usually  the  refuse  from 
the  fanning  mill,  which  is  considered  unfit  for  mar¬ 
ket  or  for  other  stock.  Now,  while  corn  is  perhaps 
beneficial  to  hens  that  are  exposed  to  the  severe  cold 
of  winter,  inasmuch  as  it 
supplies  heat  to  the  body 
and  prevents  their  freez¬ 
ing  to  death,  it  is  a  very 
expensive  feed  for  that 
purpose,  compared  with 
what  can  be  done  with 
cheap  lumber  and  build¬ 
ing  paper.  For  water  the 
poultry  are  supposed  to 
get  a  sufficient  supply  by 
eating  snow,  and  I  have 
often  noticed  how  eagerly 
they  drink  from  pools 
formed  in  the  barnyard 
on  warm,  thawy  days.  Is 
it  any  wonder  that  the 
o  vners  scarcely  ever  get 
an  egg  from  these  hens 
from  fall  until  spring  ? 
Yet  when  they  hear  of 
some  one  who  is  gather¬ 
ing  eggs  from  properly 
kept  hens  every  day  all 
winter  through,  and  sell¬ 
ing  them  at  the  high 
prices  that  usually  prevail 
at  that  season,  and  mak¬ 
ing  a  handsome  profit 
nearly  the  year  round, 
they  will  usually  give 
him  credit  for  being 
“  lucky  with  hens,”  when 
the  fact  is  there  is  no  luck  about  it,  for  his  success  is 
simply  the  result  of  good  common  sense  in  study  and 
work  properly  applied. 
Why  they  Keep  Stock  that  “Don't  Pay." 
Ask  these  people  how  it  is  that  they  continue  to 
keep  hens  when  they  find  them  so  unprofitable, 
and  they  will  answer  that  they  find  it  such  a  con¬ 
venience  to  have  fresh  eggs  in  the  spring  and  summer 
when  the  hens  do  lay,  and  also  to  have  a  chicken  or 
fowl  at  hand  for  the  family  dinner  when  needed,  that 
they  will  continue  to  keep  them  even  at  a  loss;  all  of 
which  proves  that  fresh  eggs  and  chickens  are  articles 
of  food  dearly  relished  even  by  people  who  are  not 
unwilling  to  treat  their  fowls  in  the  manner  just  de¬ 
scribed.  Although  it  hardly  seems  possible  that  hens 
so  carelessly  wintered  would  lay  even  in  the  spring 
months,  it  is  a  fact  that  although  they  come  through 
merely  alive,  as  soon  as  there  have  been  a  few  weeks  of 
warm  weather,  and  they  are  able  to  get  to  the  ground 
and  pick  up  a  variety  of  food,  including  a  supply  of 
fresh,  green  grass  found  springing  up  in  warm,  shel¬ 
tered  spots,  they  quickly  improve,  their  combs  that 
Harvesting  a  Crop  of  Water  on  the  Half-Shell.  Fig.  325. 
