4i6 
MAY 3o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
If in a nursery of trees the heads have been carefully 
formed, the young trees when planted need no cutting, and 
they will be much better if none is made. It is best to de¬ 
lay pruning until the trees are established and have made 
a free growth, and then a careful man can do most of the 
work with a knife. Every wound on a tree is an injury to 
it,—the larger the wound, the greater the injury. The 
many hollow trees seen In old orchards are a testimony 
against the heavy pruning which is necessary only in 
orchards that have not had intelligent care from the 
beginning. T. HOSKINS. 
Orleans Co , Vt. __ 
Farm Politics. 
Here it is proposed to discuss with freedom and fairness, ques¬ 
tions of National or State policy that particularly concern farm¬ 
ers. The editors disclaim responsibility for the opinions of cor¬ 
respondents. The object is to develop a true and fair basis for 
organization among farmers. Let us think out just what we want 
and then strive for it. 
NEVER TAX PROPERTY WITH LEGS. 
Apropos of the remark that the question of taxation is 
purely an economic one and that ethical considerations 
should be omitted from its discussion, I inclose a clip¬ 
ping from the Boston Globe on the subject, in which the 
argument proceeds upon the lines indicated in The Rural. 
I think any fair study of the subject will lead to the con¬ 
clusion that, whatever class would suffer by the substitu¬ 
tion of a tax on the value of land in place of all other taxes 
whatsoever, the farming class would be immediately and 
immeasurably relieved. For it is a matter of common knowl¬ 
edge that the ratio wh ; ch the personal assessment bears to 
the total assessment in rural communities is altogether 
larger than that which the assessment of the same class of 
property bears to the total assessment in urban communi¬ 
ties. This being the case, the question for the farmer re¬ 
solves itself into a simple problem in arithmetic that any 
child who has reached the grammar grade in our public 
schools should be able to solve correctly. The article re¬ 
ferred to states the case so fairly and plainly, however, 
that it is commended to the careful perusal of the readers 
of The Rural, and is as follows: 
Among all the ill considered efforts which are made on 
behalf of the farmers to apply the screws of taxation to 
personal property of every kind, it is refreshing to read in 
the American Agriculturist this wholly different principle 
of taxation: 
“Never tax anything that would be a benefit to your 
State and that could and would run away ” 
The more this rule is pondered by farmers the more they 
will see the folly of putting burdensome taxes on personal 
property. Suca property is easily movaole, and when 
you iucresse the taxes on it you drive it Into States where 
taxation is less rigorous, or else into hiding, wnere it is of 
little or no use in building up local industries. Even the 
taxation that is now levied upon persoual property, partial 
and little enforced as it is, must and does operate to keep 
capital out of the State and out of active use. Would it 
not be better to adopt the opposite policy, relieving per¬ 
sonal property of taxation whenever and wherever pos¬ 
sible, throwing open the gates of Massacou e&is to the 
capitalists ot the country and bidding them come here, 
without fear of taxation, to spend their money and start 
their business enterprises ? Nothing else would so quicxly 
or so surely “ boom Massachusetts ” Such a policy, con¬ 
tinued a few years, would mane Boston the metropolis 
of the country if otner cities did not adopt the same plan. 
The larmers who are alleged to be mainly responsible 
for these new efforts to increase the tax burdens upon per¬ 
soual property, are apt to consider themselves the princi¬ 
pal landholder of th*- State, on wuorn cnltfly any increase 
of taxation would fall. Tnls is not true. Saying nothing 
of the value of buildings, whlcn is vastly greater in the 
large towns and cities than in the country, the chief landed 
interests also are in the cities, l’ne farmers own the most 
land in area, but not in value; and as value and not area 
is the basis of taxation, It is not the farmers chiefly who 
would pay any increased laud tax resulting from the ex¬ 
emption of personal property. 
Furthermore, it is the presence of population and per¬ 
sonal property that gives value to land. Drive these away 
and wnat would the land be worth ? Land has no value 
except what it absorbs from these sources. The most 
fertile land is worth little or nothing if there are no popula¬ 
tion and business near it. Thus It is the height of folly 
for farmers to drive population, capital and business away, 
as they surely will do if they succeed in increasing the tax 
burdens on movable property. 
Until the farmer, who is the principal victim of the pres¬ 
ent system of taxation, learns that it is not by striving 
after a portion of the benefits that accrue from special 
privilege, but in the abolition of laws that confer privilege, 
he must expect to remain, as now, the under-dog in the 
fight. G. D. L. 
Providence, R. I. 
“ Unearned Increment!” Unearned Living. 
The “single tax” suggestions of G. D. L., Providence, 
R. I., I am constrained to say, are similar to the old say¬ 
ing, “The world owes me a living.” Have you earned it ? 
Do you intend to earn it ? Have you replenished and sub¬ 
dued the earth and thereby earned the living ? Will G. 
D. L. point out the manager of the “general taxable 
pool” and show what one who has been diligent in replen¬ 
ishing and subduing the earth till he is 70, and has provided 
for himself and those depending on him, is to expect, when 
the little land he has improved and is Improving is put 
into that mysterious pool ? Till then silence would be 
becoming. George White, Kings County, N. Y., pleads 
that the single tax advocates are the honest men. He 
appears to think that they are so honest that it is impos¬ 
sible for them to be in error, while all the toiling farm 
owners have done wrong and offended Him who com¬ 
manded us “ to repienish and subdue the earth.” Great 
is this oracle ! G. c. M. 
Acra, N. Y. 
Objections to Income Tax. 
Is the chief charge against an income tax its Inquisitorial 
character ? I think not. History and reason show that 
its injustice and the impossibility of equalising it are 
the insuperable objections to it. If all men were equal in 
circumstances there could be no fairer way to raise a 
revenue than a tax on incomes; but men are not equally 
situated. Two men have incomes of $1,000 or $10,000 a 
year, one man has a large family, and other domestic bur¬ 
dens which are inevitable, the other has one child or none. 
Would a five per cent income tax be the same to each of 
these men ? One might well afford to pay 10 per cent, the 
other could not spare very well one per cent. The great 
advantage of all taxes is elasticity or mobility, so that the 
man who finds any one excessively burdensome may 
relieve himself by abstaining from the use of the articles 
taxed, or using less of them or cheaper kinds. The larger 
the list of taxable articles the more easily the tax is borne, 
the smaller it is the heavier the burden, and a single tax 
is the most unbearable of all. Consequently an income 
tax is unpopular—always was, always will be—bscause of 
its inveterate inequality and injustice; and so will any 
single tax be unpopular. H. stewart. 
Macon Co., N. C.__ 
THE “TIMES” ARE WHAT WE MAKE THEM. 
This is a day of unrest. What will be the outcome ? 
That depends. If there is wisdom enough in the public 
press to direct the swelling tide, all will be well,'otherwise 
dark days are before us. I am forced to the belief that 
many are laboring to inflame the spirit of unrest rather 
than to give to it a proper direction. These are the men 
who are constantly crying out: “ Hard times Farmin’ 
don’t pay 1! Down with the capitalist 111” etc., etc. My 
observation and experience teach me that the times are 
essentially what we make them for ourselves. For one, I 
would not think of hard times now if I did not see so 
much in the papers about them. I think I may safely say 
that I never knew the time in the past when $5 would pur¬ 
chase so many comforts at the store for one’s family as 
now ; or when the purchasing power of what the farmer 
has to sell was so great. How then can the times be 
hard if we are living as we ought ? Any man, at any 
time, can make the times hard for himself and family if 
he squanders his earnings or lives beyond his income. 
Here is the rock upon which too many are being wrecked. 
Years ago I thought the times were hard when I was pay¬ 
ing $300 interest a year on borrowed money and my crops 
were almost totally destroyed by a few days of unfavorable 
weather. Those hard times may have been to me a god¬ 
send; for since I determined to sell out and know just 
what I owned, and then never live up to my income, I 
have not seen or felt hard times. This experience and 
what I see about me have led me to say times are essent¬ 
ially what we make them for ourselves. 
A word for our capitalists: for one, I thank God for 
them, both great and small. Were it not for them the 
most of the poor laborers would be worse off than they are 
now. Thousands of them would starve. They lack the 
power to direct their own energies. If another can furnish 
them work and tell them what to do and how to do it, 
they can earn their daily bread. Wny then this constant 
outcry against the men of means who keep the poor from 
starving ? The-e poor laborers have never been taught to 
economize what they obtain. If I had it in my power to di¬ 
rect all the educational influences of our land I would re¬ 
quire a short dally, or at least weekly drill in all our 
schools in economy, and teach all the children the sin of 
living too fast, and the wisdom of earning something 
themselves and of laying up a portion of all they earned 
against a day of need. If this were faithfully done, the 
next generation would see good times, tiiebon Loomis. 
Waukesha Co., Wis. 
HERE’S “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH GREEN I” 
The Rural asks what’s the matter with Green ? Turn 
back to The Rural of January 24 and read again Mr. 
Green’s letter in which he asks no favors of any “ ’crat; ” 
read it carefully and you will find that there is a good deal 
the matter with Green. His 50-acre farm is mortgaged 
and the mortgage has not been reduced in the last two 
years. He says: “ I get short of funds sometimes ” and he 
is compelled to borrow money and finds “ by bitter experi¬ 
ence that the terms are sometimes hard,” at the same time 
he is thankful that “ there are some men who, years ago, 
saved their money when I was careless and spent mine 
foolishly,” but those men are now willing to lend him 
money “ as long as I am willing to pay them the princi¬ 
pal and interest I agree to pay,” though the terms are 
“ sometimes hard I” He sees the “ need of reform ” but 
his experience has been that it “ doesn’t do much good to 
try to reform anybody but myself.” As he has had free 
swing In the self reform business all these years, he ought 
to be able to show a little “ reform ” by this time, but he 
doesn’t, except that he gave up whisky and tobacco 15 years 
ago. 
I would like to make a little break here and ask those 
worthy individuals who are forever harping upon the one 
string of the enormous expense of the tobacco habit (I have 
no word to say in favor of liquor), why it is that the man 
who does not use tobacco, never has one dollar to show in 
excess of his neighbor who does use it, both men being 
equal in other respects ? (Ought Mr. Green to be borrow¬ 
ing money now after he has saved so much from not using 
tobacco and liquor for 15 years?) It reminds me of the 
man who asked another how much his tobacco cost him 
for one week, and how many years he had been using it ? 
Being told, he took a pencil and paper and figuring for 
awhile said that If he had not spent that money for tobacco 
he would now have enough to buy a brown stone house. 
The other man replied by asking if the first man ever used 
tobacco? “No.” ‘ Well,” he said, “ where’s your brown 
stone house? ” And he had no house at all. I assert that 
the tobacco-user spends less on the weed than the non-user 
does on what he calls “trifles” and that the tobacco does 
the former more real good than the “ trifles ” do the latter. 
This is an assertion that The R. N.-Y. believes to be 
without the slightest foundation in truth.—E ds,] 
But to go back to Green. He asks: “What if Jay 
Gould did make $3,000,000 in one week ? If I understand 
the matter he squeezed it out of his brother bondholders.” 
There are thousands of widows and orphans who mourn 
the loss of their property because Jay Gould and others of 
his class have “squeezed” (that is a very mild word to use 
in this connection) it out of them 1 And Mr. Green thinks 
that the present state of affairs, that permits men like 
Gould to wreck railroads and defraud the helpless, is 
all right 1 Mr. Green closes by saying: “Although I 
have made no money In the last two years, I do not expect 
to leave my farm,” but if he is compelled to, he says he 
will be "very thankful to Jay Gould if he will give me a 
place to work on one of his railroads,” and he will promise 
said Gould that he will never “ go on a strike.” 
Now, friends, do you see “ what’s the matter with 
Green ? ” Do you consider him a model American farmer 
one to be imitated, one to follow in his cringing to rail¬ 
road wreckers, to monopolists, to protected manufactu rers, 
to any and all of those who will loan him money upon 
terms that are “sometimes hard ?” Mr. Green Is, accord¬ 
ing to his own statement, barely making a living, yet he 
cites “the countless number of now well to do farmers 
who scored their first success as such through the accom¬ 
modation of some grasping money lender,” as proof that 
the farmer is himself only to blame if he does not suc¬ 
ceed, forgetting that the “cmatless number ” of farmers 
who have succeeded on borrowed capital did so under 
different conditions from those now prevailing. At this 
present time, when nine out of ten farmers are complain¬ 
ing of the drepressed condition of their business, and 
loudly calling for relief, [Nine-tenths 1 We doubt it I 
Eds ] for a man in the position of Mr. Green to claim that 
it is solely their own fault proves conclusively that 
“ what’s the matter with Green ” is that he does not 
understand what he is writing about; he sees no further 
than his own door yard fence, he owns himself a failure, 
and if he Is compelled to give up his mortgaged farm he 
will be “ thankful ” to Jay Gould if he will give him a 
place on one of his railroads I That’s what’s the matter 
with Green, but I hope, yes, I know, that that is not what’s 
the matter with nine oat of ten of the rest of the farmers 
of these so called “ free” United States. But the time is 
close at hand when we shall be a free people, with a gov¬ 
ernment of the people, the whole people—or else we must 
all become Greens and be “ thankful” to take such places 
as may be accorded to us by the freedom-wrecking gang 
who now govern us. A. L CROSBT. 
Baltimore Co , Md. 
The Farmers Chib. 
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
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not answered In our advertising columns. Ask only a few questions at 
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CANNING FACTORY WASTES IN THE SILO. 
In response to that question on page 401 last week about 
preserving pea pods from a canning factory in a silo, the 
following information has come to hand: 
P. P. W., Milford, Del. —I am offered the pea pods from 
two canning factories for the hauling. What is their 
value as a feed for stock ? Some say that they are more 
valuable than good corn ensilage, corn and all. Is that so ? 
If bauled and put into a silo 14x17 feet at the rate of four 
to five tons per day, will they keep ? Would it be better 
to run them through a cutter ? If any of this ensilage 
was left when we wanted to fill the silo with corn, could 
the latter be put right on the top of pea pods and, if so, 
would it keep all right ? 
It Ought to be Successful. 
I know of no instances in this State where the wastes of 
any other than the sweet-corn factories have been pre¬ 
served in silos. From a merely theoretical standpoint it 
would seem as if pea pods could be as readily preserved in 
the silo as almost anything else and without cutting. I 
cannot speak, however, either from experience or observa¬ 
tion in that matter. w. h. Jordan. 
Maine Experiment Station. 
Divide the Silo In Two. 
The preservation of the waste of canning factories has 
only come to my knowledge in case of sweet corn husks, 
and the cob cleared of grain but full of sap. In this case 
the results were very satisfactory. The finer quality of 
the husk as compared with the total solids of the more 
fibrous stalk made a combination of great value. The 
possibilities concerning pea pods I should theoretically 
consider a great economic “ find ” if in similar circum¬ 
stances. Having a silo 14x17 feet, I would without delay 
put a partition through it; as it would take 15 to 20 cows 
to eat the surface off such a large area and keep ahead of 
mold. Two-inch plank with one-inch boards to break 
joints is sufficient, if both divisions are filled together, or 
each on alternate days. The depth not being given, I can¬ 
not judge whether one side could be filled to the top without 
some braces against the uprights in the empty side. Con¬ 
sidering the curved shell of the pod and the natural me¬ 
chanical resistance of that form to flattening, the prospect 
of successful storage would be greatly increased by fine 
cutting from % to X inch. Though the labor would be in¬ 
creased, I would have green grass, or wet sodden straw, to 
cover with each night to a thickness of 3)4. to five inches ; 
otherwise I would expect to find, on opening for use, a 
layer of blue mold where each day’s filling stopped, espe¬ 
cially if heat develops, as it will surely do by the second 
day. In packing let no bruising be given with heels or tools 
after the pods have been thrown in the silo. Where you 
pack the hardest next the sides and in the corners it will 
rot the most. Simply level with the least labor possible 
