288 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
April 22 
THE 
Rural New-Yorker 
TIMES BUILDING, NEW YORK. 
L Rational Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
ELBERT g. CABMAN, Editor-In-Chief. 
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD, Managing Editor 
ERWIN G. FOWLER, Associate Editor. 
VopvHghted. 1H93. 
Address all communications and make all orders payable to The 
Rural Publishing Company. 
Money orders and bank drafts are the safest In transmitting money. 
SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 1893. 
All seeds and plants, all communications whatever 
for the Editor should hereafter he forwarded to River 
Edge, Bergen County, New Jersey. 
* * 
Women’s Suffragists everywhere are greatly pleased 
with the showing made at the recent elections in 
Kansas. The chief argument against women’s suf¬ 
frage has been that women generally do not care to 
vote. Consequently the friends of the movement 
went to work to “get their votes out.” They suc¬ 
ceeded admirably and thousands of women voted 
quietly and intelligently. The sentiment for women’s 
suffrage is strongest in the country districts where 
the Alliance and Grange have done much to improve 
the social standing of women. 
# * 
The Iowa Experiment Station people found that a 
small quantity of liquid manure sprinkled around the 
corn when about two-thirds grown increased the vigor 
of the plant and the yield. A tablespoonful of a good 
corn fertilizer would have had the same effect and 
been easier to apply. Stable manure “or the extract 
thereof ” is best for the corn plant, but there are 
cases where a substitute is needed. If a cow grows 
thin and loses in her milk yield through lack of food 
you give her more to eat. The same way with a corn 
plant and how are you going to feed a plant that is up 
to your shoulders, with extra stable manure? 
* * 
Connecticut is a small State geographically and 
many of our Western friends seem to think that be¬ 
cause its manufacturing interests are immense, its 
agriculture must be insignificant. That is a great 
mistake. The article this week on corn growing in 
that State will open many an eye. What corn grow¬ 
ing section in the West can compare with that Connec¬ 
ticut neighborhood for profit. New England farming 
going to seed, eh ? Yes, seeds to be used all over the 
country in farm and garden. New England first 
seeded the West with a good crop of men and women. 
That product of her farms has changed the history of 
the world. That old soil has many a crop left in it 
still. * , 
A man who has just returned from Washington tells 
us that the rush of office se kers is greater than ever 
before. The President and Cabinet members have no 
time for anything but listening to the appeals for 
political jobs. A man may turn up at Washington 
with a long list of “indorsements” from well-known 
men only to find that these same men have written the 
President privately that their names on the petition 
mean nothing at all. The whole thing is disgraceful 
business. President Cleveland is in a position to stop 
it at once by simply announcing that he will listen to 
no more personal appeals for office and that any 
attempt to force such arguments upon him will be 
certain to debar the candidate. This would end the 
rush at once. President Cleveland is in a better posi¬ 
tion to do this than any of his predecessors and noth¬ 
ing that he could do will more facilitate the public 
business. # , 
The big corn fields are not all “ out West ” by any 
means. At the Ellerslie stock farm 90 acres of corn 
are required to fill the silos every year. A problem 
has arisen this year that is peculiar to many large 
Eastern stock farms. The land selected for ensilage 
corn needs manure, but is IK mile from the stable— 
too far to haul stable manure. It is therefore proposed 
to put the manure on nearby meadows and use fertil¬ 
izers only on the corn. Experiments last j^ear showed 
that fertilizers gave far better returns, dolls r for dol¬ 
lar invested, than purchased stable manure. There 
will be a mighty object lesson in the crop from this 
year’s 90-acre corn field. There are thousands of acres 
of Eastern land so situated that they cannot be profit 
ably manured from the stable. A hundred generations 
of cattle have walked away with the soluble phos¬ 
phates, until now a cow would starve on the product 
of five acres. Such land was designed by nature for 
stock feeding, and yet chemicals must be used first in 
order to induce the ground to produce stock food ! Mr. 
Cottrell, at Ellerslie, would like to grow ensilage corn 
on the same ground, year after year, using nothing 
but ft rtilizers. Can he do it successfully? For how 
m any years ? These are big questions for Eastern 
dairymen. # # 
Secretary of Agriculture Morton is reported to 
have said this about the seed distribution farce : 
If the Government is going to continue in the business of seed dis¬ 
tribution, I cannot see why it should not go a step further than now, 
and grow the seeds itself, and thus do away with the middlemen’s 
profits, which, according to all farmeis. are one of the heaviest bur¬ 
dens imposed upon them. 
Secretary Morton must have been called upon to 
receive a delegation of seedsmen who desire to sell 
seeds for distribution. If the seeds are to be given 
away it is a little hard to see how the middlemen’s 
profits in this case fall heavily on the farmer. Could 
the Government grow the seeds cheaper than it can 
buy them ? We question it if the cost of growing 
crops at the present experiment stations is any crite¬ 
rion. If the Government is to distribute seeds, why 
should it not distribute samples of fertilizers for 
experiment. Surely there is greater need of a study 
of plant-food than of new plants. 
* * 
The California Legislature passed a bill to compel 
newspaper publishers to make a true statement of 
their circulation and to punish those who misrep¬ 
resent it. A similar bill is before the New York Legis¬ 
lature. No State law will be adequate to cover this 
important matter, because all papers of any conse¬ 
quence do business in many States and it would be 
easy to evade the law by having two or three publish¬ 
ing offices. The R. N.-Y., as our readers know, has 
prepared a bill that will be presented in the United 
States Senate. Our plan is to compel papers to print 
sworn statements of the amounts paid for postage 
from week to week. A failure to do this, or an attempt 
to make a fraudulent statement is to be punished by 
taking from the offending publisher the privilege of 
sending his paper through the mails at cheap postage 
rates. This would take the wind out of many of the 
bogus circulations, and with the wind out—what 
would there be left ? 
* * 
“ A bah winter for horses.” This is the report that 
comes from the far Northwest. The result is that of a 
band of 300 head 75, or one-fourth have died of expos¬ 
ure and starvation. In other cases the losses have 
been 50 or 75 per cent. The same is true of cattle, 
and in one case every one of a large herd perished 
miserably of cold and want of food. It is often said 
with a sad sort of humor, of the careless and incom¬ 
petent Eastern farmer, that he winters his stock on 
the lee side of a straw stack, and we pity the sorrows 
of the bags of bones that survive the winter under 
such circumstances. But there is some excuse for this 
at times when the poor farmer without means is 
obliged to do the best he can, and his poverty and not 
his will consents to this infliction of misery upon his 
stock. But in the case of these Western stockmen, the 
case is quite different. They deliberately take cattle 
on to these exposed plains without any preparation 
for a possible hard winter, and calculate their profits 
with allowance for the loss of so many wretched 
beasts by actual starvation, in cold blood, and without 
one single pang or thought even of remorse for the 
horrible cruelty. It is but one instance of the proverb¬ 
ial “ man’s inhumanity.” 
* * 
The decisions of United States Judges Ricks and 
Taft at Toledo the other day, in regard to the action 
of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in boy¬ 
cotting Ann Arbor freight on other roads, is in line 
with that of United States Judge Billings, a few 
weeks ago, at New Orleans, with regard to the strikers 
who paralyzed the trade of the Crescent City last 
November, inflicting damages to the amount of mil¬ 
lions of dollars on the local interests and causing 
enormous losses in the tributary territory. In sub¬ 
stance, the decisions declare that public interests are 
paramount and that private interests must yield to 
them when the two come in conflict. They pronounce 
it illegal for any labor organization, combined to¬ 
gether for mutual protection, to “ paralyze trade and 
industry in a thousand places remote from the scene 
of conflict.” The legal bearings of the question are 
to be decided by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, whose verdict must be final; but meanwhile, 
what is a common-sense view of the rights of labor ? 
The right of workingmen to combine against an em¬ 
ployer has been stoutly maintained for years, in spite 
of the fact that the common law, the outcome of 
human experience, forbids such combinations and 
brands them as conspiracies. On the other hand, 
there can be no doubt that the same law applies with 
equal force to combinations of employers—to capital 
as well as to labor—yet what court has hitherto con¬ 
demned trusts and similar combinations of capital, 
though they have frequently “paralyzed trade and 
industry,” and interrupted the commerce of the coun¬ 
try by set purpose and system? It has been often 
announced that workmen employed in a mill or fac¬ 
tory or on a railroad gain, after a time, a right to 
continue in the service, and that the owner has not the 
privilege to discharge them without their consent, 
so long as they perform their duties efficiently. The 
advocates of such a proposition claim that the men 
have aided in building up the business and therefore 
have a lien upon it, or, as Senator Palmer said in Con¬ 
gress, of the Carnegie workmen : “ These laborers, 
having spent their lives in this peculiar service, have 
a right to permanent employment therein ” Much of 
the turbulence connected with strikes is due to this 
opinion. Tf the men have such a right, any persons 
taking their places are trespassers, and if remon¬ 
strances fail, are to be met with bludgeons or shot¬ 
guns. Should these, too, prove ineffective, the inter¬ 
lopers are to be denied every comfort and harrassed 
in every way, or the works are to be wrecked and laid 
waste. If any possible foundation for such a claim 
exists, mustn’t the lien be mutual, and cannot the 
proprietor of the works claim the services of the 
operatives in spite of their wishes ? If the place be¬ 
longs to the man, doesn’t he belong to the place ? Of 
the greatest lesson taught all future generations by 
the social and political upheaval, the destruction, car¬ 
nage and terror of the French Revolution, trade- 
unionists appear never to have heard—that the rights 
of one man end where those of another begin. 
* * 
BREVITIES. 
Guess you’ll say I throwed away half a dollar bill to-day. 
Gut no money fer ter throw round about that way, I know, 
Hev ter let my pipe alone, till I pay It up. I own, 
Hed an auction—ain’t 1 told, how the sheriff up an' acid, 
Ole man Gray’s fer a debt? Poor ole folks, I see ’em yet, 
Btandln’ there so white an’ sad- tell je that I did feel bad. 
Auctioneer, he made folks grin, with the funny yarns he’d Bpin. 
Held a cradle up In sight, thought he’d git off somethin' bright. 
“ Noah’s baby laid his head, In this cradle here,” he said; 
“ Baby jumped when ole Ark lacked, that’s the way they gut It 
cracked.” 
Everybody laughed, but I see the tears In Mis’ Gray’s eye. 
" That's my baby's cradle,” she sorter whispered unto me. 
I ain’t gut no cash ter spare, but my hand wuz in the air. 
“ I’ll give fifty cents fer that!' Took me up ez quick ez scat! 
Sorter 'frald 'at I'd back out; orter heard the laugh an’ Bhout 
Onto me; but I don't care—never heard no human prayer 
Thet left half the healin’ trace of thet poor ole woman's lace, 
Ez she took tbet cradle back; half a dollar makes a crack 
In my pocket book, you bet, but I don’t regret it yet. 
Think of quicklime In a hen’s throat 1 Page 295. 
The worst enemy of the woodchuck is his own sweet tooth. 
Oh rubber conscience ! what crimes are within thy stretch I 
Bkeeding the “ speckles ” out of corn is a long job. See page 281. 
Unless your Leghorns use their legs, they lay on flesh instead of 
eggs ? 
He who drops wood ashes on his seed, he shall have scabby tubers 
with all speed. 
Where do you get any legal or moral right to let a potato bug go 
from vour Held to a neighbor’s ? 
Home evaporating of different vegetables In the Woman and Home 
Department two weeks from this issue. 
Which Is the greater sinner In a potato Held—the bug that eats 
the vines or the man who rides the cultivator Into the roots ? 
We understand that in Missouri failure to pay a dog tax renders the 
owner liable to imprisonment. Why not imprison the dog ? 
Evaporating is a more practicable way of handling vegetables or 
fruits on the farm than canning, and the outfit Is less expensive. 
Let the Behring Sea commissioners have a monopoly of that dis¬ 
cussion. The discussion of beer rings on a table has ruined many a 
farmer. 
The Indians were shrewd farmers. They raised great crops of corn 
In that very section from which the sweet corn seed goes forth to help 
feed the world. 
The fattest corn we have any record of Is Stowell's Evergreen, 
grown in Pennsylvania. A sample of this showed 11.9 per cent of fat. 
That Is ” fat enough to kill.” 
Methods of culture for sweet corn do not differ materially from 
those for Held corn, except that the former Is of more slender growth 
when young, and needs more coddling 11 anything, than the latter 
Here is a letter from a New York State subscriber : “ Please stop 
The U. N.-Y. I find 1 am running behind my Income and must stop 
small expenses as well as greater ones. P. S.—My wife says No, so 
send It along. Here’s your $1.” 
Here Is a “true word” from Virginia: “ If three-quarters of the F 
F. V’s now swaiming at Washington, and tormenting their M. C’s. 
would work as haid In reclaiming our abandoned Helds as they do for 
public office, shortly would old Virginia ‘ bloom as a rose.’ ” 
What lesson does our Iowa lriend, page 286, draw from that good 
effect of plaster on his clover ? Does it mean that plaster Is simj ly 
the first skirmisher of commeicial fertilizers and that potash and 
phosphoric acid will follow later and demand aomlttance ? 
In making a fertilizer with hen manure for a basis, as described 
last week, It is safe enough to assume that more nitrogen Is needed 
than the manure itself contains. Add at least 50 pounds of nitrate of 
soda to the formula theie given unless you know your soli does not 
need it. 
IN a ton of average milk are 10 pounds of nitrogen, 3)4 of phosphoric 
acid and 3 of potash. This hab a fertilizing value of $2.09. The way 
some farmers figure may be stated thus: If one ton of milk takes $2.09 
worth of fertility from the soil, we must produce less milk and thus 
prevent exhaustion. 
Any one contemplating growing corn or other products for the 
canning factories, will be furnished all needed information as to the 
proper varieties bv the canners. Different varieties succeed differ¬ 
ently on different soils, and a trial Is the only certain way of deciding 
which are the best for any particular location 
Home-made barny ard manure Is not called a “ commereial fertili¬ 
zer ” because nobody can tell what It costs. Hence there is no com¬ 
meicial basis for handling it. When y ou pay $2 for a load of manure, 
how do you know what you are paying for—water, straw and smell? 
Until you do there will te little commercial basis in the trade. 
