842 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
December 16 
SECRETARY MORTON CRITICISED. 
I have no criticism to make upon the 
stupendous statement which opens Sec¬ 
retary Morton’s World’s Fair address, in 
regard to land and air. To some people, 
an acre of wild air, or wind, might be 
worth as much as an acre of wild land 
covered with wild fruits and nuts. There 
may be great depth of wisdom in “ That 
greatest sentence in modern political 
economy,” “A market for products is 
products in market ” But the farmer, 
whose home markets are being killed for 
the sake of markets in the ends of the 
earth, where it costs two or three times 
as much to take them as they are worth, 
cannot seem to see its profoundness. 
A farmer’s library consisting of one 
ancient volume and a city newspaper, 
only, is a pitiable sight, the results of 
which can only be realized by the read¬ 
ing of the Secretary’s address. Neither 
do I find fault with the Secretary in re¬ 
gard to his statement that “ humanity 
generally and the farmer particularly 
has no enemy equal in efficiency for evi', 
to ignorance.” But when we see that 
quality coupled with “ educated selfish¬ 
ness ” which he recommends, enthroned 
in a high position which anybody of in¬ 
telligence knows, was largely created 
through the influence of the Grange and 
Alliance, and then see the occupant 
thereof, before a world’s congress, try¬ 
ing to trample those societies under foot, 
do we not see those qualities exemplified 
to perfection ? J. J. s. 
Rochester, Mich. 
FRUIT AND OTHER NOTES FROM IDAHO. 
The weather has been hard on us this 
fall. It began raining in early harvest 
and has continued to rain by spells, de¬ 
laying the harvest and destroying about 
one-third of our grain crop. What is 
thrashed is hardly fit for market on ac¬ 
count of dampness. Prices are desper¬ 
ately low, money is desperately scarce, 
farmers are desperately worked down, 
both in mind and body, and traders and 
money lenders are desperately saucy, to 
say the least. This country is in the 
midst of an experience that we shall 
never forget. 
Our fruit trees suffered much from a 
late and cold spring, and I hardly looked 
for anything but a complete failure of 
peaches, apricots and tender plums ; but, 
to my surprise, they not only lived, but 
I found a few ripe peaches. The trees, 
however, received a shock in some way 
(perhaps from the many sudden changes 
from warm to cold and wet), so that 
when the fruit was set, it kept falling off 
all summer and only a few on each tree 
remained to maturity. The plums bore 
the best crop, cherries next, apples a 
few, and many trees lost all the fruit. 
Our berries bore a fine crop. I will 
describe a few, so that you may know 
how they look here. 1 would like to see 
how they compare with the same varie¬ 
ties grown in other places. I have 
tried nearly all the red raspberries 
and dug them out all but the Superb 
and Cuthbert; I have also the Golden 
Queen. Superb grows about three feet 
high; a splendid bearer, many berries 
being three-quarters of an inch in diame¬ 
ter ; hardy and not a heavy runner. 
Cuthbert and Queen, 10 feet high, fruit 
small, crop light, tender and a terrible 
runner, two weeks later than Superb ; 
no good. Spry’s Early is my best flavored 
cap, and ripens directly after the straw¬ 
berries. Fruit medium; canes, six feet 
high; very drooping; a good bearer. 
Gregg, canes, six to eight feet high; 
partly upright; berries large, firm; 
good bearer; late. Shaffer, canes, 12 to 
15 feet high; drooping. Fruit larger 
than Gregg, and brown , rather tart and 
soft; good bearer, but does not ripen its 
fruit together ; late. 
Muskingum is the grandest bearer I 
have ; berries like Shaffer’s and nearly as 
large. About the same quality and sea¬ 
son, canes three feet high and upright ; 
good. If this berry could ripen its fruit 
more at once it would astonish the 
natives. Palmer, canes four to six feet 
high, drooping. Fruit a little larger than 
Tyler, medium bearer. Tyler is my poor¬ 
est cap in vine, crop and flavor, four to 
six feet high, drooping. 
Currants are all good croppers, and no 
insects infest them. My best variety is 
Fay, followed by Cherry, Victoria and 
Versaillaise. The white currants are 
sweetest. I have picked currants from 
the bush as late as October 25, and a sec¬ 
ond crop of red Superbs November 8 
Among gooseberries, the Industry is 
ahead, and I like the brown color better 
than the green or yellow. Downing, 
Smith and Houghton are all small. My 
bushes of English gooseberries are still 
free from mildew ; they are three years 
old. The Crandall currant grows and 
blooms finely, but does not bear well; 
berries small. Dewberries will make 
fine vines and bloom splendidly, but no 
perfect fruits. I have tried 11 varieties 
of blackberries and failed to find one 
to stand the drought. The Evergreen 
blackberry is a distinct half-creeper, and 
is a wonderful bearer, quite early, and 
of good flavor ; berries the size of wild 
blackberries. It will grow a cane 30 feet 
long in one season, three-quarter? of an 
inch in diameter at bottom ; it is full of 
thorns, and they are hook shaped. The 
fruits are produced on special bloom 
spikes running up from the main vine ; 
it can endure aDy amount of heat and 
stands drought well. 
Many of the old sorts of apples will 
not do well with us here, because, though 
they can withstand severe cold, they can¬ 
not endure our trying climate ; if the 
tree endure ever so well, it cannot make 
perfect fruit. Among those I find Fa- 
meuse, Yellow Bellflower, Gravenstein, 
White Pearmain and several other good 
sorts. The best are those that bloom 
late and are quick to mature the fruit 
aftf r the first fall rain. Among these are 
Red June, Whitney’s No. 20, Tetofsky, 
Astrachan, Duchess, Wealthy, Maiden’s 
Blush, Rambo, Haas, McIntosh, North¬ 
ern Spy, Pewaukee, Walbridge, Ben 
Davis and the Pearmains. Late fall apples 
are our winter apples; late winter will 
not always do well. 
We cannot look for profit from our 
peaches and apricots, but can raise fine 
fruit when the season will permit. Early 
plums are a grand success here, but it is 
hard to save the trees from breaking 
down. Prunes bear well, but the season 
is hardly long enough. Pears grow 
nicely, but have not become old enough 
to show what they will do. Cherries do 
well, but are not as hardy as I would 
like, still I have seen fine crops of several 
varieties on the high lands, x. E. miller. 
CHAUTAUQUA DESK FREE 
SECRETARY MORTON VS. THE GRANGE. 
At the meeting of the Mississippi Val¬ 
ley Horticultural Society in Kansas City, 
in January, 1884, I met J. Sterling Mor¬ 
ton. He was a smooth and polished 
speaker and orator, and was selected on 
that occasion to pay a tribute to the 
memory of Dr. Warder, recently de¬ 
ceased, and offer resolutions of respect 
to his memory. The opinion I formed 
of him was that of a man of great polish 
and very effective as a special pleader, 
but of no very large grasp on affairs 
or events. Gov. Norman J. Colman, 
the first Secretary of Agriculture, was 
also present at that meeting, and had 
much of interest to do and say in the dis¬ 
cussions, while Governor Morton’s name 
appears in the report only in connection 
with the flowery eulogy. 
Governor Morton has, at present, very 
little in common with farmers, and is, I 
fear, not the man for the place. His 
four sons are all in business in Chicago 
as middlemen , and are probably as much 
disposed to “ farm the farmer” as are any 
officers of the Orange.” 
It is now a little over 20 years sicce 
Granges began to be numerous enough 
in northern Ohio to have an influence, 
and I have watched them both outside 
and inside the order with a good deal of 
critical interest, and have .little doubt 
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that the order has on the whole been of 
great value to the farmer class. At many 
points, Granges have been organized, 
where before there was no kind of organi¬ 
zation, not even a church, and got the 
community together at stated intervals, 
gave them a chance to get acquainted, to 
discuss matters of practice, business and 
policy, and educate themselves in a va¬ 
riety of ways. In diseasing matters of 
national policy the Grange has sometimes 
bit off more than it can chew, but Nat¬ 
ional conventions of politicians and State 
legislatures have made the same mistake 
before now. Its breadth of membership 
covering the whole country makes it dif¬ 
ficult to promulgate a line of action, 
everywhere satisfactory and sometimes 
puts certain sections in an antagonistic 
and ridiculous attitude. In the winter 
of 1873-74, the great battle cry was 
“ down with railroad extortion” and the 
Western Granges had an interest in re 
ducing freight rates. Ohio members 500 
or 1,000 miles nearer the seaboard, had 
not this interest, as any reduction in 
freights reduced the advantages we had 
in location. In spite of this fact, how¬ 
ever, the newly fledged Grangers of Ohio 
took up the Western war cry and argued 
and fought hotly in a battle in which 
they had no common interest. Other in¬ 
stances equally patent could be men¬ 
tioned where the Grange of one section 
has not been able to sympathize to any 
great degree with those of other places, 
but the discussions on these various ques¬ 
tions have been of great intellectual 
advantage to farmers in many quiet, out- 
of-the-way places and leavened whole 
States with a desire for more and higher 
knowledge. The knowledge acquired in 
Grange discussions has in many cases 
proved a foil to designing demagogues, 
and many of that genus are down on the 
organization in consequence. 
Of the Alliance and its internal teach¬ 
ings I have none but newspaper and 
hearsay knowledge. In Ohio discon¬ 
tented people of all kinds hurried to its 
ranks, and the heterogeneous character 
of its members may be seen in the 22 
counts it made in its bill of rights in 
State convention two or three years ago 
Two of these were prohibition and re¬ 
duced railroad fares, the first of which 
had no claim as a special farm issue, and 
the other one was so remote that it sim¬ 
ply loaded down important agricultural 
needs with that much dead weight. The 
argeement of the Ohio Alliance on two 
or three needed reformations, and the push¬ 
ing of these to a successful issue, would 
have made it a power in the State and 
left it in shape to have pushed still other 
reforms; but it frittered away its 
strength iii a multitude of side issues, 
■just as an untrimmed grape vine wastes 
its strength, and nothing was secured 
Besides, the organization laid itself open 
to just such charges as Secretary Morton 
has made. l. b pierce. 
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