844 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
December 21 
T H K 
Rural New-Yorker. 
THE B USINESS HAMMERS' PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes 
Established 1850. Copyrighted 1805. 
Elbert S. Carman, Editor-In-Chief. 
Herbert W. Collingwood, Managing Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
PRICE, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 
8s. 6d., or 8% marks, or 10*4 francs. 
ADVERTISING RATES. 
Thirty cents per agate line (14 lines to the inch). Yearly orders 
of 10 or more lines, and 1,000-line orders, 25 cents per line. 
Reading Notices, ending with “Adv.," 75 cents per 
count line. Absolutely One Price Only. 
Advertisements inserted only for responsible and honorable houses 
We must have copy one week before the date of issue. 
Be sure that the name and address of sender, with name of Post- 
office and State, and what the remittance is for, appear in every 
letter. Money orders and bank drafts on New York are the safest 
means of transmitting money. 
Address all business communications and make all orders p&y- 
able to THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
Corner Chambers and Pearl Streets, New York. 
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1895. 
$250 
will be paid January 15 to the persons securing the 
largest eight clubs of subscriptions for The R. N.-Y. 
Every club of 20 earns $5 anyway. 
O 
Our newer readers do not all know that Mr. E. S. 
Carman has written a valuable book on potato grow¬ 
ing entitled “ The New Potato Culture.” This gives 
in detail an account of the development of the 
famous trench system of growing potatoes. The 
book is sold at 40 cents in paper and 75 cents bound 
in cloth. The R. N.-Y. sells it. Every potato grower 
should own it. Another excellent little book for 
those owning a small place is “ A Fortune in Two 
Acres,” by our vivacious friend, Fred Grundy. It 
costs 20 cents. 
® 
An effort is being made to boom gold mining in the 
West just now. The needed capital will be raised at 
the East, and efforts are already being made to ob¬ 
tain money by selling shares to small investors like 
farmers or people in town with a few hundred dollars 
to spare. Our advice is to let these shares alone, and 
to invest the spare money nearer home. Why go 
away from the farm to invest money ? Is there not 
some way in which capital can be used to increase 
the farm's capacity ? You may be entertaining a 
gold mine unawares. 
O 
It is said that $1,066,677,508 one-cent pieces have 
been coined since 1793. There are now 780,000,000 or 
more in circulation. It is singular how, as prices have 
fallen, the demand for “ change for a nickel ” has in¬ 
creased. There is already demand for a half-cent 
piece to enable buyers to make even a closer change. 
We would like to see fractional currency again in cir¬ 
culation—paper money in denominations of 10, 25 and 
50 cents. We believe that it would be to the advan¬ 
tage of farmers, especially for mailage purposes, to 
have this small currency. 
Q 
On the Western deserts, people know the value of 
water because they are often without it. In the early 
days of irrigation, a simple canal was considered 
sufficient, and little thought was given to leakage or 
the vast quantity that soaked away through the bot¬ 
tom and sides of the canal. As the area under irriga¬ 
tion increased, this waste became worth saving, 
and now we read of an 18-mile canal in California 
which had been covered over its entire length with a 
coating of cement. The vast expense involved in this 
cementing will be more than recovered in the mere 
saving of seepage water. Surely, there must be 
“money in irrigation,” if practical men will pay 
money to cement an 18-mile canal. 
Q 
For a good many years, The R. N -Y. has been 
talking about the undiscovered agricultural values 
that lie in swamps and low places. Mr. Hodgman 
(page 839) shows us how Michigan farmers are going 
into these swamps to dodge the drought. In former 
years, the advice was to haul the swamp muck up to 
the upland fields as fertilizer and organic matter. 
This muck represents the leachings that have soaked 
down from the uplands, and why not take it back ? 
The plan now is to drain the swamp and raise the 
crops there, and it is better advice. We met a man 
in Orange County, N. Y., lately who is growing more 
on 13 acres of drained swamp than he can on all the 
rest of a 70-acre farm. In this case, professional 
ditchers all said that the swamp could not be drained 
because there was not fall enough to give an outlet 
for drainage. A skilled engineer came and found 
that there was a fall of a few inches—enough to carry 
off the water in open ditches. Any farmer owning a 
swamp could well afford to get the water out of it 
if possible. Better take the water out and leave the 
muck, than to take the muck and leave the water. 
© 
On Thanksgiving Day, there were on Ellis Island, 
in New York harbor, about 400 immigrants, from 
every quarter of the globe. Some one conceived the 
idea of giving them their first taste of Americanism 
by filling them up with a genuine Thanksgiving din¬ 
ner. They were, therefore, turned loose upon a com¬ 
plete collection of Thanksgiving “fixings”—from tur¬ 
key to celery. They cleaned up everything but the 
celery. They didn’t know that was made to eat, and 
so stuck it in their buttonholes to serve as bouquets. 
Is it only foreigners who fail to know a good thing 
when they see it ? No—lots of good, true-blue Ameri¬ 
can farmers with pedigrees ’way past Bunker Hill, 
don’t grow celery, even for bouquets. They know 
that it is made to eat, but they don’t eat it. Same 
with lettuce and small fruits. Why ? ? ? ? ? 
© 
The question is often asked why more Spitzenberg 
apples are not grown, and we too often ask ourselves 
the same question when partaking of this delicious 
apple, either cooked or as a dessert fruit. The con¬ 
sensus of opinion among fruit growers is that the 
Spitzenberg ranks foremost as a canning apple, and 
certain it is that it has no superior for baking when 
properly cooked. The plain baked apple, for many 
people, is too sour. If the core is removed and the 
hole filled with sugar before baking, the desirable 
flavors are retained, and the objectionable acidity 
overcome. Close observation has shown that fruit 
growers refuse to plant Spitzenbergs, not because 
they are unproductive, or meet with a slow sale, but 
because the trees are short-lived. They bear well 
while young, but do not live long ; the first unfavor¬ 
able symptoms usually are an unhealthy appearance, 
followed by more or less dead wood in the top. This 
continues and increases until the whole tree is dead. 
Where trees have remained productive and attained 
considerable age, as a rule, high culture has been 
given with abundance of plant food. The evidence 
of fruit-growers tends to show that most of the 
Spitzenberg apple trees of the country are starved to 
death. Orchardists who have made the Spitzenberg 
a study, are pretty well agreed on this point, that of 
all varieties of apples, they need the highest culture 
and a liberal amount of available plant food, and 
spraying to ward off the attacks of fungous diseases 
and insects. This point was well discussed in the 
report of the fruit show at the American Institute 
Farmers’ Club on page 840. 
O 
Certain publishers have a habit of sending their 
papers along, year after year, whether a subscriber 
renews his subscription or not. Several agricultural 
papers have worked up what they call “ a large cir¬ 
culation” on this plan. A man subscribes for the 
paper expecting it to stop when the numbers for 
which he has paid have been received. Instead of 
that, it keeps on coming. Oftentimes he pays no 
attention, as he has not ordered it, and frequently 
throws it away unread. Pretty soon there comes a 
bill for $1 or more, and very likely a threatening 
letter dunning him for goods that he never ordered 
or wanted. Here, for example, is a copy of a letter 
sent by an agricultural publisher : 
Dear Sir : We are in receipt of an order from your postmaster 
to discontinue your subscription, which, upon examination of 
our list, we find in arrears. As it is our custom to send our 
journal to responsible subscribers until ordered to the contrary, 
and as no subscription is discontinued until arrearages are paid, 
it will be necessary for you to remit $2.68, which is the amount 
due to date, before we can comply with request. From March 
1893 to November, 1895. 
Now some farmers would pay that bill at once rather 
than have any trouble over it; but they would not 
be wise in doing so. No man has a right to stuff 
goods into your pocket without orders, and then col¬ 
lect money for them. As there seems to be a differ¬ 
ence of opinion concerning the legality of the question 
involved, we sent the above letter and other facts 
to the Post Office Department for an opinion. The 
Third Assistant Postmaster General replies that there 
is nothing in the postal laws concerning the liability 
of a subscriber for the subscription price of a paper 
or periodical. He quotes this paragraph from these 
laws : 
Par. 253.—When a subscriber of a newspaper or periodical re¬ 
fuses to take the same from the office, or neglects to call for it for 
the period of one month, it becomes the duty of the postmaster to 
notify the publisher of the fact. If the first notification be disre¬ 
garded, a second may be sent, calling attention to the previous 
notice. The refused matter should then be held for 30 days, after 
which the same, and all copies thereof subsequently arriving, 
should be placed with the waste paper. 
Our advice to those who receive such bills and letters 
is to ignore them entirely—that is, if they have made 
no use of the paper. Of course, if they have read the 
paper regularly, and have received benefits from it, 
they are under moral obligations to pay for it; but 
if, as in most cases, the paper has been forced upon 
them, and they have no use for it, they should leave 
it in the post office and not give it a second thought. 
© 
On page 781 of The R. N.-Y., Mr. E. H. Currier, of 
Pierce County, Wis., gave a statement, showing how 
he grew an acre of potatoes at an expense of $17.62. 
As will be seen on pages 841 and 842, these figures 
are severely criticised by growers in other parts of 
the country. In our opinion, Mr. Currier makes his 
claims good, and we believe that he does raise his po¬ 
tatoes at five cents a bushel. That he can continue 
to do this for many years without increasing the cost 
of supplying necessary potash and phosphoric acid, 
does not follow. In fact, we believe that he has 
about reached the limit in reduction of cost. How is 
he able to do it ? Many a good farmer can honestly 
question those figures when he reviews his own ex¬ 
perience on small fields of soil that requires heavy 
fertilizing. It is largely a difference between whole¬ 
sale and retail farming. Compare rows 160 rods long 
with those 10 or 15 rods in length, and see how much 
time is lost in the latter case by turning and stop¬ 
ping. Think of the difference between working the 
crop with a two-foot wide cultivator, and scratching 
over it with a 17-foot wide harrow or a three-row 
wide weeder. The five-cent bushel has the advan¬ 
tage of superior climate, and soil appliances that 
utilize the horse’s work to the best advantage. Many 
of these tools could not be used to advantage on the 
hilly and rocky small fields of the East or South. 
That is one advantage of the smooth, rich fields of the 
West—the ability to do a wholesale business in grow¬ 
ing crops. That means business enough to utilize 
expensive machinery for planting, cultivating and 
harvesting. One of our readers says that even though 
these figures are correct, they should not be given, as 
they will tend to discourage farmers, or give false 
hopes to enthusiastic young men. We do not take 
that view of it—we believe it better for farmers to 
look every fact of agricultural development squarely 
in the face, and thus have ample time to study a way 
around it, if possible. 
O 
BREVITIES. 
My name is Claus, old Santa Claus; you’ve heard of me, no doubt. 
I live up in the frozen North—each year I sally out 
And drive my reindeer up and down. I halt at every door, 
At palace, wigwam, hut and tent—with rich folk and with poor. 
I come with gifts and words of love, and in the Christmas air, 
I leave a benediction like an echo of the prayer 
That rose above that baby in the country far away, 
When all the world’s hope centered in the manger where he lay. 
But times are tough this winter, when my products are so low, 
I’ve just got to economize as ’round the world I go. 
I like to meet the wish that lies in every weary heart, 
But cash is scarce, and faith and hope will have to do their part. 
And so as up and down the world I take my cheery march, 
Down in the bottom of the sleigh, I take a bag of starch; 
And when I see some hopeless one just ready to let slip 
On hope, I’ll dole him out a dose to stiffen up his lip, 
And into every drooping spine, and every faltering will, 
I’ll put the stiffest of my starch, and hold them steadfast still 
To that great promise grinding Time has never worn away, 
The trust and faith that coming years will bring a better day. 
Read the bog article—page 851. 
You can’t buy permanent happiness. 
That is sound insurance talk on page 838. 
Any fowl weeds enjoying your henhouse ? 
The most popular rose just now is zeroes. 
Bad cheese is a “terror from whey bac” teria. 
The R. N.-Y. believes in Lynch law for scrubs. 
Read Dr. Hoskins’s definition of weeds—page 845. 
There’s blessing in a good wood pile this weather. 
Hold the forte—the knack of doing something well. 
We have some fine articles on apple culture, coming. 
“ Hang on ! ” is the constitution of the United Stay-its. 
Did you ever spell hog cholera out of the letters, corn? 
Read the interesting story about “ Apple rust ”—page 841. 
The muscle-makers of good clover mate the fat-formers of corn 
stover. 
Better adopt the Mapes hen hospital rule of killing every in 
mate. Food with recovery—fertilizer with disease ! 
, If you found yourself in a position about three sizes too large 
for you, what would you do—get out of it, try to grow , or puff 
yourself up ? 
The State of Pennsylvania has decided that “ Preservaline ” is 
injurious to health. So has the state of many human stomachs 
and kidneys. 
Potatoes for five cents a bushel! Eastern farmers often com¬ 
plain of high freight rates on Western grain. High rates on 
Western potatoes are more of a blessing. 
It’s a mistake! What is? Judging Guernsey cattle on the 
fashion of Jersey breeders, and giving most credit to finer and 
delicate points. Give us a vigorous dairy cow. 
Here are two horses, two farmers and two fields of potatoes. 
One farmer buys two one-horse cultivators and hires a man. He 
waits until the potatoes are well up and then chases these culti¬ 
vators up and down the rows. The other man starts before the 
plants are up, hitches both horses to a wide harrow, and scratches 
five rows at a time. Whose fault is it that the labor on one field 
is cheaper than on the other ? 
