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VOLUME VI. NO. 30.} 
ROCHESTER, N: Y.-SATURDAY, JULY §8, 1855. 
{WHOLE NO. K0, 
Inflow's $oral %tk-§axht. 
A QUARTO WEEKLY 
AGRICULTURAL, LITERARY, & FAMILY JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOORE. 
ASSOCIATE EDITORS • 
J. H. BIXFiY, T. C. PETERS, EDWARD WEBSTER. 
Special Contributors : 
T. E Wetmork. H. C. White, H. T. Brooks, L. Wftoeri-xl. 
Ladies’ Port-Folio by Ataim. 
The Rural New-Yorkkr is designed to be nnique and 
beautiful in appearance, and unsurpassed in Value, Purity 
and Variety of Contents. Its conductors earnestly labor 
to make it a Reliable Guide on the important Practical 
Subjects connected with the business of those whose 
interests it advocates. It ombraces more Agricultural, 
Horticultural, Scientific, Mechanical, literary and News 
Matter, interspersed with many appropriate and beautiful 
Engravings, than any other paper published in this 
Country,—rendering it a complete Agricultural, Lite¬ 
rary and Family Newspaper, 
For Terms, and other particulars, see New3 page. 
■><».< 
|luntl Jleto-fcker. 
PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT. 
THE WHEAT CROP—PRICES. 
The Wheat Crop of 1855 has ripened, and 
a great portion of it will have been secured 
ere this paper reaches its readers. The yield 
of the crop, and prospective prices of bread- 
stuffs, are therefore questions of absorbing in¬ 
terest to all classes of community. Producers, 
speculators, and the great mass cf consumers, 
are discussing the subject more earnestly per¬ 
haps than at any other period wilhin the last 
decade. Each class is hopeful of the future, 
yet neither can arrive at a satisfactory con¬ 
clusion, or specify as to results with any great 
degree of positiveness. Indeed, it is perhaps 
too early in the season to canvass the subject 
fully and intelligibly, for the reason that the 
yield of the crop in many districts is yet un¬ 
known. And still, inasmuch as the matter is 
of paramount importance to a great majori'y 
of our readers in the grain-growing regions, 
we thus early commence its discussion. 
Without attempting to particularize in re¬ 
gard to the yield in all the wheat growing 
districts of the country, we still have sufficient 
data to conclude that the growth of wheat has 
generally been excellent, and that the crop is 
not inferior to that of former years in either 
yield or quality. And yet, taking the whole 
country into the account,— making allowance 
for the partial failures in some sections, and 
the comparatively small breadth of land sown 
to wheat, last fall, in others,—we are confident 
that the yield of the crop has been over-esti¬ 
mated by many dealers and commercial papers. 
The aggregate product is, very probably, 
greater than the average for the past three or 
five years, yet we doubt w hether the increase 
is much if any above the increased population 
and home consumption of the country. 
In the present unsettled state of the mar¬ 
ket, and feverish excitement and uncertainty 
as to the amount of the crop, it is of course 
difficult to arrive at any satisfactory conclu¬ 
sion in regard to future prices of breadstuff's. 
The views of producers and dealers are proba¬ 
bly more adverse than i'or many years,—for 
while the former are anticipatirg high prices, 
the latter apparently believe they will rule ex¬ 
tremely low for the next twelve months. In 
our opinion both classes will be disappointed 
in the result. The large crop will be likely to 
cause a further decline in prices,—yet the 
scarcity of all grains before harvest, (the old 
crop being nearly or quite exhausted,) and 
the continued demand for both wheat and flour 
for exportation to Europe, will prevent the 
great depreciation of prices anticipated by 
dealers and speculators. That the fore : gn 
demand will continue there can be no doubt, 
and that it will be materially increased is 
more than probable. The scarcity of old 
grains, and the increase of our population, 
will of course augment the demand for home 
consumption—an item which will alone re¬ 
quire an unusually large proportion of the 
annual production. For these and other rea¬ 
sons which we will not now' stop to enume¬ 
rate, we cannot resist the conviction that the 
new crop will command a fair, though not 
exhorbitant, price—and that wheat growers 
will be amply remunerated for their labor and 
expenditures. 
— We Bhall recur to this subject when more 
definite information is obtainable relative to 
the crop now bemg harvested. Meantime the 
following sensible article, which w T e have just 
received from a Genesee County Farmer, is 
worthy the attention of all wheat growers.— 
Though the writer takes a somewhat extreme 
view of the subject, there is much cogency in 
his points and arguments : 
Editor Rural : — As the wheat harvest is 
rapidly approaching, a word of caution to 
fanners in regard to the “ tricks of trade,” 
may not be ill-timed or inappropriate. For 
the last three years I have had occasion to 
watch the signs of the times indicating the 
movements of speculators in farm products in 
general, and in wheat in particular, and have 
made a note of my observations to which I 
now invite the attention of wheat growers. 
That the price of the wheat crop now rap¬ 
idly whitening for the reaper will rule high, 
in comparison with former years, or even the 
last two, there can be no reasonable doubt.— 
The only question with me is whether the ad¬ 
vantages resulting from high prices shall in¬ 
ure to the interests and benefit of the produ¬ 
cers or to speculators and trafficking middle 
men who are already industriously engaged in 
preparing the way for a rich harvest for them¬ 
selves,— not in the beautiful golden grain 
which is the just pride cf the husbandman 
who has labored and toiled through the year to 
mature the crop, but in the thousands which 
they expect t. realize as the profits of trade. 
That the profits of the last two crops have 
mainly been secured by speculators at home 
and abroad, is fully established by the fact 
that a large portion of those crops had passed 
out of the hands of the producers before any 
material advance in price was realized. The 
market was first depressed by false reports of 
the prospects of an abundant harvest in 
Europe and the United States, until the crop 
was mainly bought up, when the weather sud¬ 
denly changed, or was reported to have 
changed, and it was then discovered that the 
yield had been a light one, that in England 
and France a great deal had been lost in con¬ 
sequence of bad weather in harvesting, and 
that the crop would fall far below the average 
for several years ; the consequence was a large 
advance in prices on wheat held mostly by 
speculators, who had greatly affected the mar¬ 
ket by reports manufactured solely for that 
purpose, and industriously circulated by the 
press and the telegraph, both of which, in com¬ 
mercial matters, are mainly controlled by com¬ 
mercial men. 
The same class of speculators are using the 
same means to produce a similar effect on the 
market this year also, but I trust they will 
fail in their efforts. That the crop will be an 
average one compared with the product of the 
last five years is unquestionably true. But 
upon what basis the calculation is made that 
the crop will greatly exceed the average of 
the last five yc-ars is diilicult to understand— 
especially since those who maintain the 
affirmative do not favor us with the details of 
their anticipations. With the narrow breadth 
sown last fall in Ohio and a portion of Indi¬ 
ana, and the destruction by the fly in Michi¬ 
gan, aud Northern Ohio and Indiana, the 
chinch bug in Illinois, and the midge or wee¬ 
vil in Western New York and other wheat 
sections of the country, it is believed to be 
impossible that the present crop should great¬ 
ly exceed that of previous years. Admitting 
that the harvest will prove an average one, 
what is the reasonable prospect for prices this 
fall ? In this query the wheat growers of the 
country are deeply interested. It will be uni¬ 
versally admitted that the stock of old wheat 
has not been lighter in twenty years at har¬ 
vest, than it is at the present time. In that 
length of time perhaps the prospect for the 
corn crop has not been more unfavorable.— 
We must, then, rely mainly upon the wheal 
crop for bread for the next twelve months, 
and when it is remembered that the popula¬ 
tion of our towns and cities, for the last few 
years has increased much more rapidly than 
in the rural districts, and that the immigra¬ 
tion to this country has been greater for the 
past three years than at any former period— 
and that this class of our population are con¬ 
sumers and not producers for several years af¬ 
ter their arrival, whether located in town or 
country—it will be difficult, we imagine, even 
for speculators, who have a peculiar faculty 
for making things look fair on paper, to figure 
up a large surplus after supplying the wants of 
this country. But supposing there should be 
a surplus, what then? For the last year 
wheat has been worth in Rochester two dol¬ 
lars per bushel for shipping to Europe, and it 
is not likely to be worth less for that purpose 
as long as the war continues ; on the contrary 
in all probability it will be worth more for 
the next year than it has been for the last.— 
It is already announced that agents of the 
French Government are in the Atlantic cities 
ready to buy as soon as the new crop comes 
into market. In view of these facts we think 
there can be no doubt but the new crop will 
rule a3 high through the year as the last one 
did, a,nd the question for farmers to decide is, 
whether they will secure the advantages re¬ 
sulting from high prices or permit speculators 
to secure those advantages. With the con¬ 
sumer it will make but little difference who 
pockets the profits. j. g. s. 
REVOLUTION IN FARMING, 
The world’s physical advancement has usu¬ 
ally been measured by the changes made in 
the mechanic arts. Great eras have been 
marked in human history by the invention of 
the printing press, the steam engine, the power 
loom, the railroad, the telegraph, and other 
cognate enterprises, and their influence very 
justly appreciated and acknowledged. The 
inventive genius of mankind has, until the pres¬ 
ent century, been chiefly directed to the ser¬ 
vice of manufactures and commerce, leaving 
the kindred and more vitally important em¬ 
ployment of agriculture entirely out of view. 
The two women grinding at the mill have both 
lorg since been taken away, and water and 
steam, with their resistless power, made to 
perform work that would defy, in each instance, 
the united muscles of thousands of men. The 
gossamer tissue of the silk-worm is handled by 
an iron-fingered engine, with all the delicacy 
of the most sensitive nerves ; and the manip¬ 
ulations of all the arts have, by the triumphs 
of human genius, been turned over to the per¬ 
fect workings of automaton machines. All 
this had been going on for centuries, while, in 
agriculture, the chief processes were still con¬ 
fined to the operation of human hands. It is 
true a gradual improvement took place in the 
models of agricultural implements, and in the 
materials of which they were constructed ; but 
these changes were forced upon community 
by the advancement of the mechanic arts gen¬ 
erally, rather than produced by a bold and 
initiatory step in the agricultural department 
itself. They were the reflections of a borrow¬ 
ed light emanating from other departments of 
human industry, rather than a lumication of 
its own. 
The farmers, in the early part of the nine¬ 
teenth century, still used a plow scarcely bet¬ 
ter in its model than that used by the ancient 
Romans; and cattle were not unfrequently 
employed in treading out the grain. Small 
inducement was held out to the skillful me¬ 
chanic to engage as a laborer in agriculture or 
anything connected with it. Stalwart limbs 
and insensibility to fatigue, were the chief re¬ 
quisites of a farm laborer, and even these were 
paid for in the usual niggardly way that brute 
force only is rewarded. Twelve dollars a 
month was giveu for the services of a farm 
hand, while a good mechanic at any other em¬ 
ployment would obtain double that sum. A 
man that has mechanical skill sufficient to 
whittle out a cider tap, make a wooden linch¬ 
pin and turn a grindstone, would do very well 
for a farm hand, provided he was physically 
endued w ith the power to work aud possessed 
the will to do it. Perhaps there was no busi¬ 
ness that required so little exercise of the in¬ 
tellectual faculties as farming under the old 
regime. Plow and sow in the spring, harvest 
in the summer and autumn, and thresh in the 
winter, about covered the ground of ne¬ 
cessary knowledge. 
All these things have undergone a change 
within a few years. The best hand now em¬ 
ployed upon a farm is not the man who can 
cut the neatest swath or thresh out the mest 
grain with a flail. Farm machinery is work¬ 
ing a wonderful revolution in agricultural pro¬ 
cesses, and is doing much of the work better 
and much more rapidly than it was executed 
by the old hand process. We remember an 
old farmer who prided himself upon the splen¬ 
did manner in which he broad cast his seed 
wheat, and he would point to the green field 
in the fall after the grain was up, proudly con¬ 
trasting it with his neighbor’s streaked ground. 
But at length that neighbor purchased a grain 
drill, and the comparison thenceforth was de¬ 
cidedly in his favor. The old farmer could 
never speak complacently of a grain drill af¬ 
terwards, declaring it would ruin all skill in 
sowing, and enable a mere clod-hopper to scat¬ 
ter seed equal to the best wheat grower in the 
world. 
Who would think at the present day of fall¬ 
ing back upon the flail to do the threshing of 
our grain ? And yet, the writer remembers to 
have heard it gravely argued, that a threshing 
machine was a miserable invention, and vastly 
inferior to the flail. That it wa3 far better for 
a farmer to hire a couple of men two or three 
months in the winter to thresh out his ^heat, 
than to have it done by a machine in as many 
days. “ It spoiled the straw,” it was said; 
“ the cattle would not eat it half as well as they 
would that thrown out day by day as threshed 
by a flail,” with other arguments equa’ly as co¬ 
gent, and which would now be regarded at 
least as evidences of partial insanity. 
The g.wg plow, the wheel cultivator, the 
horse rake, the corn sheller, and above all the 
mower and the reaper are additional illustra¬ 
tions of the revolution that is going on in the 
agricultural departments of human industry, 
brought about by the direct application of 
scientific knowledge and inventive genius in 
the substitution of machinery for manual labor. 
All of our energetic agriculturists are adopt¬ 
ing machinery more or less, as their surplus 
means will admit; and the lively rattle of the 
mower and the reaper is heard the present 
season in innumerable fields that never before, 
in gathering the harvest, felt anything but the 
slow-paced movement of the cradler. 
This intelligent desire on the part of our 
farmers to do their work by machinery instead 
of human muscle, has, within a few years, 
built up large establishments where agricultu¬ 
ral implements are made. They rival, in 
many instances, the machine shops of manufac¬ 
tories and railroads, and employ great numbers 
of men. The prominent objects in an agricul¬ 
tural warehouse, are no longer the plow, the 
rake and the scythe, although these are by no 
means dispensed with. The mower, the reap¬ 
er, the drill and other kindred instruments, 
now occupy the fore ground, and the farmer, 
well to do in the world, pays as many dollars 
for a machine to do his work, as formerly for 
the simpler instruments he paid cents. But 
the difference is more than compensated by 
the rapidity and certainty with which the 
work is executed and the reduced number of 
hands employed. A few men in the harvest 
field at two dollars a day, very soon absorb 
the entire cost of a reaper. 
In view of the change which is taking place 
in the processes of agriculture, it behooves our 
farmers, especially the young, to educate them¬ 
selves with some reference to these points — 
No human knowledge ever came amiss, and 
we never heard of a man, farmer or otherwise, 
who knew too much, although there are very 
many familiar instances of individuals placing 
too high an estimate upon their own abilities. 
A thorough knowledge of Natural Philoso¬ 
phy, especially in the department of Mechanics, 
is of the highest importance to the farmer; 
for in many of the implements, as nrach skill 
is requisite to use them successfully, as to 
use an ordinary steam engine. The time is 
not far distant, if indeed it is not to-day, when 
good mechanical abilities will be as much 
needed in agriculture as in the trades, and will 
be as amply rewarded. 
Another revolution which is taking place in 
consequence of the introduction of farm ma¬ 
chinery, is the careful manner in which the 
fields are fitted tor their use. A man with a 
scythe can, with extra labor, manage to se¬ 
cure a tolerable crop of hay on a field that 
would ruin the best mower ever made; and 
the introduction of the latter method of cut¬ 
ting the grass is an additional argument for 
the farmer to put hi3 meadows in admirable 
order. Let an intelligent man, but one unac¬ 
quainted with the action of a machine, break 
out a few guards and batter up half a dozen 
cutters on a new mower, one season, and no 
fear need be entertained but that next year 
his meadows will be free from stumps and 
stones. There are undoubtedly very many 
machines of different kinds offered to the farm¬ 
er, which cannot prove otherwise than failures; 
but they no more disprove the value of farm 
machinery than a counterfeit gold piece would 
disprove the value of the genuine coin. 
Ciimnutiutdiflits. 
CUTTING WHEAT BEFORE IT IS RIPE. 
IN THREE NUMBERS-NO. II. 
It has been asserted that the monopoly of 
salt, some years since, by the British East 
Company in India, was the cause of the 
Asiatic cholera, (that dreadful disease which 
swept over the world like an ancient pesti¬ 
lence,) because the native population, which 
live almost exclusively upon vegetable diet, 
(Rice,) was unable to pay the extravagant 
price at which that necessary of life was held 
by that “ soulless” corporation. If that be 
true, (and I think there is a strong probabil¬ 
ity it is “o, Y„‘« ’t not reasonable to sup¬ 
pose that diseases of that description, aud 
even that terrible scourge itself, is, in a great 
measure, owing to the unwise use of vegeta¬ 
ble diet ? If the disuse of salt in India caused 
even ripe vegetable food (fer until the con¬ 
trary appears, I must suppose they were wise 
enough to let their chief article of food, rice, 
ripen before gathering it,) to become un¬ 
healthy, can we not safely say that flour from 
unripe wheat will contribute in as great, or 
even a greater degree, to cause the same, 
or similar diseases to fall upon us ? I think 
so. Bnt, although I believe that the great¬ 
est predisposing cause of cholera is the unwise 
use of too much unripe vegetable diet, I do not 
propose to go into an argument on that 
subject. 
It may be more profitable to the farmer to 
cut his wheat in its unripe state, if he gets a 
machine, threshes it out, and sells it immediately, 
—as I have known some to do, even when 
their wheat was yet so soft that, upon trial, I 
could crush one half or more of the grains be¬ 
tween my thumb and finger! Such grain 
could not be safely stored, nor manufactured 
into good or wholesome flour. It could not, 
even by the most active means, be carried to 
Troy, (the usual market.) It heated on the 
way, became nearly spoiled, and I was inform¬ 
ed that it was sold as of inferior quality.— 
Now I would ask whether the most ardent 
advocate of this unripe theory, would be wil¬ 
ling to use the flour made from such wheat ?— 
I presume he would not. And yet very much 
of the flour which is vended in the markets 
is, undoubtedly, of that description. When 
it is very bad it is called “ sourbut no 
doubt a large portion “passes inspection,” 
and is sold as “good,” and even sometimes 
it is dubbed “ fancy ” because of its whiteness. 
f believe it is generally known that it 
is very difficult, if not impossible, to distin¬ 
guish the flour made of wheat that is not free 
from disease, or unripe, from that made from 
wheat which is sound and good. Such, par¬ 
ticularly, is said to be the case with that 
which is call “ sick-wheat,” the flour of which 
is poisonous, and if eaten, in a few moments 
causes violent vomitirg,—oftentimes produc¬ 
ing the most fatal consequences. In Ohio 
it was, by statute, made a criminal offense to 
sell such flour. When traveling in that state, 
some years ego, I saw a published proclama¬ 
tion of the Mayor of Cincinnati, offering a re¬ 
ward of two hundred dollars for the discovery 
and conviction of a villain who had, just pre¬ 
viously, sold such fleur to a family in that 
city which had endangered their lives. Be¬ 
fore “ sick wheat ” is manufactured into flour, 
it is easily known from that which is goed, 
