Published  by 
The  Rural  Publishing  Co. 
333  W.  30th  Street 
New  York 
The  Rural  New-Yorker 
The  Business  Farmer’s  Paper 
Weekly.  One  Dollar  Per  Year 
Postpaid 
Single  Copies.  Five  Cents 
VOL.  LXXV. 
NEW  YORK.  MAY  13.  1916. 
No.  4371 
“There  is  More  in  the  Man  Than  in 
the  Land” 
X  passing  arourul  the  country  in  any  section  one 
can  find  here  and  there  men  who  have  made  a 
success  in  farming,  and  the  wonder  is  always  that 
their  example  spreads  so  slowly  among  men  around 
them.  Talking  a  day  or  so  ago  with  the  farm  dem¬ 
onstrator  in  our  county,  he  said:  “The  good  farmers 
do  not  need  me.  for  they  can  farm  as  well  as  I  can, 
hut  the  majority  of  the  farmers  are  not  farming  as 
well  as  they  know  how,  and  the  problem  is  how  to 
put  more  ginger  into  the  farmers,  and  get  them  to 
use  the  knowledge  they  already  have.” 
Years  ago,  at  the  request  of  the  Governor  of  North 
Carolina,  I  went  to  Nebraska  to  study  tlje  Licet  sugar 
manufacture  T  visited  and  inspected  a  large  fac¬ 
tory  at  Norfolk,  Neb.,  and  was  very  much  interested 
in  the  process  of  getting  white  granulated  sugar  in 
12  hours  from  the  raw  beets.  While  there  I  rode 
around  and  talked  with  the  farmers.  Talking  with 
an  unusual  sight  to  see  a  farmer  in  that  part  of 
the  country  selling  bacon.  lie  said,  “Cotton  is  now 
very  low  in  price  (in  fact  it  was  then  lower  than 
it  has  ever  keen  since).  With  my  methods  of  fann¬ 
ing  I  can  make  cotton  at  a  cost  of  1  </2  cents  a  pound, 
while  there  are  all  cotton  men  around  here  who  take 
three  or  four  acres  to  make  a  bale,  and  eonnot  make 
it  at  present  price  at  all.  But  I  made  that  bacon  at 
the  same  price  per  pound  that  my  cotton  costs,  and 
the  bacon  is  bringing  an  average  of  14  cents  a  pound 
right  here  at  home." 
This  same  man  had  a  flock  of  sheep,  a  cross  of 
a  Merino  ram  on  the  pure  Southdown,  and  was  get¬ 
ting  an  extra  price  for  his  wool,  because  of  the  ex¬ 
tra  fineness  from  the  Merino  cross.  And  yet,  as  he 
said,  there  were  men  all  around  him  growing  noth¬ 
ing  but  cotton  year  after  year  on  the  same  impov¬ 
erished  soil,  and  never  learning  from  the  example 
right  before  them.  This  man  had  level  high  land  on 
which  here  and  there  were  sinks  that  held  water 
and  made  ponds.  When  I  was  there  these  old 
the  place  annually,  and  raises  mules,  and  says  that 
he  can  there  raise  a  three-year-old  mule  for  $50.  A 
carload  he  recently  sold  in  Atlanta  brought  for  the 
meanest  one  in  the  lot  $165.  He  grows  thousands 
of  bushels  of  corn  and  wheat  and  makes  lug  cotton, 
and  by  careful  breeding  has  gotten  his  corn  to  such 
a  condition  that  it  is  in  demand  for  seed  corn.  And 
yet  there  are  thousands  in  Alabama  who  will  tell 
you  that  there  is  no  money  there  in  anything  but 
cotton.  Truly  in  every  part  of  the  country  “there  is 
more  in  the  man  than  in  the  land." 
W.  F.  MASSEY. 
Criminal  Treatment  of  Poultry 
THE  people  of  the  City  of  New  York  annually 
eat  thirty-five  million  head  of  poultry  that  are 
slowly  dying  at  the  time  they  are  dressed  for  the  re¬ 
tail  trade.  If  not  killed  promptly  they  would  die 
within  three  or  four  days.  For  the  privilege  of  eat¬ 
ing  this  diseased  poultry,  the  people  of  New  York 
one  German  farmer  I  asked  him  if  the  cultivation 
of  a  few  acres  of  beets  interfered  much  with  his 
corn  crop.  “There  is  the  corn,”  said  lie.  “There  is 
no  sunflower  in  it.”  The  absence  of  sunflower  was 
an  evidence  of  clean  cultivation.  I  asked  him  what 
corn  was  selling  for.  “The  elevator  pays  25  cents  a 
bushel,  but  I  sell  no  corn  to  the  elevator,  for  I 
feed  it  to  hogs  and  they  walk  off  and  get  me  50 
cents  a  bushel  and  leave  me  some  manure."  Then 
I  said  I  had  noticed  in  the  town  that  the  stores  were 
supplied  with  Chicago  packing  house  meat,  and 
would  it  not  pay  to  supply  them  some  home-cured 
bacon.  “That  is  a  good  idea,”  said  he.  “I  think  I 
will  cure  some  and  get  75  cents  for  my  corn.” 
On  another  occasion  I  was  in  South  Carolina,  and 
was  entertained  at  the  home  of  a  large  and  suc¬ 
cessful  farmer,  a  man  who  seldom  made  less  than  a 
bale  and  a  half  of  cotton  an  acre.  Sitting  on  his 
porch  I  saw  a  man  drive  up  with  a  light  wagon. 
My  host  went  out  to  him  and  in  a  little  while  I 
saw  the  man  drive  off  with  a  load  of  smoked  bacon. 
As  my  host  returned  I  remarked  that  it  was  rather 
ponds,  where  he  said  that  the  alligators  would 
switch  their  tails  from  one  pond  to  another  and 
thrash  down  the  cotton,  had  now  the  heaviest  cot¬ 
ton  in  the  fields.  He  said  that  to  drain  some  of 
those  ponds  he  had  to  cut  ditches  10  feet  deep  to 
get  fall  for  the  tile,  but  it  paid.  “And  now,”  said  he, 
“there  are  no  alligators  this  side  of  the  Bee  Dee 
River.” 
Evidently  then.  North  or  South,  there  is  more  in 
the  man  than  in  the  land.  On  another  occasion  I 
went  to  see  the  farm  which  a  young  man  from 
Kentucky  had  bought  in  the  hill  country  of  North 
Alabama.  lie  took  an  old  run-down  cotton  plan¬ 
tation,  and  started  to  make  a  grain,  cotton  and 
stock  farm,  and  was  laughed  at  for  trying  to  grow 
wheat  there.  But  he  persevered,  though  his  first 
crop  of  wheat  was  six  bushels  an  acre,  and  at  the 
time  of  my  visit  was  making  35  bushels  an  acre, 
growing  heavy  crops  of  grass  and  clover  and  big 
corn  crops.  In  fact  he  says  that  he  can  make  com 
at  a  cost  of  11  cents  a  bushel  and  can  get  75  cents 
for  it.  lie  has  a  fine  herd  of  b*»<»f  cattle  tired  on 
annually  pay  an  amount  of  money  approximating 
seven  million  dollars.  The  fact  that  the  poultry 
is  slowly  dying  when  killed  by  the  kosher  butchers 
in  New  York  City  is  shown  by  the  V.  S.  Department 
of  Agriculture. 
There  are  seven  thousand  carloads  of  live  poul¬ 
try  shipped  to  New  York  from  Western  States  an¬ 
nually,  with  approximately  5.000  fowls  to  a  car, 
averaging  four  pounds  each,  totalling  one  hundred 
and  forty  million  pounds  of  poultry.  The  average 
wholesale  price  is  about  20  cents  per  pound,  making 
a  total  of  twenty-eight  million  dollars.  This  poul¬ 
try  retails  at  approximately  25  cents  a  pound,  mak¬ 
ing  a  total  retail  cost  of  thirty-five  million  dollars 
annually. 
The  poultry  is  bought  from  the  producers  by 
dealers  in  the  West.  The  producer  is  obliged  to  de¬ 
liver  the  birds  with  empty  crops.  If  the  bird  is 
delivered  to  the  dealers  with  any  food  in  its  crop, 
10%  of  the  total  weight  is  deducted  for  feed  allow¬ 
ance.  This  makes  it  clear  that  the  farmer  is  in  no 
way  responsible  for  the  conditions  in  which  the  poul- 
