1236 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 14, 1922 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S FA PER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Home! 
Established ts;0 
Publish'd ntrkly by tb» Rnrsf Pnbliuhlnr fomiiuny. 3:i» W»«i 30lh Street, New York 
IIbbbvrt W. CoiAiKuwoob, Prenitlcnt anil Editor. 
John .1 rmxoN, Trouiurer Hint cnneral Mumiircr. 
TV«l F. Dillon, eecirturj’- Mu*. K. T. KoVLt. AMociate Editor. 
L. H. MUHl'HY, Oircnlntton Miuiiurrr _ 
SUBSCRIPTION : ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries In the Universal Postal I idon, 8" OC Remit in money 
order, express order, personal ehcch or bunk diart. 
Entered at Sew York Tost Orece as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates. $1.00 per agate line—? words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL" 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible person. We use every potalhlc precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. Rut. to make (loulily sure wr will make good any loss 
lo paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertUeno nts in our columns, and any 
such swindler will be publicly *sx|X"->d. We are also often railed upon 
to adjust <Ii(Terences or mistakes between our subscribers and honest, 
responsible houses, whether advertiser* or not. M e willingly use our good 
offices to this end, but such cast* should not be confused with dishonest 
transaction* We protect siiKterlbtre against rogues, hut we will not he 
responsible for the debts of Honest bankrupts sanctioned by tlic courts. 
Not ice of the complaint must be sent to us within one month of the time of 
the transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural hEW» 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
I have five children raised on milk. The oldest is 
just entering Yale, lie is six feet four and broad in 
proportion. Also has won some honors and no condi¬ 
tions. Milk and nuts, fruit and vegetables, cereals and 
more milk ! 5V. c, n, 
I THY do you keep up this endless talk about 
W milk?" asked a friend the other day. Well, 
the good things of life should ever be kept iu mind— 
and milk is one of the most useful things iu the 
world. Among vital necessities it ranks only a little 
behind water, air, sunshine and heat. No race of 
strong, healthy men ami women can endure without 
milk. Nuts, too! They will give a full substitute for 
meat, with none of its well-known injurious effects. 
We see so many small, undersized and puny chil¬ 
dren growing up as a result of a lack of milk that 
we feel it a duty to milk away at the subject until 
every American child can have its quart of milk per 
day. And back of all that, is the national need of 
giving prosperity to dairying, the most necessary of 
all American industries. 
* 
I T is always a hard job for anyone not a profes¬ 
sional statistician to understand a tariff or its 
influence upon prices, it is hard therefore to settle 
the claim that the wool tariff will increase the cost 
of clothing. Some clothing dealers are publicly 
claiming that the new tariff will Compel buyers to 
pay from $4 to $7.50 extra for an ordinary suit of 
clothes. This seems to be on the assumption that 
such clothing is "all wool” and that the present tariff 
is higher than the previous one. It is not likely that 
any "ordinary" suit contains one-half its weight in 
virgin wool. The remainder is shoddy, and should 
not be counted into the increased tariff cost. As for 
rates in the tariff. Senator Smoot has printed the 
following: 
The facts are as follows: Under the emergency tariff 
a duty of 15 cenis per lb. was placed on wool imported 
in the grease. 30 ceuts if washed, and Jo cents if 
scoured, with the proviso that if altered in any way 
from the condition as shorn from the -beep, (lie duty 
should be doubled, but not to exceed 45 cents per lb. 
About 00 per cent of the imported wool used for 
clothing is altered, from the condition as shorn, by the 
removal of less desirable, heavy shrinking portions of 
the fleece, and, owing to the requirements of the mills# 
it is imported in the grease. This means that the duty 
per grease pound was 00 cents under the emergency 
tariff, and since these wools eoutniii about Ui per cent 
of dirt, the effective duty per pound of clean content 
was about 55 cents. 
Accordingly, virtually all these wools imported after 
May 27, 1021. when the emergency tariff became ef¬ 
fective, were placed in bond and held there until the 
present tariff, with its greatly lowered effective rates, 
went into effect. These wools are now being withdrawn 
for use by the mills, and are paying a duty of 31 cents 
per lb. of clean content instead of 55 cents. 
If that is true this cry about the need of charging 
more for ordinary clothing is simply “bunk.” in 
addition to this it seems to be a fact that a good 
proportion of clothing now offered for sale was man¬ 
ufactured from wool which was imported free of 
duty-—before tbe emergency tariff was enacted. We 
do not believe the clothing dealers are iu any way 
justified in increasing their prices. They cannot 
prove the necessity. They seem to be trying to take 
advantage of the natural reaction against any 
change in the tariff. 
* 
A ND now we learn that the common rose bush 
has in some localities a vital connection with 
potato growing. No, Burbank does not claim to have 
produced a plant carrying roses above ground and 
potatoes at the roots; the rose rises to more deli¬ 
cate work than that. It. is a “host plant” for the 
pink and green aphis which work on potatoes. This 
fact has been worked out by Edith M. Patch of the 
Maine Experiment Station. The "host plant" plays 
a large part in the troubles of animals and plants. 
The poison of malaria develops in tbe mosquito, 
while the hippopotamus carries the germ of sleeping 
sickness. The wild cherry is “host" for the tent 
caterpillar, the cedar for apple rust, and the black 
currant for certain diseases of the pine, while dogs 
may carry hydrophobia or tapeworm. In the case 
of the rose and the potato the aphis lives during the 
Summer on the potato vines. In the Fall certain 
specimens go to the rose bushes and deposit their 
eggs. These eggs winter on the roses and in the 
Spring hatch out aphis which go back to the potato 
vines. All through the Summer the young are horn 
alive—there being no egg stage. Tbe last generation 
of females for tbe season are the only ones which 
produce eggs, and they go to rose hushes for that 
operation. If tbe rose bushes within reasonable dis¬ 
tance of tbe potato fields were destroyed or care¬ 
fully sprayed there could be few if any aphis carried 
over through Winter. These aphis not only suck the 
juices from the potato plants, but they carry dis¬ 
eases from one plant to another. Without doubt 
they cause much of the spread of mosaic and leaf- 
roll and are partly responsible for the rapid spread 
of blight. While these aphis feed on a number of 
common plants, it seems to have been demonstrated 
that they winter onlu on rose t>italics. That, at 
least, is true of Maine, and the chief trouble comes 
from the wild roses often found scattered through 
the woods or left to run wild around abandoned 
houses. When the Panama Canal was dug the doc¬ 
tors found that the French had failed, not because 
of the “exceeding high mountains" to he cleared 
away, but because of the tiny malaria-bearing mos¬ 
quitoes. "Doctoring" for malaria was of little avail 
until these mosquitoes were destroyed. Perhaps we 
shall find that much of this labor and expense in 
spraying to kill potato aphis may be saved by de¬ 
stroying the wild roses and spraying the cultivated 
hushes. 
* 
T ills middleman proposition has come to the 
poiut where it is said that for every three farm¬ 
ers in the country raising fruit, vegetables, grain or 
meat, there is one clerk or storekeeper to make 
sales. The statement seems incredible at first, but 
we think, after all. it is close to the truth. If two- 
thirds of those middlemen were taken right out of 
their jobs, and the consumers were willing to help, 
food would still be distributed and at less than half 
the cost. One trouble is that most city people de¬ 
mand private service. Grandmother willingly 
lugged a basket back from -market or store. She 
paid herself for doing it with a lower price. .She 
and her husband saved those little sums of money 
and passed them on to their descendants. Today 
her grand-daughter will not carry the basket be¬ 
cause those of her "set" will not do so. And all this 
means thousands of servants and flunkeys employed 
to do useless work and render useless service—and 
all finally paid for out of the 05 cents in the final 
split-lip of the dollar, which leaves the producer 35 
cents. The money needed for extravagant rents and 
high labor wages, are. at. the last analysis, taken by 
the handlers out of every can of milk, every pack¬ 
age of food, fuel or metal, which the farmer or the 
miner produces. That is a side of the distribution 
problem which many of us fail to recognize when we 
talk of improved marketing. The consumer needs 
education far more than the producer—and who is 
to give it to him? 
* 
H ERE is a new problem from one of our New 
York readers. He has made a contract to 
carry the local school children to the consolidated 
school. Of course we know that he is not likely to 
get rich at that job. Formerly lie used a horse and 
wagon, but now he has a car which he wants to use 
for carrying these children. The neighbors come 
and tell him that if he does so he will be obliged to 
take out an omnibus registration and a chauffeur’s 
license—which would just about eat up all be gets 
for tbe transportation. What is the answer? The 
State Tax Commission settles it for us in this way: 
If the party uses his vehicle in carrying school chil¬ 
dren as outlined in his letter, he will not require an 
omnibus registration, nor will the operator of the 
vehicle require a chauffeur’s license, lie will not be 
privileged, however, to carry other passengers for com¬ 
pensation. the law limiting the use of the vehicle under 
pleasure registration to carrying children to schools 
outside of cities. 
* 
While I admit most of the present unsavory situation 
D dm- to a lot of us just taking the easy way of letting 
"George do it," I try to jolly myself that my influence 
is so trifling as to be negligible. Of course ibis is just 
what the gang politician wishes. If some one could 
wake up nil such fellows there would be a general 
housecleaning. K. w, 
Pennsylvania. 
44 A N honest confession is good for the soul." 
jlx This man has stated the case exactly for 
most of us. Wc do not like the way thiugs are 
being done, and we know that while the common 
people are right at heart the political masters are 
wrong. Of course we know that we are responsible 
for it. and we know who must set things right if 
they are to be straightened out. It will not be 
Senator Brown or Prof. Smith or Dr. Green or Judge 
White, but plain Mr. Man who must do the trick. 
We all know what we could do if we once got to¬ 
gether and pushed, but all that seems impossible 
when, like this Pennsylvania man, we "jolly" our¬ 
selves into the belief that our own personal influence 
is so small that it does not count. There you have 
the great trouble with the “common people." "TFc 
must do it ourselves 
* 
P ROF. L. D. COX Is quoted as saying that the 
modern city was an experiment and is now 
doomed: 
It has not been settled by any means that we could 
go on living in the city under the present system, be¬ 
cause tbe tendencies of the urban community were dis¬ 
couraging to human efficiency, due principally to ner¬ 
vous tension and tlic poverty of out-of-door recreation 
places. This is uot so much a physical need, as is com¬ 
monly believed, science having largely overcome many 
of the physical disadvantages of city life. It is a men¬ 
tal need. Only about three generations can survive the 
shock and confinement of the modern city without men¬ 
tal impairment. 
We have long believed that the modern plan of 
crowding humanity together in great towns and cities 
is destructive and demoralizing to national life. 
This is not a popular doctrine, hut we believe It Is 
true. The owners of land and the holders of priv¬ 
ileges are most desirous of crowding people into a 
limited space. When men and women are herded 
together they can be more easily managed and forced 
to contribute more iu direct and indirect taxes. They 
lose their individuality and character and much of 
their original power. If our great cities could he 
broken up and their industries sent back to the water 
powers and country locations the nation would be 
in the end fur stronger and better. We think that 
something of this movement will soon start. During 
the past 20 years the tide has been flowing In the 
other direction. It will turn before long, for the city 
cannot long endure if the country is to be depopu¬ 
lated, so that it cannot supply fresh and vigorous 
life. 
* 
I T has been a general belief among many farmers 
that tbe continued use of acid phosphate will 
make land sour. Phosphorus is the most needed 
element of plant food on most of our Eastern farms, 
while acid phosphate is the cheapest and most avail- 
aide form in which this element can he bought. It 
is quite a serious matter for many of us if. as 
claimed, this phosphate will sour our land. The 
Rhode Island Station has now worked this out with 
care and shows that the fear is groundless. The 
continued use of this phosphate did not sour the 
land. If anything, it made It more alkaline. An¬ 
other thing: It has been claimed that manure made 
from cattle fed on silage will sour the land. There 
is nothing to the minor. Manure made on dairy 
farms where silage is fed is no more acid than any 
other. Both acid phosphate and silage are necessi¬ 
ties on a dairy farm. We cannot expect to keep up 
the farm without them. And we must have clover 
or Alfalfa, and they require a sweet soil. We must 
use lime in reason, but acid phosphate and silage 
will not sour the soil. 
Brevities 
Our hiekorynut crop is heavy. Does it indicate a 
hard Winter? 
Far better meet fate with a smile than let her know 
she’s raised your bile. 
To all these questions about cutting weeds into the 
silo with the corn, we say—go ahead and cut them. 
If Winter come—and find that spring is still wasting 
its water without running through the house—discom¬ 
fort cannot be far behind. 
Perhaps you can tell us why, when we call for re¬ 
ports on some new variety or plant or machine, nine 
come to knock it where one comes to boost ! 
Of what value is knowledge, even the most profound, 
unless it can he applied to everyday life? The “high¬ 
brow" should be connected with tne feet. 
At every farmers* meeting there is a contest at pitch¬ 
ing horseshoes. This has come to he the characteristic 
game with farmers, and some of the country people 
show a skill and judge of distance that is little short <ff 
wonderful. 
Some time ago we mentioned a bill which gives 
women equal naturalization and citizenship rights with 
men. Under it an American woman will not lose her 
United States citizenship on marriage with an alien. 
This lias now become law. 
In answer to dozens iff questions constantly coining, 
we will say once more that if a woman is legally mar¬ 
ried to a mail she will be. at bis death, entitled to the 
dower rights in his properly, no matter how tuuny for¬ 
mer wives or how many children he has had. 
