\ US. 21 
THE RURAL fHEW-VORP^ER. 
838 
On a farm so thoroughly tilled and so pro¬ 
ductive as Mr. Bell's, there, necessarily will be 
a large amount of straw and other coarse feed. 
Instead of selling this at a low price, or feed¬ 
ing it to young cattle, which would require a 
large iange for pasturing in the Bummer, Mr. 
Boll, like others of his neighbors, has been in 
the habit for years of wintering horses and 
juimsn aoout a tnousanci tons ot hay, more or 
less, for the teams. Then come harvest 
and thrashing when all is rush, and, last of 
all, is the “backsetting,” or stubble plowing 
for next year's crop. The turf first plowed in 
early Spring, becomes so far rotted that it is as 
far as possible backset before harvest, and by 
Spring it is rotted enough to be worked with a 
harrow and raise good wheat. Instead of the 
plow, after the first breaking, some aro using a 
remarkable machine of new principle and new 
invention, which docs the work of cutting the 
tough turf to pieces, it is claimed, better and 
faster than either plow, harrow or cultivator. 
It is called the Chicago screw harrow, and is, 
in effect, two huge, short, horizontal augers, 
which worm their way into the turf or soil 
horizontally and cut and turn a succession of 
flue furrows or slices. It is a gigantic hashing 
machine, and is worked by four, or even six 
horses, aud on our Western prairies seems like¬ 
ly almost to work a revolution in agriculture, 
i have examined with great care its construc¬ 
tion and its workings in many parts of the 
great West, aud must speak more fully of it at 
some future time, as well as of some other im¬ 
plements and machines peculiar to that sec¬ 
tion. ibis machine, however, is not in use on 
Mr. Dalrymple’s farm, hut on Mr. Steele’s aud 
several others near Bismarck. 
Such, in brief, are some of the facts in re¬ 
gard to the Daliymple farm, probably the 
largest of any in the world, whose minute de¬ 
tails are under the management ol a single 
etc., etc., has been such that dealers and man¬ 
ufacturers have had more thau they could do 
to supply the demand. Indeed, it has been 
demonstrated that, could all the orders for 
reaping machinery have been filled in season, 
from a quarter to a half a million dollars' 
worth more would have been sold in Illinois. 
And while a small part of these purchases only 
—fig. 266. 
have been made for cash, one-half of them 
have been by parties for whom they are a 
good investment, leaving for the other half a 
burden which, in the light of present circum¬ 
stances, seems to have been unnecessarily as¬ 
sumed, And to such an extent does this feel¬ 
ing prevail among dealers and manufacturers, 
that they are free in their expression that half 
the fanners of the country seem bent on ruiu- 
ing themselves in the purchase of what they 
do not really need. 
At first thought it is difficult to give a suffi¬ 
cient reason for the existence of such a state 
of affairs and it is not till one has looked over 
the ground pretty thoroughly that he can satisfy 
himself. But in reviewing the agricultural 
history of the 8tate since the war, one can 
find many causes which have operated to bring 
about the preseutcondition of things. During 
the war and for a year or two thereafter there 
were great profits in farmiug, and every farm¬ 
er who went into trade and bought land, or 
goods, or stock, and sold again, made much 
money. These first successes stimulated larger 
ventures and these were made, and in making 
them they came to be male public, aud every¬ 
body who could borrow a dollar or buy on 
credit, invested to that extent. 
Then came the eraeh of '73 and found two- 
thirds, ir not more, nf the farming community 
deeply in debt, and a half of those lioplessly 
so. Then followed a series of crop failures, 
and it became a struggle for all to keep their 
heads above water, aud a desperate one for 
many, for what little surplus there was went 
to pay accumulated interest and to satisfy 
mortgages and trust deeds. Bui many went 
down, abandoned their farms, went West to 
start again and grow up with the country 
there. And the extent of this forced exodns is 
well shown by the returns of this census, 
wffiieh report little or no gain in proportion in 
many counties between 1870 and 1S80. But 
the crops grew better than in 1S76, especially 
the winter wheat crop, which had been prac¬ 
tically abandoned for nearly twenty years. A 
tolerably good one of this cereal was made in 
1877, and in 1878 came the phenomenal crop of 
this century, and the full blaze of agricultural 
prosperity burst upon the West in the abuud- 
ant yields and fair prices along the whole ag¬ 
ricultural line. 
MOLE TRAP 
mules used on the canal. The average price 
paid is $1.00 per week, which is equal to $8.00 
per ton for hay, if they should be fed exclu¬ 
sively ou it. The usual practice with these 
animals, which arc mostly mules, is to give 
them hay in ihe stable in the mornings, and 
then turn them into a yard during the day, 
where there are racks in which they are fed 
straw and corn-stalks, which they readily con¬ 
sume. 
At night they are again fed in the stables 
either hay or straw. Under this system, Mr. 
Bell disposes of his coarse feed, supplinmuted 
with a little grain, if necessary, and converts 
it into manure, which is available for any crop. 
Tbis system of wintering stock allows him to 
have more meadows and land for cultivation 
than he otherwise would, and fills his barns, 
which in turn feed the fields, thus not allowing 
any depletion of the soil. 
’Without enthusiasm. A hundred questions 
suggest themselves. Can this thing coutiuuc* 5 
Will so huge un estate hang together, or will 
the geinns of our free institutions and out lack 
of entail laws soon dissolve it ? Do the 
climate and the character of soil along the 
Northern Pacific favor large in distinction or 
opposition to small farms? Are there many 
large farms here? Do the large farms and 
farmers have a, tendency ora desire to crowd 
out the smaller ones? Is there land and room 
enough for all, or have the best land and the 
most desirable locations all been taken ? What 
can farmers do in these high latitudes in Win¬ 
ter? Can they Jive there at all? Can they 
raise Timothy, or clover, or garden vegetables, 
or fruit, or keep stock profitably ? Are freights 
ruinously high? How many and wliut rail¬ 
roads give access to these wonderful Dakota 
wheat lauds ? 
These and other questions i may try to au- 
swer in future in these columns. 
Another Mole Trap. 
What 6eems to be a simple, inexpensive and 
effectual machine for catching moles is shown 
in the accompanying illustrations which we 
take from a late number of the London Live 
Stock Journal. It explains Itself. Appear¬ 
ances in mole-traps, as we have found to our 
cost, are very deceptive and reliance cau he 
placed upon actual test alone. 
COUNTRY LIFE 
Observation!) Among Kural Subscribers, 
COL. F. D. CURTIS 
I iiorouguness is the foundation of success 
with John F. Bell, who inherited the charac¬ 
teristic from Scotch ancestors. With this idea 
as a governing principle, the farm of Mr. Bell 
has been miderd rained aud made fertile. The 
making of manure has been a leading aim, 
and such stock have been kept ou the farm as 
would produce this result, aud at the same 
time afford the largest profit. A number of 
cows are kept, carefully selected for their 
actual worth in the dairy. The making of 
THE WESTERN AND SOUTHERN MANIA 
FOR BUYING IMPLEMENTS, ETC., ETC, 
Attention has been repeatedly drawn to, 
and mention made of, the extraordinary mania 
for buying agricultural implements and ma¬ 
chinery and similar articles of many kinds 
now prevailing in the West and South, and es 
peclally in that portion of the South not Tar 
from the Mississippi River. But this frantic 
desire for the possession of that kind of prop¬ 
erty is chiefly confined to farmers, as a matter 
of course, but the sale of cheap carriages und 
furniture to all sorts of people, shows the 
mania is not wholly confined to these, ft. is 
estimated that the total value of the Winter 
wheat crop in the southern half of Illinois, for 
hsbed. Ihe excellence of Mr. Bell’s butter 
enables him to sell it to one grocer m the city 
of Albany, who purchases it for some of his 
most particular customers, who arc willing to 
pay liberally Tor a good article without regard 
to the current market rates. This special de¬ 
mand enables Mr Bell to contract his butter at 
one price the year round. It is delivered at 
regular intervals, and the cows are fed aud 
mauaged so that the yield is steadily main¬ 
tained. 
Mr. Bell does not hesitate to supplement the 
supply of food by purchasing more, if by 
reason of drought or other causes there is any 
lack. Jle does not believe that it pays to winter 
cows ami then sliut them ia Summer. Under 
the above wise management, Mr. Bell’s dairy 
affords a profitable income. 
This i6 not all; plenty ol manure lays a 
foundation for auother source of income. A 
CORN SUGAR 
The following brief statement of fact in 
regard to a subject which is now attracting a 
large share of attention, will perhaps interest 
some of the readers of the Rural and correct 
some mistakes. 
In 1876 I published a condensed account of 
experiments which I had made that year in 
manufacturing sugar from the juice of Indian 
corn stems, adopting a new line of research. 
I had previously exhibited at the Centennial 
Exhibition, a few days only before its dose, 
specimens of the sugar so made. These re¬ 
sults, as then published, were to the effect that 
under favorable circumstances from 1,500 to 
2,000 pounds of sugar per acre of ground 
planted, could thus be obtained from (he juice 
of common field corn ; that the sugar so made 
was true cane sugar; that it existed in the 
mole trap.—fig. 267 
the present year, has been fully absorbed in 
the purchase of agricultural implements, tools 
aud machinery, including wagons and car¬ 
riages, within the last three or four mouths. 
While the main sales have been of tools related 
to the wheat und small grain crops, such as 
self-l.inders, self-rakers, thrashing machines, 
grain-drills and the like, the call for steam 
engines, improved plows, patent harrows, 
heavy aud light wagons, cheap and fancy 
single aud double buggies, stylish farm wagonst 
The profits of this year were used, as far as 
might be necessary, to pay off old debts,wheth¬ 
er of arrears of interest or contracts for land 
dne; but a largo share was reserved for uew 
purchases in the line of clothing, furniture, 
and everything of personal need and necessity, 
which five or six years of bad crops and hard 
times had prevented folks from keeping up to 
the average wants of life and living. Hence 
the remarkable start and continued stir of 
business, beginning at this time last year, and 
