40 
JAN JO 
THE 
RURAU NEW-YORKER, 
Conducted by 
ELBERT 8. CARMAN, 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 84 Park Row. New York 
Address 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884. 
We now find that we shall be able to 
send over 200 tomato seeds in each en¬ 
velope to every applicant for the Rural’s 
present seed distribution. The whole 
quantity of seeds is made up of the late 
or latest varieties, nothing older than the 
Acme having been admitted, including 
not less than ten different strains which 
have been raised at the Rural Grounds 
from the most carefully selected seeds, 
through from three to ten years. They ^ 
have been all most thoroughly mixed, so 
that each envelope should contam seeds 
of the entire collection. Thus without 
cost to them our readers will be enabled 
to test all of the best kinds of tomatoes in 
cultivation. 
Of the Black Champion oats we shall 
send over 500 grains in each envelope. It 
will be remembered that a peculiarity of 
these oats is that they tiller remarkably. 
We should advise that one grain be 
planted at least six inches each way from 
its neighbors. The Garden Treasures and 
Rural Union Corn have not as yet been 
reached. But our supply is ample to fur¬ 
nish a liberal test supply. 
A friend writes us as follows: 4 ' Mon¬ 
ey is not the root of all evil. (See Rural 
New-Yorker, 844, bottom of the page, 
first column.) It is the love of money 
which is the root of all evil, if we are to 
believe what Paul said to his friend Tim¬ 
othy. There iB a great difference, don’t 
you see? Wealth is good for itself alone 
when it is honestly got and humanely 
used, for then the owner is merely a dis¬ 
tributor of it, a reservoir, in fact, into 
which streams flow and discharge their 
floods and from which there flows out a 
constant, steady current that in time- 
makes a complete circuit, and, like the 
showers, benefits wherever it is scattered. 
But the love of it for the power it gives 
and the ambitions it creates, is quite an¬ 
other thing, and makes a man’s soul a 
chilled-steel safe, in which he hoards the 
wealth merely for his own selfish pur¬ 
poses, and into which he gathers it by all 
means possible, regardless of right and 
justice.” 
The Manitoba and Northwestern Farm¬ 
ers' Union has passed resolutions asking 
for a revision of the tariff, demanding that 
the Provincial Government be allowed to 
charter railways and be given absolute con¬ 
trol of the public lands, and declaring in 
favor of the immediate construction of the 
Hudson Bay Railroad. Every one of 
these points is opposed to the policy of 
the party in control of the Dominion Gov¬ 
ernment and which, since the election of 
1882, has had a majority of 60 in the House 
of Commons. Sir John Macdonald, Prime 
Minister, appears wedded to what is 
known as the National policy, which aims 
to restrict the power of the Provincial 
Legislatures in order to build up in British 
North America a strong confederacy with 
a dominant central power, in order to of¬ 
fer a steady and effective opposition to 
the commercial and political suprem¬ 
acy of the United States. Although 
the recent decision of the Privy Coun¬ 
cil, the highest appellate court in the 
British Empire, in the ease of Regina 
vs. Hodge, gives decided encouragement 
to the Provincial Rights party, and will 
intensify the feeling on the questions in 
dispute" in Manitoba, still it is hardly 
likely that the discontent in that Province 
will have more influence in changing the 
policy of the Canadian Government under 
the present Administration than did simi¬ 
lar discontent in British Columbia a few 
years ago. 
-♦ • » - 
Governor Ireland, of Texas, having 
called the Legislature of the Lone Star 
State together in special session to legis¬ 
late on the great problem how to put an 
end to wire-fence cutting, that body has 
just met at Austin. The town is also 
thronged with hundreds of stockmen, 
who are acting as a Third House, lob¬ 
bying vigorously to secure the severest 
sort of legislation against the cowboys 
and small rancheros who have so little re¬ 
spect. for the vast lines of fences which 
shut them and their small herds away 
from water and passage-way through the 
country. Many of the newspapers, how¬ 
ever, remind the legislators that they are 
elected to represent not only the live¬ 
stock men but also the pioneer farmers 
and small stockmen, who are entitled to 
just consideration even though they may 
not be able to go to Austin and 
spend several weeks in lobbying. 
The large stockmen who have inclosed 
miles of river and creek fronts and who 
possess vast herds, who are opposed to 
the agricultural settlement of the coun¬ 
try. and whose arrogance and disregard 
for the rights of their poorer neighbors 
have been only checked by the present 
agitation, will have great influence as lob¬ 
byists; but it is to be hoped the Legisla¬ 
tors will have the public interest, not the 
interest of any individual class, at heart, 
and will take duly into consideration the 
views and rights of the thousands of 
farmers and small stockmen who own from 
a quarter section to two sections and 
make a living by their own labor. To 
prevent fence cutting over so vast a stretch 
of thinly inhabited territory in the present 
state of public feeling on the matter will be 
a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. 
-» - 
TAXATION. 
The tax levy of this city in 1883 was 
$29,167,029.81 according to Mayor Edson’s 
report published yesteiday. In the as¬ 
sessed valuations of real estate there was 
an increase of $43,926,853, while in the 
assessed valuation of personal property 
there was a decrease of $726,087.33. No¬ 
body for a moment supposes that these 
valuations afford a fair criterion of the 
actual rise or fall in the value of both 
kinds of property. Justly, therefore, does 
the Mayor call attention to the urgent 
necessity for reformation in this matter. 
It is true everywhere as well as here that 
“erroneous and unequal valuation of real 
and personal estate for the purposes of 
taxation lead to consequences of a serious 
nature, inviting widespread dishonesty in 
efforts to escape, the payment of a just 
proportion of the necessary expenses 
of the Government.” Why do the 
great daily papers which have so 
much to say about tariff reforma¬ 
tion, have so "little to say about reforma¬ 
tion in State and local taxation? Is it be¬ 
cause the wealth of the owners of most of 
them is chiefly in the form of personal 
property, and their own pockets would 
suffer if this sort of property bore its just 
share of taxation? One of the largest 
New York dailies thinks taxes should be 
laid exclusively on real estate, exempting 
personal property entirely. The taxes on 
real estate, it thinks, diffuse themselves by 
the agency of rent-payers through the 
community and are eventually collected 
from the consumers in proportion to their 
consumption of the goods produced, 
manufactured and sold. How about prop¬ 
erty on which no rent-payers dwell ? A 
better reason for laying taxes exclusively 
on real estate is given by a writer in Texas: 
The perjury, dishonesty, selfish disre¬ 
gard of justice and equity through which 
personal property now escapes its just 
share of taxation will then be avoided, 
and the country will escape the divine 
chastisement such offenses against public 
morality deserve. 
A GLIMPSE BEHIND THE SCENES. 
About 300 letters, written from early 
in 1874 to the middle of 1878, to the late 
Gen. D. D. Colton, Vice-President of the 
Southern Pacific Railroad Company, by 
Mr. C. P. Huntington, Vice-President and 
General Agent of the Central Pacific Rail¬ 
road Company and General Agent and 
Attorney at New York of the Southern 
Pacific, have lately been made public in 
a law suit in California, in which Colton’s 
widow' claims a large sum of money from 
Huntington and his associates of the 
Southern Pacific Railroad, on account of 
her dead husband's valuable services in 
connection with the road. The Central 
and Southern Pacific Roads were praeti- 
ally identical, the magnates of the Central 
promoting the Southern in order to con¬ 
trol the line to the west across the 
Southern States and Territories. At the 
same time Thomas A. Scott, of Penn¬ 
sylvania, was pushing his Texas and 
Pacific line from Shreveport, Louisiana, 
to San Diego, California, and the interests 
of the Scott systems were distinctly an¬ 
tagonistic to those represented by Hun¬ 
tington and Colton. The hostile interests 1 
clashed continuously in a struggle, at i 
Washington, for the organization of fa¬ 
vorable committes of Congress, the votes 
of Senators and Representatives, and the 
enactment of legislation giving to one 
party or the other the ultimate control of 
the * Southern trans-continental railroad 
systems and the possession of the enor¬ 
mous land-grants bestowed in the re¬ 
spective charters. 
To the public the interest and value of 
the correspondence lie in the fact that it 
was evidently written with the utmost 
sincerity and without the remotest idea 
that it would ever be made public. The 
letters plainly show' -what has long been 
known in a general way—that Hunting- 
ton and his associates have for years been 
ensaged in buying the votes ana influence 
of the Congressional, State and Territorial 
representatives of the people, in corrupt- 
ins: the press, and in amassing huge for¬ 
tunes by fraud, deceit and knavery of 
every sort that can be practiced by unscru¬ 
pulous wealth without incurring the pen¬ 
alties of the criminal law. The letters 
have been given in installments to the pub¬ 
lic, and a perusal of the whole in pam¬ 
phlet form -would be interesting and in¬ 
structive reading. Thus we see that the 
struggle between Huntington and Scott 
was not confined to the lobbies, the com¬ 
mittee rooms and the floors of both 
Houses of Congress; it extended to the 
Congressional districts and into the State 
and Territorial Legislatures. Thus, speak¬ 
ing of the Governor of Arizona, Hunting- 
ton asks Colton if he ‘‘cannot have Safford 
call the Legislature together and grant 
such charters as we want at a cost, say, 
of $25,000.” Again he directs his part¬ 
ner to heat Congressman Luttrel, of Cali¬ 
fornia, in his district, and, on the whole, 
he thinks it better “to beat him with a 
Democrat,” because the House was then 
Democratic. He reports that Governor 
Axtell, of New Mexico, had assured him 
that he would get such a bill as the Cen¬ 
tral Pacific wanted passed for a very little 
money, “when if we sent a man they 
would stick him for large amounts.” 
Though Huntington's road was one of 
the greatest gainers by laud grants, he was 
strongly opposed to land subsidies to 
Scott’s"road, and sent a man to Rich¬ 
mond on Saturday and to A Ibany on the 
next Friday, to get “anti-subsidy resolu¬ 
tions” passed by "the Legislatures of Vir¬ 
ginia and New York. To rouse public 
sentiment against the subsidy policy, and 
thus thwart Scott, he sent Dr. (Duke) 
Gwin through the South as an anti-subsidy 
agitator; yet he now wants Congress to 
confirm to" him the very land grant against 
the cession of which his emissaries then 
struggled. But then as long ago as June, 
1876. he said of Scott and his associates: 
“My idea is to fight them until it is for 
our interest to make friends with them, 
then quit and work with them :" and hav¬ 
ing gobbled up Scott’s road after Scott’s 
death, he now clamors for its land grant. 
The bitterest struggle between the rivals, 
however, was for the purchase of Con¬ 
gressmen. Of the venality of those Hun¬ 
tington frankly gives his contemptuous 
opinion: “ The coming session. ” lie writes 
in 1874, “will be composed of the hun¬ 
griest set of men that ever got together, 
and the devil only knows what they will 
do.” In January, 1876, he writes: “I 
believe that with $200,000 I can pass our 
bill, but I take it that it is not worth that 
much to us.” A fortnight later he says of 
Scott: “ He switched Senator Spencer of 
Alabama and Walker of Virginia this 
week, but you know they can be switched 
back with proper arrangements when 
wanted.” In March, 1877, he “ stayed in 
Washington two days to fix up the Senate 
Railroad Committee.” In the same month 
he says of Scott: “I believe lie can pass 
. his bill, and 1 think I know enough of 
1 Washington to know how he can do it.” 
they may subserve his interests. Thus 
the President is “This man Hayes;” Con¬ 
gressman Page, of California, is “Always 
right;” Congressman Luttrell, of the same 
State,is “A wild hog;” “A cuss with whom 
it is not safe to talk openly,” Congress¬ 
man Piper, of California, “D-d hog;” 
“That drunken, worthless dog. Piper.” 
Of Gilbert C. Walker, of Virginia, be re¬ 
marks, “A slippery fellow: don’t trust 
him.” Senator Sargent, of California, is 
He disapproved of the Committee on Ter¬ 
ritories, “which,” he says, “I do not like. 
A different one was promised me.” Iu 
November, 1877, lie says of the National 
Capitol: “All the strikers in the world 
were there.” A month later he says “Gould 
has large amounts of cash and pays it 
without stint to carry his points.” In May, 
1878, he thus gives the price of a Con¬ 
gressman; “The Texas Pacific folks of¬ 
fered one member of Congress $1,000 cash 
down. $5,090 when the bill passed, and 
$10,000 of the bonds when they got them. ” 
As with State Legislators, so with 
Congressmen, railroad passes are very in¬ 
fluential. Tu July, 1876, Huntington 
says of Scott: “lie is very strong with 
his many railroads running out of Wash¬ 
ington, on which lie is very free with his 
passes to members of Congress," and this 
is the burden of many of his complaints. 
His opinion of Congressmen and others 
depends entirely on the extent to which 
“Worth as much as any six new men.” 
Peter D. Winington, of Wisconsin, is ‘‘A 
good fellow, growing every day.” Of 
S. B. Conover, of Florida, he says: “A 
clever fellow, but don't go money on him.” 
John A. Kasson, of Iowa, is “Our good 
friend iu Congress, and he has never lost 
us a dollar.” His characterizations of 
others are equally candid and pithy. 
There is no room here to tell how, as he 
candidly confesses, be schemed to burst 
up “that fellow Jones,” the Senator from 
Nevada : how he fought shy of Gould, of 
whom he says: “1 do not like to be mixed 
up with Gould in anything where it is 
possible for him to get controlhow lie 
got the California papers to puff liis pro¬ 
jects, or belittle those of liis opponents, 
and got the puffs copied by Eastern and 
Southern papers, “a cheap form of adver¬ 
tisement how he got Colton to induce 
“ some of the prominent men in San Fran¬ 
cisco” to invite Senator Gordon of Geor¬ 
gia, with “ a party of the best men of 
the South,” to visit California over the 
line of the Southern Pacific, with a view 
of capturing all the Gulf States for the 
S. P., which would pay $10,000 for ex¬ 
penses; how he was always afraid of the 
“ damned interviewers.” etc., etc. Mr. C. 
P. Huntington is worth $50,000,000, but 
there isn’t a penniless tramp in the coun¬ 
try whose moral sense is less obtuse, or 
who would relate the shifts by which he 
collected a dishonest meal with less shame¬ 
less effrontery than that with which this 
man recounts his mameuvers for piling up 
I bis millions. 
-—■» - 
BREVITIES. 
It seems odd euough that the Delaware 
rj-ape has produced few noteworthy seedlings. 
Prize I. seotns to be the most popular, as 
ve have received six or more articles for it to 
>ne for anv of the others. It is to be hoped 
hat the other prizes may receive more atten¬ 
tion. 
The Thwack raspberry. What a furore 
;his was to create! The Rural was the first 
condemn this plant as a weed, and the qual- 
ty of the fruit as worthless. It had one merit, 
riz.: firmness of fruit—that was all. And yet 
it is well praised by some Western poinolo- 
rists. 
Mr. Stkobecker, of Pennsylvania, writes: 
‘Every board and every nail of my bams, 
buildings, &e., were placed or driven by my- 
■udf and a young son.” It shows what, build¬ 
ings and labor-saving contrivances a farmer 
cun himself make who keeps a shop with a set 
i.r carpenter’s tools; sets his wits to work and 
occupies the time iu his shop that many waste 
arouud the corner grocery. 
This is our beloved and boasted laud of 
the free and home of the brave.” Is it a land 
of the free, when the people groan under 
heavy burdens not imposed by the rulers 
they lmve chosen, but by capitalists who are 
more cruel tyrants than the kings of Britain, 
who hear not when the poor cry for bread, 
hut more, bear down the lowlv with a stronger 
hand' And is this a home of the brave where 
the people, who can end this rule of mon- 
opoly. this oppression of centralized capital, 
without blood or waste of treasure, but by 
the silent, irresistible force of the ballot, su¬ 
pinely submit and only groan iu sorrow' 
Shall we not assert our rights and end the 
rule of tyrant monopolies? 
After a heated Senatorial contest iu Ohio, 
Mr. Henry B. l’avne has been selected to the 
United States Senate as the successor ot Sena¬ 
tor Pendleton. Mr. Payne has been long iden¬ 
tified with the notorious Standard Oil Com¬ 
pany, whose baleful influence in Ohio is hardly 
less powerful than its influence iu Pennsylva¬ 
nia It is asserted everywhere and nowhere 
denied, that Mr. Payne’s victory is the victory 
of the Standard Oil Company. Other wealthy 
corporations and monopolistic influences, aided 
by corrupt tools in their employ, contributed 
to the issue; but to the Standard Oil Company 
belongs the chief glory or shame of sehding 
to the United States Senate a representative 
of all that is most odious and oppressive in 
monopolistic consolidation. 
It Is officially announced that by the opera¬ 
tion of the tariff act of March 3, 1383, the 
reduction iu the average ad valorem rate on 
dutiable goods for the quarter ended Septern- 
ber :50. 1883. as compared with the correspond¬ 
ing quarter of 13S2, was 2.12 per cent. The 
reduction on -cu^ai wius only ‘3. < per cent, for 
the quarter euded September 30. and some¬ 
what less for October and November. The 
reduction on clothing wools was 9 7 per cent., 
ou combing wools 7.8 per cent, and on carpet 
wools 2.46 per cent. It Is very evident, there¬ 
fore, that, as might have been expected, the 
import duties on agricultural products were 
reduced considerably more than those ou man 
x ufactures; so that to benefit tlve manufacturer 
the farmer is made to suffer In two ways: 
s first, the prices of some of his products are 
4 lowered by exposing thum to severer foreign 
competition; and second, the price? of the 
manufactured goods he has to buy are kept 
s U p by n merely nominal reduction of duty 
i on competing foreign articles. 
