THK 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Conducted by 
E I, B ft R T S . CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL, NEV.-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row. New York. 
SATURDAY, JAN. 20, 1888. 
TO ADVERTISING PATRONS. 
We call attention to our changed ad¬ 
vertising rates for 1883 as presented on 
page 31. The change divests them of 
all discounts, presenting them in the 
simplest form so that they may be under¬ 
stood at a glance. We beg to assure 
those who would favor us with their ad¬ 
vertising patronage that these rates are 
invariable and that any correspondence 
looking to a change would under any and 
all circumstances prove ineffectual. 
- » ♦ • - 
To new subscribers we beg to say that 
the Seed Distribution will not be com¬ 
menced before February 1. 
■ M t 
We beg to inform our readers that we 
have a full supply of Rural Premium 
Lists for 1883 and we should be glad to 
send them to subscribers on application. 
-- 
As we have never adopted the plan of 
notifying our subscribers when their sub¬ 
scriptions expire, we would ask them to 
look at the address slips on the wrappers 
and thus ascertain lor themselves. Thus, 
if the number after the name is 1722, the 
subscription will end next week; if 1723 
the week after, and so on. 
We have received from Mr. Wm. 
Moore, of Preble Co,, Ohio, one of the 
largest and most perfect ears of corn we 
have ever seen. The variety is the Rural 
Heavy Dent. It measures 18 inches in 
length, eight inches in circumference in 
the middle. It has 18 rows, each row 
containing 56 large kernels. It weighs 
one pound 10 ounces. 
-- 
According to the plots of wheat raised 
at the Michigan Agricultural College, 
Zimmerman yieldt d 57 bushels per acre; 
Champion Amber 48; Beige’s Prolific 55, 
etc. These plots were but 12x18 feet 
and it is next to impossible to calculate 
the yield per acre from the crop of such 
small areas. One-fortieth of an acre— 
our favorite test-plot—is too small. 
-- 
Judge Parry remarks, in a note ac¬ 
companying the article appearing else¬ 
where, that he has never represented the 
Kieffer Pear as being of the best quality 
as a table fruit, but he thinks it has in an 
eminent degree other properties essential 
for a profitable market pear. “If qual¬ 
ity,” he says, “was all that is required, 
the Seckel would cover the whole ground. ” 
— 4 * * - 
Thh Rural New-Yorker is $2.00 a 
year in advance and there is no club or 
second price. We invariably (except 
through oversight) take names out of our 
list at the end of the subscription teim. 
The law which permits publishers to send 
their journals longer and to collect for 
the year is, as we view it, a very unjust 
law and quite as much an imposition upon 
the farmer as many other laws which farm 
journals vehemently oppose as a duty. 
In the Tariff Commissioner’s report 
lately presented to Congress is a list of 
the industries of the country taken from 
the Census of 1880, and therefore con¬ 
taining the most accurate information ob¬ 
tainable. From this we learn that while 
there are upwards of 6,000 establish¬ 
ments in w'bich men’s clothing is made, 
the value of the garments manufactured 
every year amounting to upwards of $200,- 
000,000, there are less than 600 places 
where women’s clothing is made, the 
value of the goods beiDg less than $30,- 
000,0001 Isn’t it about time that the tia- 
ducers of women in the matter of expense 
for dress should “shut up”? According 
to this showing the men’s clothing costs 
upwards of six times tbe women’s. Most 
of the womeu’s clothing is made by them¬ 
selves, not at factories! Well, then, 
more credit to them. 
WE”should like again to wish our read. 
ers a Happy New-Year and to thank them 
again for the happy new year which we, 
through them, are thus far enjoyiDg. At 
present we are enabled to say that our in¬ 
crease in circulation over last year is as 
great as was the increase of last year at 
this time over any preceding year. We 
are aware that the weather thus far in 
every part of the country has been very 
favorable and it is quite possible we may 
yet lose a part or even all of what we 
have gained. “ Sufficient unto the day 
is the evil thereof,” however. We pro¬ 
pose to be “merry while we may”; to 
“ cross that bridge when we come to it”; 
—to “make hay while the sunshines,” 
etc. We have done the best we could for 
our readers and we are confident that no 
rural paper ever received heartier words 
of encouragement from them—so that in 
the absence of any cause for a change, we 
have full faith in continued prosperity. 
-♦ ♦ »- 
Many people experience real pleasure 
in garden work; in the vineyard it may 
be; among the flower beds; laying out 
new plots—preparing for additional beau¬ 
ties or utilities for another season of vege¬ 
table life and growth. So also many 
farmers enjoy caring for their stock that 
they may look sleek and clean; putting 
farm implements in perfect order and 
arranging them simply in rooms of out¬ 
buildings so that they may be ready for 
use when needed, the same as city fire 
engines are ready for use when the alarm 
is given. He who can enjoy bis work, 
whatever it may be, is a philosopher. His 
life is a routine of enjoyment instead of 
hated drudgery. The difference between 
working for play and for pleasure iB not 
necessarily us great as it seems. Both re¬ 
quite effort. In the one case we enjoy the 
effort, in the other we do not. Those 
who are not obliged to work and who 
have no liking for useful employment 
f oou grow weary of pleasure-seeking and 
the days drag their slow length along 
without bringing any sense of rest or 
satisfaction. Dullness, languor, indiffer¬ 
ence which surely follow satiety are as 
hard to bear as the reluctance with which 
the hired laborer toils in the field. They 
are the price which all are obliged to pay 
for their indolence, obstinacy, their con¬ 
ceit, their envy, their hatied which they 
prefer to cherish in the place of energy, 
reasonableness, modesty, charity and love. 
THE CORN AWARDS. 
In the Rural of the 6th inst. it will be 
remembered, we said that as some of the 
called-for evidence had not been received 
it might be necessary to slightly change 
the awards as then announced. This we 
find it necessary to do, out of justice to 
those who were delayed for various good 
reasons in sending us their affidavits, so 
that the revised list of awards will be 
published in the first number for Feb¬ 
ruary. In one instance our first request 
for affidavit was not received and in 
another otir letter was delayed several 
days on the road, so we consider it but 
fair to give such competitors a chance. 
We have also received several complaints 
from competitors who claim a position in 
the list, all of which we carefully con¬ 
sider and if, through any fault of ours, 
they should have been allotted a place in 
the awards, their names will appear in 
the revised list of February. 
STOCK RAISING ON THE PUBLIC 
DOMAIN. 
Nearly three years ago we earnestly 
urged the necessity for Congreesiou d 
legislation regulating the occupation by 
stockmen of those parts of the national 
domain unfit for tillage but suitable for 
pasturage. Nn action, however, has 
been taken on the matter since then; but 
the necessity we pointed out is yearly 
becoming more pressing. Large corpora¬ 
tions and enterprising capitalists have 
already appropriated vast areas of the 
public land for stock-raising purposes, 
without making any adequate returns to 
the people lor the use thereof, and others 
are constantly following their example. 
For a long time the Standard Oil Com¬ 
pany, one of the most oppressive monopo¬ 
lies in America and one of the richest 
corporations on the globe, has been 
anxious to get a fot thold in the Indian 
Territory for the purpose of raising cattle 
on a grand scale, ana a considerable time 
ago made application to the Interior De- 
partrm nt for the fairest portion of the 
Territory as pasturage. Last Decem¬ 
ber 26, however, Secretary Teller decided 
not to allow the Company to enter the 
Territory for this purpose. 
A telegram from the West last Mon¬ 
day tells us that a number of Chicago 
capitalists are negotiating with the Secre¬ 
tary of the Interior for the lease of 
2,400,000 acres of land situated in the 
Indian Territory belonging to tbe Chero¬ 
kee and Cheyenne tribes, to be used for 
grazing cattle, and that they agree to cut 
only such timber as may be necessary to 
provide posts for wire fences to inclose 
the land. They offer $50,000 rental or at 
the rate of about $13.33 per square mile. 
The Indians are represented as being 
very anxious for the arrangement 
A telegram from Louisville tells of a mam¬ 
moth live-stock company which filed 
articles of incorporation there last Thurs¬ 
day. It is known ns the Snider Stock 
Company and starts with a capital of $500,- 
000. It is said to control 33,000 acres of 
tbe finest grazing land directly on the 
Atchison, Topeka amt Santa Fg Railway, 
in Kansas, besides valuable properties in 
Rice, Reno and McPherson Counties in 
the same State and in El Paso and Jeffer¬ 
son Counties, Colorado. The bead-quar¬ 
ters of the company will be in Louisville. 
These arc only the latest of many similar 
wealthy organizations which have recent¬ 
ly started, or been preparing to start, in 
cattle raising on a gigantic scale in the 
Far West. A vpst area of the land in 
the Western plains is unsuitable lor till¬ 
age at present and will probably remain 
so for generations or for ages; but a con¬ 
siderable portion of that now occupied as 
pasturage is excellent grass land, and, 
no doubt, will ere long be brought under 
cultivation. According to the Census of 
1880 there remained 1,200,000 square 
miles west of the Mississippi either unset¬ 
tled or occupied by Indians. Of this, 
240,000 square miles were embraced in the 
Indian Reservations. After deducting 
the mountainous tracts, inaccessible or 
sterile h,nd and the arid regions in¬ 
capable of irrigation, the amount 
of the public domain available for 
ordinary agriculture is not large. As a 
matter of fact, it is estimated that in a 
couple of more years, it will all have 
been practically taken up. It is there¬ 
fore a matter of general importance that 
the amount of land that can be taken up 
by any single party at present Govern¬ 
ment prices, should be limited within 
narrow boundaries; that the area or 
character of laud unsuitable for tillage 
should be defined, and that for Buch por¬ 
tions of this as are fit for pasturage, the 
people through the Government should 
receive a fair rental. 
-♦♦♦- 
THE NEW YORK RAILROAD COM¬ 
MISSION. 
The laBt Legislature of New York 
State passed a law providing for the 
nomination, by the Governor chosen at 
the recent election, of three railroad com¬ 
missioners, one of them a Republican and 
another a Democrat, the third tobenam^d 
by the New York Board of Trade and 
Transportation, the Anti - Monopoly 
League and tbe New York Chamber of 
Commerce, or by a majority of these bod¬ 
ies in case of disagreement. This Board 
of Commissioners is designed to act as a 
sort of court of equity and arbitration be¬ 
tween tbe railroads of the 8tate and the 
public, checking the exactions and un¬ 
fair discriminations of the former, and ad¬ 
judicating, within ceitain limits, upon 
the complaints of the latter. The insti¬ 
tution is no new experiment. A similar 
commission is proving highly satisfactory 
in Massachusetts. The same is the case 
in Illinois. The Railroad Commission of 
Georgia has turned out so eminently sat¬ 
isfactory, both to the railroads and the 
public, that a bill modeled, in its chief 
provisions, on the Georgia railroad law, 
was recently passed to a third reading in 
the South Carolina House of Representa¬ 
tives by a vote of tbitty-five to seven. Of 
course, it cannot be expected that the best 
possible Commission could adjust the 
puzzling railroad difficulties in a manner 
satisfactory to all pi rties. No State legis¬ 
lation or body of State officials could pos¬ 
sibly do that. The railroad problem is 
continental, involving all the States and 
Territories from tbe Atlantic to the Pa¬ 
cific and from the great lakes to the 
Gulf. National legislation can alone ade¬ 
quately grapple with the whole difficulty. 
State legislation may, however, greatly 
lessen the hardships to the public within 
circumscribed areas without injustice to 
the bondholders of tbe railroads. 
The efficacy of all corrective legislation 
depends greatly upon the honesty and 
i biiity of those charged with the duty of 
putting it into force. In the three Com¬ 
missioners nominated by Governor Cleve¬ 
land last Tuesday no small interest must 
therefore be felt, not by the people of this 
State only, but also by those of other States 
in which legislation relating to railroads 
may be affected by the action of the New 
York Commissioners. These are William 
E. Rogers, John D. Kernan and John 
O’Donnell, Mr. Rogers is 37 years old, 
having been born in Philadelphia in 1846. 
In 1863 he entered West Point. He gradu¬ 
ated sixth in his class in 1867 and was 
commissioned Lieutenant in the Engineer 
Corps. He resigned from the army in 
1869, and has since followed the profes¬ 
sion of civil engineeer, most of the time 
in the employment of the Delaware, Lack¬ 
awanna and Western Railroad Company, 
with which his connection ceaBed in 1881. 
His wife is the diugbter of Ex-Governor 
and Ex-Secretary Hamilton Fish, and he 
was appointed as the Republican and ex¬ 
perienced railroad member of tbe Com¬ 
mission. He lives it Garrisons, Putnam 
County; but his place of business is in 
New York City. Mr. Kernan is 39 years 
old, having been born in 1844 at Utica, 
N. Y., his present home. He is the eldest 
son of ex-Senator Francis Kernan, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1868. For 
several years be served as Chairman of the 
Democratic Committee of Oneida County, 
but, like Mr. Rogers, he has never held 
public office. He is the Den ocratic mem¬ 
ber of the Commission. Mr. O’Donnell is 
the oldest member of the Board, having 
been born at Fort Ann, Washington 
County, N. Y., 56 years ago—in 1827. In 
1849 he settled in Lowville, Lewis County, 
where he established a clothing store, and 
subsequently became a general merchant. 
In 1864 he was a delegate to the Balti¬ 
more convention which renominated Lin¬ 
coln, and the same year was elected to the 
Assembly from Lewis County. He was 
sent to the 8tate 8enate from Lewis and 
Jefferson Counties in 1865, and retired 
Iroxn business. Lately he has attracted 
most attertion as an anti-monopolist, and 
it was in this character that he was nom¬ 
inated on the Commission as the choice of 
the Board of Trade and Transportation 
and the Anti-Monopoly League, the 
Chamber of Commerce having voted in 
preference for Mr. Hepburn, an uncompro¬ 
mising enemy to railroad greed in the 
Lower House of the New York Legislature. 
-*-*-♦- 
BREVITIES. 
Dr. Hkxamkr deems the Keiffer a hybrid 
between a squash and a potato. 
WE have no idea that the price of potatoes 
will advance enough to pay farmers for keep¬ 
ing and handling them. 
ALL of our farm exchanges are congratu¬ 
lating themselves upon heavy additions to 
their subscription lists, while a number of 
new farm journals are encouraged to hope for 
a liberal patronage. 
An Apology —Many of our readers have 
sent us plants to be determined; specimens of 
corn, wheat, oats, etc. During this, the 
busiest season of the year, we have suffered 
these various things to get so mixed up that 
they cannot now be separated so as to ascer¬ 
tain who sent them. We beg to be excused. 
It has not been negligence, but the actual im¬ 
possibility of keeping np with this part of 
our work. 
We note tbe death, at tbe age of 84 years, 
of Mr. Edward Meehan, a distinguished Eng¬ 
lish horticulturist and tbe father of Professor 
Thomas Meehan, the Editor of the Gardeners’ 
Monthly. We trust the son may live to that 
age and longer. Thomas Meehan has shown 
himself to be an unassuming, benevolent 
man; an impartial editor; a pleasing writer; 
an able botanist He has endeared himself 
to many personal friends, while his name 
must always live in connection with Ameri¬ 
can horticulture. 
The National Tobacco Association has just 
“resolved” that tuxes should be reduced to 
eight cents per pound on chewing and smok¬ 
ing tobacco, to #3 per 1,000 on cigars, and to 
75c. per 1,000 on cigarettes: that a rebate equal 
to the reduction should be made, and that “the 
sale of leaf tobacco, free of tax, by growers 
to consumer* is in violation of all sound and 
recognised principles.” Truly Bapient reso¬ 
lutions] The proposed reduction of taxes 
would not lower retail prices a particle or 
raise the prices of leaf tobacco; but would 
simply raise the profits of the manufacturers. 
The hardship tbe taxation of sales of leaf 
tobacco brings upon tobacco growerp, we have 
frequently protested against in the Rural, 
It appears that the New York Central Rail¬ 
road has made a move by which the beef 
trade of Chicago to the East is likely to be 
curtailed. It. is stated that tbe contract 
made by Mr. Goodman, General Freight 
Agent of the line, with C. H. Hammond, 
Toffy Bros, and Swift Bros, which extended 
over a term of years and enabled them to 
transport dressed beef at such low rates as to 
defy ordinary competition, has been revised 
bo that after Jaruary 1, shippers of dressed 
beef will be required to pay the rate estab¬ 
lished in the schedule for the transportation 
of cattle on the hoof. That rate is nt present 
60 cents per hundred-weight from Chicago to 
either New York or Boston. In return for 
these higher rates, the threatened formation 
of that rival company by Vanderbilt’s asso 
date* has been abundone 1. The live stock 
dealers who have been most affected by the 
dressed beef trade feel very much elated over 
the change in the situation and look for a re¬ 
vival of their business, which has been light 
of late. The railroad wins; the public loses. 
