THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
ANatlonal Journal for Country and Suburban Home-. 
Conducted by 
KtUBRT S. CA11M4J. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1SS7. 
Readers should bear in mind that the 
Pedigree Sweet Corn of the Rural's Dis¬ 
tribution is a very dwarf variety, grow¬ 
ing scarcely 18 inches high in a pool' soil. 
In a rich soil it may be planted closely,as 
we do not think the plants will average 
over two to 2feet high. 
May 4th we planted small areas of the 
following kinds of sweet corn—the older 
varieties for comparison: Leet’s Early, 
Early Genesee, Cory, Northern Pedigree, 
Early Dean, King of the Earlies, Early 
Boston Market, Triumph, Ne plus ultra, 
Evergreen. Ne plus ultra is one of the 
very best kinds of sweet corn we have 
ever raised, and it is among the most pro¬ 
lific. The cars arc shapely, though rather 
small; the rows are very crooked, the 
quality best. Sometimes from three to 
five ears are borne upon a siugle stalk. 
It is rather late. Those who raise sweet 
corn for market will plant to suit the 
market, but it seems to the writer that 
farmers, as a rule, pay too little attention 
to a rotation of t ,e best kinds for family 
use, so that their tables may be supplied 
from the earliest season of picking until 
frost. 
Of late years a great shrinkage has tak¬ 
en place in the price of grain, and the 
cost of transportation has been considera¬ 
bly reduced, but no corresponding de¬ 
crease has been made in the charges for 
storage in the elevators at the great col¬ 
lecting center, Chicago. Agitation has 
brought about considerable reduction in 
the storage at several other cities in the 
West; but the Chicago monopolists ob¬ 
stinately cling to the old high charges, 
although it is evident that the position of 
the city as a grain market is being jeop¬ 
ardized by the excessive elevator ra^es. 
As the owners are deaf to the representa¬ 
tions and remonstrances of the grain men, 
an effort is being made by the represent¬ 
atives of the latter to secure a reduction of 
the rates through the Legislature, A bill 
dealing with the subject has been intro¬ 
duced, but docs not appear to satisfy the 
grain men. The abuse is flagrant,” and 
should certainly be remedied. 
■> * » i 
We told our readers last year that we 
had succeeded in crossing the raspberry 
upon the blackberry and the blackberry 
upon the raspberry. The seeds were 
planted at once (Aug. 14) as taken from 
the ripe berries, supposing they would 
erminate more freely than if allowed to 
ry and planted later. Whiter came and 
still the hybrid seeds had not sprouted. 
The boxes were buried, and last spring 
taken to the greenhouse. There arc now 
eight little plants, all of the raspberry 
crossed with the blackberry. The others 
have not yet started. It may be thought 
that it will be time enough to write about 
these hybrids when they fruit—three 
years hence or more. But we like to re¬ 
cord all the work of this kiud as it is 
done. Such records carry the weight of 
evidence with them, and there is little 
need for making allowances for guess¬ 
work or forgetfulness when the results 
are placed before the public. The little 
plants resemble grape-vines more than 
they do either raspberries or blackberries, 
being lobed similarly and not as yet as¬ 
suming the compouud form, with from 
three to five leaflets,as in either the black¬ 
berry or raspberry. But the stems are 
thickly clothed with little prickles or 
bristles. 
Hydra-headed Adulteration. —The 
farmers’ fight against food frauds, as pic¬ 
tured on our first page, is a desperate one. 
The monster has grown to an enormous 
size. He is pushed on by those who 
have grown rich and powerful by hand¬ 
ling and developing him, to attack the 
farm interests represented by the cow and 
the pig. The men who try to sell oleo¬ 
margarine for honest butter, or cotton¬ 
seed oil for pure lard, or glucose for cane 
sugar, all strike at the rights of the farm¬ 
er. The frauds they have built up and 
now attempt to sustain cut the heart out 
o l the profits^of the^farm, and’drive the 
farmer to desperation. It is an unequal 
contest, because organization, capital and 
thought are on the side of fraud. The 
farmer is making a brave stand, however. 
He has weakened oleomargarine, and now 
stands ready to attack the other heads. 
Let him but stand bravely and honestly 
by his rights, and he will be able to pro¬ 
tect his property. Let him wait for some¬ 
body else to fight his battles for him, and 
his business will be crippled before his 
eyes. Organization, thought, and edu¬ 
cation must be called to the defence of 
the farmer. 
Nearly all our exports to Europe con¬ 
sist of agricultural products, and Conti¬ 
nental Europe seems determined to lessen 
the amount of these or shut them out 
altogether by starting or increasing import 
duties on all foreign goods of the kind. 
Within the last twelvemonth both France 
and Germany have increased the taxes on 
importations of cereals and meat, dressed 
or on the hoof, to such an extent as to he 
nearly prohibitory on American goods. 
Italy has just nearly doubled her duties 
on imported cereals. The farmers of Bel¬ 
gium are clamoring for “protective” duties 
on foreign products which compete with 
their own. Even the millers of the 
United Kingdom are urgently demanding 
a duty of $1.25 a barrel on imported flour, 
though quite willing that foreign wheat 
should still remain on the free list; and 
the farmers arc anxious for a duty on im¬ 
ported cereals in all forms. While there 
is little probability that manufacturing 
Great Britain will tax the food of her 
millions of workmen for the benefit of her 
handful of farmers, there is a strong likeli¬ 
hood that the chief American agricultural 
products will bo soon taxed entirely out 
of Continental Europe. This is a pros¬ 
pect which deserves at least occasional 
consideration. 
To know that the Rural's method of 
planting corn is everywhere gaining ad¬ 
vocates, it is only necessary to read the 
farm papers. Surface manuring, or fer¬ 
tilizing, drilling in the seed, shallow cul¬ 
tivation after the plants are up, and flat 
cultivation (i. e., no hilling up) constitute 
that method. If the Rural is not en¬ 
titled to the credit of the first advocacy 
of this method, we should like to know 
it, so that we might give credit where 
credit is due—and we should do it healt¬ 
hy. It is a matter of regret to us that 
the farm press are so chary of giving the 
credit due to us. We cannot understand 
it. It may be supposed, however, that 
those who work disinterestedly for the 
public good should not care for any re¬ 
cognition of the value of their services, 
but simply rejoice in the fact that they 
are striving to do good. We must try to 
educate ourselves up to this benevolent 
state of feeling. What we have advocat¬ 
ed for corn, the Rural has no less advo¬ 
cated for potatoes and indeed for all hoed 
crops. Our experiments lead us to be¬ 
lieve that seed potatoes planted in 
trenches, with the fertilizer or manure, 
or both, above them, and with shallow 
cultivation, and without hilling, will give 
larger and better crops than any of the 
old systems. 
TnE President on the Public Do¬ 
main. —The abuses under the Land Laws 
of the United States have been shameful, 
and some of the most glaring have fre¬ 
quently been denounced in our columns. 
Millions of acres of the public domain 
have been illegally appropriated by rail¬ 
road companies; inillious more have been 
fraudulently taken possession of by land¬ 
grabbing syndicates, cattle-kings, and 
plutocrats. Tn addition to these abuses, 
the Interior Department has for years 
aided such spoliation by withdrawing 
vast tracts from settlement to meet any 
possible claims railroad and other corpora¬ 
tions might make upon the public domain. 
Frequently settlers have taken up farms 
on these lands, and expended years of 
labor and all their savings on their im¬ 
provement, only to be finally ousted by 
some corporation which appropriated the 
results of all their toil and outlay without 
compensation. The policy outlined in 
the President’s recent letter to the Secre¬ 
tary of the Interior on this subject is 
worthy of all consideration. Tn it he 
criticises the action of the Interior De¬ 
partment, in the recent past, on the 
ground that it has resulted in the with¬ 
drawal of millions of acres from the ope¬ 
ration of the land laws altogether, thus 
placing them beyond the reach of citizens 
desiring to settle and make homes on 
them, in the interests of railroad com¬ 
panies having no fixed, certain, or defi¬ 
nite interests in them. 
This state of affairs, he says, should no 
longer continue, and he suggests that 
where corporations are actually entitled 
to select any part of the public domain, 
thev'should be required to do so from 
tracts in whichjsettlcrs have no legal or 
equitable interests and upon which they 
have made no improvements. Every rea¬ 
sonable presumption, he declares, should 
be made in favor of the settler, so as to 
secure him the rewards of his thrift and 
industry. This broad and enlightened 
view of the proper policy to be pursued 
with regard to the public lands is sure to 
meet with the hearty approval of all 
classes, except, of course, the unscrupu¬ 
lous land-grabbers w r ho would suffer from 
its enforcement. 
A CATTLE TRUST COMPANY. 
A telegram from Denver last Monday 
says some of the wealthiest cattle-men of 
Colorado, New Mexico and Western Kan¬ 
sas have formed an association to be called 
the American Cattle Trust Company, with 
a paid-up capital of $25,000,000. Its ob¬ 
ject is to fight the Chicago dressed meat 
ring, which, on a capital of $50,000,000, 
has, in five years, according to reasonable 
estimates, wrung $200,000,000 from meat 
producers and consumers. Within the 
last four years the price paid for cattle to 
the ranchmen has fallen 50 per cent.; 
whereas the price to the consumers has 
remained stationary, though the railroad 
freight charges have also decreased. The 
ring of slaughterers at Chicago and Kan¬ 
sas City, embracing only five firms, fix 
the prices to be paid to the producer 
and by the consumer, and has been en¬ 
abled to maintain its monopoly by 
secret and iniquitous bargains with rail¬ 
roads, like those with the Standard Oil 
Company, which have enabled it to cap¬ 
ture all the oil business of the country. 
The moment for the formation of the m*\$ 
organization is propitious, as the Inter- 
State Commerce Law forbids discrimina¬ 
tion and rebates, and it will, therefore, 
have a fairer show than was hitherto pos¬ 
sible. For the present, the Trust is to 
handle only the cattle of the Western 
ranges; but it is designed ultimately to 
control the sale of all the cattle in the 
country. “Let each owner give a mort¬ 
gage on every animal he owns for $5 per 
head, payable iu five annual payments, 
with six per ceut. interest.” sajs the 
mouth-piece of the Association, “such 
payments to be deducted from his beef 
sales. Let this pool decide when, where, 
and how all beef shall be shipped and 
sold. Let no cattle be sold at any price 
or on any terms except to this pool.” The 
idea was started several months ago. In 
spite of the Denver telegram, it is hardly 
likely to have yet taken bodily shape; 
but there is a growing conviction that 
some such means must be taken to prevent 
the $1,500,000,000 invested iu the cattle 
of the country from being controlled as 
they please by five, sharp, energetic and 
unscrupulous Chicago business firms. 
A COSTLY LESSON. 
A fortnight ago over 10,000 cattle 
were quarantined in and about Chicago. 
Of these more thau 2,000 have since been 
slaughtered on the ground that they were 
either infected with contagious pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, or had been exposed to the 
plague. Recent thorough investigation 
shows that the number of infected beasts 
is now greater than ever, as the number 
which have either contracted or developed 
the disease exceeds that of the beasts al¬ 
ready slaughtered. It is uow very likely 
that all exposed animals will have to be 
killed, and these will include practically 
nearly all in the city. The large tracts 
of unimproved prairie within pasturing 
distance have afforded special facilities for 
the spread of the disease. When this ap¬ 
peared last fall it was confined to a few sta¬ 
bles in which the cows were fed on distil¬ 
lery refuse, and might have been eradicated 
at comparatively small expense. Feeding 
on distillery slops was stopped, and those 
of the stabled animals that were not 
slaughtered or have not died have helped 
to spread the disease among other herds, 
and now the cost of stamping out the pla¬ 
gue will he ten times heavier than it would 
pave been then. The Board of Health and 
Bureau of Animal Industry were earnest 
for prompt measures; but the State Live- 
Stock Commissioners and the Legislature 
were culpably dilatory. Now, however, 
the State and National authorities are 
working harmoniously. All the herds in 
the infected districts have been corralled, 
and every infected and suspected animal 
has been tagged and numbered to prevent 
clandestine removal, though the verterin- 
arians had to be protected by the police 
from the violence of the owners while the 
collection was in progress. 
The opposition of these must soon cease 
both because it is useless, and because 
each animal condemned to death is ap¬ 
praised and the appraised value is paid 
by the National^Goverument. No fancy 
price, however, ia allowed for choice ped¬ 
igree or fine record, the value of the beast 
for the shambles or the dairy being the 
the only standard. If the body proves 
sound it is sold to the slaughter-houses. 
Had the present energetic measures been 
adopted five or six months ago the expense 
would have been less, not only on account 
of the smaller number of animals to be 
killed, but also because the value of milch 
cows is much greater now than it was 
then, with winter ahead. Moreover, win¬ 
ter is a much better season than summer 
for the work, because the stock arc all 
shut up in the former, while in the latter 
they arc permitted to roam in herds, 
crossing each others’tracks and spreading 
the plague. The costly lesson taught by 
the Chicago outbreak—the most extensive 
and expensive ever known in this country 
—should be a warning to all other places 
visited by the disease. 
brevities. 
See next week’s Rural for a report of the 
Dairy Show, 
BLACK Javas, the Downy Plymouth Rock 
ami the Patagoniau are the fowls which it is 
proposed to try at the R. Cl, this season. 
Counting chickens before they are hatched, 
however, is a risky business. 
Nothing can be more disgusting than the 
disclosures of the secrets of the “swill milk” 
trade in this city and Brooklyn. Men who 
would engage in such n wretched business are 
public enemies and should be treated as such. 
There should be no mercy for those who sup¬ 
ply such vile stuff' as this “swill milk” is 
shown to be. 
Prof Cook’s interesting article about Lon¬ 
don-purple and Paris-green for the codling 
moth, on page 820, states that the former, if 
used too freely, is a little less likely to blight 
the foliage than the other. We have never 
used either for anything but to kill the pota¬ 
to beetle, and we have found that the reverse 
is true as to potato foliage. 
Skk next week's Rural for a report of the 
Dairy Show. We shall depart somewhat 
from the usual method of writing up such re¬ 
ports. We wish to give only what seems to 
ho new, striking or useful. Reports are too 
frequently filled with uninteresting details 
which render them dry reading for those who 
wish to learn something from them. 
A Western friend with considerable ex¬ 
perience at calf rearing, writes that he has 
tried with success the following plan of hand¬ 
ling skimmod-milk: As soon as the cream is 
removed, the milk is boated to 150° and then 
cooled to 4.V* and kept at, that temperature 
until feeding time, when it is heated to 90°. 
This seems to be the best way to utilize the 
milk sweet. Whey works much the same, 
though worth less for feeding. 
Those who enjoy raising seedling small 
fruits may not know that tiny seedlings of 
currants and gooseberries may now be found 
under almost every bush, The seeds which 
have remained iu the soil through the winter 
are now sprouting. Some of the little plants 
are now developing the second or true leaves. 
These may be carefully transplanted to little 
jots and eared for until July, when they may 
ie thumped out into well-prepared plots iu the 
garden. 
True owner of one of the finest small herds 
of Jersey grades that we have ever seen, told 
us the rules he had employed in building up 
his herd. He uses the best bull in the town¬ 
ship; sjtends a day iu looking at all the bulls 
within reach. He raises calves from his best 
cows. When he starts out to buy a now cow, 
ho goes prepared to pay a good price for a 
good animal. Too many farmers put $35 or 
$40 in their pockets and start out to get a cow 
for that money. An $80 cow cun be made to 
give a larger profit than u $30 cow. 
Mr. Harrison, the former Secretary of the 
N. Y. State Agricultural Society, was not 
satisfied with the manner iu which the recent 
society election was conducted. He and his 
defeated associates carried the matter before 
the Supreme Court. This court has decided 
against them, and Mr Woodward is now clear¬ 
ly entitled to the office. We are glad the mat¬ 
ter has been thus decided. There can now be 
no question about tho office. We hope the 
society, under its now management, will con¬ 
tinue in the liuo it has so well marked out. 
Years ago, when we commenced to raise 
peanuts, the Rural presented engravings 
from nature, showing how the plants, flowers 
and nuts form. It is an interesting study 
for all, but especially for those who suppose, 
as mauy do, that tho nut forms and grows hko 
a potato, The nut is the fruit. The growth 
of the pistil, how it pushes itself into the soil, 
even though the latter be quite bard, mid then 
forms the peanut, are remarkable. The pea¬ 
nut plant resembles the pea, belongs to the 
same rumily, and the fruit is indeed well 
named “pea-uut.” It may bo well to remind 
our young readers that it is easy to raise pea¬ 
nuts as far north as New York or Chicago in 
favorable seasons. Plant the nuts in drills a 
foot apart iu mellow soil—the drills two feet 
apart. 
Many a cow has had nothing but dry fod¬ 
der for five mouths. A bit of green ryo would 
do them u world of good. They stand iu the 
dry,dusty barn-yards and look longingly over 
the fence at the rye field. When toe pasture 
is fit for them they will gorge themselves for a 
week, and thou scour for a week longer, if no 
worse complaint, attacks thorn. They should 
have had green food for the past month. 1 he 
rye has been heavy enough to feed or to cut 
for that time. The cows would have* given 
far better returns at the pall if they could 
iiave bad the ruu of the rye field for an hour 
everyday. There should be a piece of rye 
sown clone to every barn-yard for tho use of 
the cattle iu early spring. This is the easiest 
and most practical way to begin practicing 
tlie.soiling..system. It will pay as well as any 
other part of it too, r _ _ 
