1888 
415 
able importance when taking frequent notes 
upon several hundred trees. 
A label to meet the requirements of our 
work is one that is always in plain sight, so 
that no time will be occupied in finding it, 
and it should be attached in such a manner 
that the growth of the tree will not interfere 
with it. I have spent some time in trying to 
devise a label that will prove satisfactory for 
our use. It consists of a strip of zinc seven 
inches long by one-and-a-quarter inch wide, 
and a piece of No. 10 galvanized iron wire 
from 12 to 18 inches long, the wire varying in 
length according to the size of the trees to be 
labeled. The wire is bent to nearly the shape 
of the bail of a pail; the ends for about an 
inch are bent inward at an angle so that they 
can be driven into the trunk of the tree. The 
zinc is fastened upon the center of the wire 
where the wooden part would be on the bail, 
by bending one end of the zinc around the 
wire, as shown in the illustration, Fig. 219. 
The name can be written upon the zinc with 
a pencil if desired. We print the name on 
with a small camel’s-hair brush, using what is 
called Nubian black enamel for the purpose. 
The material for these labels will not cost 
more than 25 to 50 cents per 100 at the most, 
and the expense of making will be but little. 
M. H. BECKWITH. 
N. Y. Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y. 
EXPERIENCE IN ORCHARD PLANTING. 
I drove through our orchards of 20 acres of 
apple trees to-day, all pink and white with 
fading blossoms, and I thought it might be 
worth money to some one if I gave to the 
Rural a bit of our dearly bought experience. 
The first orchard of old and well tried trees 
is 28 years planted. The trees were raised at 
home from seed, and grafted, and have been 
profitable in every way. The second orchard 
was stock purchased from Mr. Little of Roch¬ 
ester, N. Y., who sent us trees twice the size of 
our order, entailing upon us enormous expense 
for carriage,and they were altogether too large 
to take proper hold of the ground. When ex¬ 
postulated with, he said that being away 
from home his men had not sent the proper 
trees, but there was no compensation to us for 
the blunder, and though eleven years planted 
they are not healthy, and a large proportion 
died down the second year, and the shoots 
have since been grafted giving no larger trees 
than those in the third orchard planted two 
years later. These trees, purchased from the 
late James Dougall, are not large, but have 
health and thriftiness that the earlier-planted 
trees will never show. The moral is to plant 
small trees, for in nothing is the value of the 
motto “make haste slowly,” more exemplified 
than in the business of tree planting. In forest- 
tree planting for ornamental purposes I know 
of a row of maples that make me nervous 
every time I look at them, so much do I want 
to lop off the tall, unsightly, top-heavy growth. 
If the French-Canadian who planted them 
had selected young saplings they would now 
have been an ornament to the grounds. 
Our orchard experience is a yearly annoy¬ 
ance, and yet when one is so victimized it is 
not easy to return the bulky plants, though 
in our case it would have paid better to have 
burned the over-grown stock, and re-pur- 
chased where faithful attention would have 
been given to the order. Nothing is to be 
gained by planting these ovqj’-grown trees, 
and the sooner orchardists learn this by others’ 
experience the better it will be for the success 
of fruit-planting throughout the country. 
ANNIE L. JACK. 
BINDING TWINE. 
Origin of sisal hemp; difficulties of its early 
introduction , immense increase of produc¬ 
tion of late; substitutes and adulterants; a 
patent sought for one of the latter; jute; 
manilla, evils of the adulterant makeshift. 
Sisal, a little port on the Gulf coast of 
Yucatan, was the original seat of the now 
enormous commerce in the fiber of the Hene- 
quen, our so-called century plant. 
The Agave Americana, or American 
aloe, comprising some twenty species, grows 
wild on the boundless plains of Mexico, 
Central and South America, furnishing choice 
fiber for the local trade of the Indian rope and 
bag maker. Two kinds are cultivated on a 
large scale, Henequen for fiber and Maguey 
for its sap, which has great local fame and 
consumption as pulque, the Mexican national 
beverage. The fine fiber of the latter is now 
wasted by the thousands of tons for want of 
transportation to market or a port from its 
mountain home. Henequen is grown for fiber 
and near the coast, being wonderfully prolific, 
especially in Yucatan, where we buy it to the 
amount of some five millions of dollars yearly 
where laborers’ wages are but 25c. per day. 
After some disastrous and many unprofitable 
years of introduction while a market for it 
was being created, when it sold for from one- 
third to one-half the price of manilla, sisal 
hemp now commands, by reason of its super¬ 
iority for binding twine and similar uses, 
about nine-tenths of the price of manilla, al¬ 
though the latter is still unequaled for general 
cordage and running rigging. This change in 
relative values, which dates from ’86-’87, was 
due to the special superiority of sisal for bind¬ 
ing twine and the consequent growth of the 
consumption of it—and also to the existence 
of prolonged droughts and destructive visita¬ 
tions of grasshoppers in the hemp districts for 
several years past, at the very time of our re¬ 
cent phenomenal increase in grain acreage. 
During the late phenomenal agricultural 
growth and prosperity the Mexican govern¬ 
ment for fear of famine, waived the import du¬ 
ties on grain, and thus by the importation of 
millions of bushels of our corn, the plantation 
laborers (who are the Maya Indians, abori¬ 
ginal to that soil) were fed and kept from de¬ 
serting to join their untamed brethren in the 
jungle. The crop shortage resulting from en¬ 
forced neglect of the plantations, culminated 
in ’87, when sisal had so proved its superior¬ 
ity in economy, convenience and certainty of 
operation as to have been selected for binding 
about two-thirds of the entire crop. Machines 
succeeded with this after failing with other 
twine, and dealers and consumers alike sound¬ 
ed its praises. 
Meanwhile the stimulus given by increased 
demand and higher prices has more than dou¬ 
bled the largest previous acreage of hemp and 
three new railroads have been pushed into the 
plantations; but as the plant requires four or 
five years of growth before the first cutting, 
and as some old plantations are each year aban¬ 
doned, the production and shipment of hemp 
may not be very much increased for another 
year or two. After ’90, however, the supply 
will far exceed any demand hitherto known, 
and such wretched substitutes as are now being 
attempted for this magnificent fiber will be 
permanently retired from the market. But 
for the present, manufacturers are exhausting 
their ingenuity in devices for substitution or 
adulteration of the two leading fibers and for 
coloring and otherwise disguising the inferior 
so as to resemble the better article, and buyers 
need to exercise intelligent and discriminating 
judgment in their purchases and contracts. 
One of the most transparent of these emer¬ 
gency makeshifts which may serve to illustrate 
the situation, is being pushed by parties whose 
evident horror of monopoly and adulteration 
as shown in their circular is funnily empha¬ 
sized by their application for a patent on a by 
no means new or novel method of hiding 
shoddy under good fiber. They simply cover 
a cushion of “jute” with manilla hemp. Now 
there is no likelihood that any advantage in 
quality is possible even by mixing intimately 
and before spinning fibers so similar as manil¬ 
la and sisal, and it is mechanically certain 
that the combination in question is not only 
ineffectual but hurtful. 
Jute, long used for wool twine, and by no 
means new as binder-twine, is a soft and, there¬ 
fore, a moisture and vermin-attracting fiber, 
with similar feel and weakness to “tow”; and 
as much inferior to sisal in strength as in 
weather-resisting qualities. 
It may add bulk but cannot add strength 
to the twine in proportion to its own weight 
and cost, unless mixed before spinning. Even 
a manilla heart or cushion with a manilla cov¬ 
ering on this “patent” plan, would be but 
about half as strong as if spun in the usual 
way, for the simple and sufficient reason that 
in the latter case all the Abel’s lie and pull 
parallel to each other, so as to furnish resist¬ 
ance at the same moment of strain, while in 
the “patent,” “anti-monopoly,” “unadulter¬ 
ated” article the heart must be comparatively 
straight and, therefore, short, and the cover¬ 
ing comparatively crooked and, therefore, 
long, so that the one will break first and the 
other afterwards, without having helped each 
other at all. In the case of a jute cushion or 
center the difficulty is further increased by 
the difference in “elastic limit” or amount of 
elongation before breaking of two such radi¬ 
cally differing fibers. When the cushion 
breaks, if the covering holds it will strip the 
cushion back in lumps at the disk and necessi¬ 
tate a stoppage and readjustment, so that the 
only advantage—enlarging the manilla for the 
disks—is dearly bought. 
The safest and best method is probably to 
use all three fibers separately, and choose be¬ 
tween manilla, superior in strength and defi¬ 
cient in bulk if at all; jute, deficient in 
strength and weather-resisting qualities and 
superior in bulk only; and sisal, with the good 
qualities of both and the deficiencies of neither 
—according to length, weight, and price, and 
the tests now usual. s j. m. 
BUCEPHALUS BROWN’S NOTIONS AND 
IDEAS. 
On Typographic Errors —Of a good many 
of the mistakes charged to printers, not a few 
are really errors of the manuscript. But I 
can hardly think that, in attempting to quote 
Mathew Arnold, I wrote: “ The power o/man 
which makes for righteousness.” It was “the 
Power above man,” which was referred to in 
my paragraph upon “What is Enough,” in 
the Rural of May 26. The proof-reader also 
over looked several interrogation marks, in¬ 
serted where periods should bave heen placed. 
On Pauper Labor.— One of the most child¬ 
ish whims that ever came from a politician’s 
mouth is the stereotyped one about the compe¬ 
tition of “the pauper labor of Europe” with 
American industry. We have a good many 
paupers in America, but I never knew an 
American workingman to lie awake dreading 
their competition. The labor to be dreaded 
between competing industrial nations is the 
highly trained and specialized labor of an in¬ 
telligent, sober, industrious and lightly taxed 
nation of freemen. If America cannot stand 
flat-footed against the world in industrial 
competition, then American institutions are 
a complete and self-confessed failure. 
We can Choose.— Some branches of labor 
are more desirable to live by in many ways 
than others; and in our country the people 
are free enough and rich enough to choose 
these, and leave the others, at present, to other 
nations. We do not compete now, as we once 
did, in international navigation, because 
Americans can get a better and easier living 
ashore. If the country were as poor as it 
was 50 years ago, and shore wages as low, we 
should lead in shipping as much as ever. The 
fact is that nearly all the ships we have are 
manned by foreign seamen in great part; and 
it is the same with our fishing fleet. The sea 
offers very little inducement to American la¬ 
bor. It is a dog’s life at best. 
We are Feared.— The competition of 
America is now feared, not only in agriculture, 
but in a great and growing multitude of in¬ 
dustries. Far seeing Englishmen have ex¬ 
pressed fear that America will find out by 
experiment that she no longer needs protect¬ 
ion for what were once, but are no longer, 
“infant industries.” We have general educa¬ 
tion, and, practically, no taxation in America. 
What we call our “taxes” are, in fact, our 
willing assessments upon ourselves, to be ex¬ 
pended for our own advantage. Even the 
great and to some extent wrongful gains of 
our monopolized industries have to be spent 
again, mainly for national development 
which benefits the whole community. 
Europe’s Burdens and Losses.— While I 
believe that the best way to raise the national 
revenue is by duties on imports mainly; and 
while it is neither likely that we shall, nor best 
that we should suddenly and completely aban¬ 
don a protective policy; yet when I consider 
how Europe is handicapped in her competition 
with us for industrial supremacy, my pity is 
not for my own countrv. With an outworn 
organization, a large idle class, part aristocrat 
and part pauper, (but both pauperized', with 
standing armies running far into the millions, 
consuming, wearing out and wasting the pro¬ 
ducts of the industry of other millions, and 
leaving self-sustenance and capital-making to 
the comparatively small remnant of able-bod¬ 
ied citizens, (with a constant emigration of the 
best of these to our shores), what chance has 
Europe to hold her own with the great Repub¬ 
lic! The very statement of the fact is enough. 
There is not a chance for argument left for 
those who are scared by the self-evoked spec¬ 
ter of European competition. The imminent 
danger of Europe is a general and furious war 
of nations first, and then of factions, which 
may end in general liberty, but must end in 
such general poverty as will make Europe of 
small account in the history of the world dur¬ 
ing the coming centuries. 
“Westward the Course of Empire Takes 
its Way.” —America holds the world’s future 
in the hollow of her band—not by military 
pre eminence; not by lust for rule over other 
peoples; but because in her, first and only, is 
“liberty regulated by law” having its perfect 
work. Here, fov the first and only time in 
the world’s history, is a great people actually 
and truly self governed and self-directed. In 
saying this I am not ignoringGod’sprovidence, 
for I believe it to be by His providence that 
America was reserved for such an exemplifi¬ 
cation of His purposes in man’s behalf. 
Our Responsibilities.—No American who 
truly realizes what his country is, can find 
anything but cause for joy and pride in that 
country. Our great, almost our only danger, 
is in the springing up out of this great popular¬ 
ity of a false material pride, which shall base 
itself upon wealth rather than upon man¬ 
hood. The millionaire spirit and the pauper 
spirit are both with us. Europe threatens us 
with no evils greater than these—transplanted 
here, and not unlikelv to make some danger¬ 
ous growth. It is true that “great cities are 
great sores,” and our danger of dangers is a 
natural blood-poisoning from those sores It 
is the mission of journals like the Rural New- 
Yorker to an tagoni-e this insidious venom; 
to spread the gospel of “plain living and high 
thinking;” to lift up and ennoble rural life; to 
awaken the food producers to their great 
privileges, and greater duties, as the salt that 
must keep our national life sweet and pure. 
CORRESPONDENTS’ VIEWS. 
English Farm Life.— The following graph¬ 
ic description of the daily life of a farmer’s 
family in Shopshire, England, who continue 
to thrive amid the general agricultural dis¬ 
tress there, may help to answer one of your 
questions relating to farm profits now and 35 
years ago. The account is taken from Le 
Correspondent, and written by M. Anatole 
Langlois. The farmer, William Bilston, is 
a man of about 50; he has an open, honest- 
looking face, browned by the weather. His 
wife, who is about 45. is a strong, vigorous 
woman, and she wears her working dress all 
day and every day but Sundays. She has five 
daughters and two sons; and they all assist in 
the farm work. They have a lease of 150 
acres, and Mrs. Bilston gave him this state¬ 
ment of their daily life. 
“I get up at four and waken the rest of the 
family; my daughters soon make themselves 
ready, and while some are busied with indoor 
work I go with the others to the yards to feed 
the animals and the poultry. There is a good 
deal to do before we have given all they need 
of feeding and attention and have everything 
tidied up. 
At seven we have our breakfast, mostly of 
bread of our own making with milk, but we 
always have some meat on Sundays. We 
place ourselves around the table standing and 
wait till the master makes us a sign to sit 
down. Bilston’s place is in an arm-chair at 
the head of the table, and he has before him a 
large Bible in which are all the records of 
births, deaths and marriages for three gener¬ 
ations of the family. He reads a chapter 
aloud, never less or more, but sometimes 
makes some remarks to the children on what 
he has read. At. noon we eat dinner, (or 
second breakfast as the French writer calls it.) 
All come to the table freshly washed and 
brushed off, for 1 can’t endure to see dust on 
the hands or the clothes at meal-time. We 
generally have a good soup, and rice or a pud¬ 
ding, and often, especially in winter, pies of 
apple or other fruit, and on special occasions 
plum cake. The men drink a cup of cider, 
the women drink milk. At four, we have tea, 
and then the girls and I bring the cattle and 
fowls into their stables and pens and make all 
right about the yards. After that we take 
our needles. At nine, after supper, I make a 
round to see that all are in bed and all lights 
out and doors safe.” tyronne. 
.Farm Help, —The cry for help—help in-doors 
