834 
DEC IS 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
ANatlonal Journal for Country and Suburban Hornet 
Conducted by 
HUBERT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1888. 
We are in hopes that the remarkable 
new pear Idaho will be offered for sale 
next year. It is probable that cions set 
two years ago at the Rural Grounds will 
bear fruit next season. 
“If frosted com fodder could be packed 
in a'silo while frozen, it might be saved from 
harm by putting it out of reach of the micro¬ 
scopic organisms which cause decay ."— 
Prof. F. R. Storer, page 832. 
Sec'y J. S. Woodward was taken seri¬ 
ously ill on Dec. 7. while conducting the 
exercises of the Farmers’ Institute held at 
Newburgh, N. Y. He was carried to the 
Leslie House. As we go to press, Dec. 8, 
the following telegram has been received 
from his son: “He is much better this 
morning and feels encouraged.” 
"The problem of machine husking is cer¬ 
tainly solved, and the husker will follow the 
thrasher as certainly as the thrasher now 
follows the binder, and do as effective and 
satisfactory work ."— A. C. Glidden, page 835. 
-•» « ♦» - 
A Subscriber in Kansas suggests a new 
lesson for the Post-office club parrot as 
follows: 
“Farmin’ don’t pay! That parrot 
which has recently put in an appearance 
at the ‘Post Office Club’ ought to come 
West, and learn to ask: ‘Who pays the 
freight?’ We need more men like 
‘Jones.’ ” 
This is one of the questions that we 
would all like to have answered. 
"The value of a thoroughbred lies in the 
production of grades', for it is to grades 
and to grades alone that we shall long look 
for profitable production of all the various 
products for which live-stock is kept." 
—“Unit”, page 835. 
•< 
If the ground is not yet frozen it is 
not too late to plant grape seeds. Make 
a drill as long as desired, two inches 
deep. Drop a seed every two inches; 
fill the drill and firm the soil. A stake 
at either end will mark the drill, so that 
it will not be interfered with next spring. 
Many of these seeds will germinate next 
June, and the seedlings may be trans¬ 
planted to a permanent place where, in 
three years, a fair proportion will bear 
fruit. 
“7 think the first prize and highest honor 
should go to the woman who does all the 
work (exceptingplowing and harrowing), on 
her plot, and obtains the largest yield ; be¬ 
cause she has earned it by hard work with 
her own hands—not her husband's or her 
brother's.— Mrs. L. T. A., page 833. 
Talking of gooseberry trees—a subject 
which is interesting some of our con¬ 
temporaries—we have had two specimens 
growing in the Rural Grounds for 10 
years. They are grafted on the Missouri 
currant, a single stem four feet high. 
Upon one both the gooseberry and the 
currant are growing. It was claimed when 
these gooseberry trees were being intro¬ 
duced (11 years ago, or thereabouts) that 
they would not mildew or be attacked by 
the currant worm. Both claims are whol¬ 
ly unfounded. The foreign varieties of 
gooseberries will mildew to the same or a 
greater extent when thus grafted than if 
grown upon their own roots in bush 
form. 
In 1882 an experiment was tried at the 
Rural Grounds to ascertain which seed 
pieces would yield most, the halves of 
the seed-end or the halves of the stem- 
end. The seed-e nd from the Rural 
Blush yielded at the rate of only 
282 33 bushels to the acre. The stem-end 
yielded at the rate of 937.71 bushels tc the 
acre I Now in the same plot the seed-end 
of the Queen of the^Valley yielded at the 
rate of 363.00 bushels to the acre; the 
stem-end 393.21 bushels to the acre. This 
teaches that we must not jump at conclu 
sions, as later experiments of the same kind 
showed. To this day, we cannot say 
whether the stem end or seed-end wil 
yield more. In every case the sprouts from 
the seed end appeared aboveground before 
those of the stem end; but we have never 
found that there was any material differ¬ 
ence in the time of the dying of the vines. 
"The only reason why hot bread is injuri¬ 
ous is that we like it too well and eat too 
much of it." Again: "If good fruit were 
provided abundantly, at every meal, few 
would be tempted to over-eat in any danger¬ 
ous direction." Dr. Hoskins, page 828. 
There are many complaints in Canada 
against large importations of “com¬ 
pound” or adulterated lard from Chicago, 
which, it is charged, enters in direct com¬ 
petition with the pure article made in the 
Dominion. It is reported that the Cana¬ 
dian Pork Packers’Association intends to 
seek legislation to regulate the importa¬ 
tion and sale of the product in the interest 
of the consumer, the farmer and the trade, 
It is proposed either to regulate the sale 
according to the English precedent, or to 
increase the import duty on it, leaving 
that on pure lard as it is at present. The 
friends of “wholesome and desirable com¬ 
pound lard” maintain that ail that is need¬ 
ed is to so brand the article that the pur¬ 
chaser cannot be misled as to what it is. 
Why not insist that the “compound” 
article should be colored pink, as oleo¬ 
margarine must be colored in several of 
the States on this side of the line? 
"It is a remarkable fact, which I think no 
one will question, that there is no article of 
food in more general use or of greater nutri¬ 
tive value than bread, and yet there is noth¬ 
ing which would appear to be more difficult 
to prepare, judged from the results which 
are generally found upon our table ."— Dr. 
Peter Collier, page 832. 
The suit of New York State against 
the Sugar Trust has been up before the 
Court here during this week, but no de¬ 
cision has yet been rendered. Accord¬ 
ing to the counsel for the monopoly, in¬ 
stead of being an extortionate, oppressive 
association, it is a beneficent one. Facts, 
however, do not agree with this assump¬ 
tion. Since its organization, a little over 
a year ago, it has advanced the wholesale 
price of sugar a little over one cent per 
pound. The annual consumption of 
sugar in the country is put at about 3,000- 
000,000 pounds. The advance therefore 
represents $30,000,000 a year to the 
“trust,” and as there has also been an 
additional advance in the retail price, 
the consumers have bad to pay from $5, 
000,000 to $10,000,000 more—or from 
$35,000,000 to $40,000,000. Shouldn’t 
something be promptly done to redress 
this great wrong? Are the people of this 
country helplessly at the mercy of this syn¬ 
dicate of extortioners? What form of 
policy or legislation should be adopted 
against such unscrupulous monopolies? 
The “labor” element was dominant in 
the last Wisconsin Legislature; this year 
the “granger” element has everything its 
own way. Dairyman Hoard, a repre¬ 
sentative farmer, has been elected 
Governor,and the agricultural vote is over¬ 
whelmingly powerful in both branches 
of the Legislature. Last year the lead¬ 
ing objects of attack were various city 
monopolies; this year the railroads will be 
the principal objects for reformation. 
The chief measures will be one creat¬ 
ing a board of railway commissioners, 
and an act reducing passenger rates to two 
cents per mile. The great danger will be 
that too drastic methods of reform may 
be adopted. In Iowa the railroad com¬ 
missioners are elective, and it is 
charged that they have been acting 
solely for partisan effect. Be this as it 
may, their action has entirely paralyzed 
railroad construction in the State, much 
to the disappointment and loss of many 
isolated sections which are anxious for 
railroad facilities. While a two-centrate 
would be fair in a thickly settled country, 
it may bear too hard on undeveloped lines 
in sparsely settled parts of the State. The 
country at large will watch with no little 
attention the action of the Wisconsin 
“granger” Legislature during the coming 
year, and it is to be hoped that it will be 
marked with such moderation, honesty 
and wisdom that popular approval else¬ 
where may send more farmers to the 
Legislatures of other States also. 
THE PRESIDENT ON AGRICULTURE. 
I N his last regular message to Congress 
the President refers at considerable 
length to agricultural matters. Accord¬ 
ing to him “the records of the year show 
that the season of 1888 has been one of 
medium production. A generous supply 
of the demands of consumption has been 
assured, and a surplus for exportation, 
moderate in certain products and bounti¬ 
ful in others, will prove a benefaction alike 
to buyer and grower.” He dwells at 
length on the danger to the great cattle 
industry of the country, four years ago, 
from pleuro pneumonia, and to the lack of 
national and State legislation and appro¬ 
priations for dealing with it, and con¬ 
gratulates the nation on the extirpation of 
the plague in all the Western States and 
also in the Eastern States, “with the ex¬ 
ception of a few restricted areas, which 
are still under supervision.” He thinks 
that owing to the introduction of the 
diffusion process, as applied to the manu¬ 
facture of sugar from sorghum and sugar¬ 
cane “the sorghum-sugar industry has 
been established upon a firm basis, and 
the road to its future success opened,” 
An exhaustive study of food adulteration 
will insure the publication of “the most 
complete treatise on the subject that has 
ever been published in any country.” 
He truly says that a wise and vigilant 
supervision of the endowed experimental- 
station system is highly important “to the 
end that the pecuniary aid of the Govern¬ 
ment in tavor of intelligent agriculture 
may be so applied as to result in the gen¬ 
eral good and to the benefit of the people, 
thus justifying the appropriation made 
from the public Treasury.” 
THE WOMAN’S NATIONAL POTATO 
CONTEST. 
E STIMATED value of souvenirs con¬ 
tributed up to Nov. 24-$550.00 
Lawson Valentine. President of the 
Christian Union Co., New York, $75.00 
in the following books selected from the 
catalogue of Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 
New York and Boston: 
Walden by Thoreau. 
Excursions In Field and Forest by Thoreau. 
Summer by Thoreau. 
Winter by Thoreau. 
Fresh Fields by Burroughs. 
Locust and Wild Honey by Burroughs. 
Winter Sunshine by Burroughs. 
Wake-R<>bin by Burroughs. 
Signs and Seasons by Burroughs. 
A Treasury of Thought by Maturln M. Ballou. 
Talks afield, about Plants and the Science of 
Plants by Prof. Bailey 
The Philosophy of Eating by Bellows. 
Pictures of Country Lire by Alice Cary. 
The Building of aBraln by Dr. Clarke. 
Rural Hours by Susan Fenimo e Cooper. 
Hints on Household Taste by Perkins. 
Castilian Days by Hay. 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast tsble by Holmes. 
Our Hundred Days in Europe by Holmes. 
The Common Sense of Money by Howe. 
Smoking and Drinking by Parton. 
The Gates Alar by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
Beyond the Gates by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
The Gates Between by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
Popular Flowers by Rand. 
My Summer in a Garden by Warner. 
The Waverly Set of oir Walter Scott’s novels com¬ 
prising 25 volumes. 
W. S. Waite, Haley, Tenn., $10 in a 
pair of either of the following breeds, 
cooped, and delivered at express station: 
Houdans, Langshans, Silver Wyandottes, 
Leghorns, W. H. B. Spanish, P. Cochins, 
Light Brahmas. 
John H. Evans, Lewiston, Idaho. $12 
in Idaho Pear trees, one to each of six 
successful competitors. 
R. N. Lewis, Red Hook, N. Y.,$5 in a 
trio of Laced Wyandottes. 
Gen. N. M. Curtis, Ogdensburg, N. 
Y., $5 in cash. 
Porter Blanchard’s Sons, Concord, 
N. II., $8.00 m a No, 5 Blanchard Family 
Churn. 
John S. Pearce & Co., London, Ont. 
$5 in seeds selected from their catalogue 
TO YOUNG FARMERS. 
J UST a word to you young men—sons 
of farmers, with good health and a 
fair knowledge of farming—who have 
made up your minds to be teachers, 
drug clerks, salesmen, etc., because such 
work is considered a little genteel. Do 
you realize the fact that there will be 
such a crowd in these lines of work 15 
years hence that even the much paraded 
“room at the top” will be crowded? It is 
a fact which you can easily see if you will 
sit down and think about it. Said a 
friend the other day: “There are enough 
girls and boys in N, Y. State alone who 
want to be teachers, to teach all the 
schools in the country, and there are 
young men enough in this city to handle 
half the country’s business.” There is 
a good deal of truth in this remark. The 
tendency is to produce a surplus of work¬ 
ers in what are known as the “genteel” 
occupations. More boys want to be 
teachers, drug clerks, or store-hands than 
ever before. You young men may put 
that down as a settled fact. 
Now for another idea. There is going 
to be a good demand for bright and ener¬ 
getic young men to serve a9 farm fore 
men. Such men will be able to secure 
better salaries than the teachers and the 
drug-clerks, and their lives will be far 
happier. There will be more large farms 
in the future; rich “city farmers” are 
going to need honest and intelligent 
young men as helpers; those who hire 
cheap labor are going to need good fore¬ 
men. Put these two facts together, 
young men, and see what follows. 
We have no special advice to offer 
those who have made up their minds, like 
the Post Office Club parrot, that “Farmin 
don’t pay?” It is probable that nothing 
will cure them so quickly as a season 
spent in some other class of work. This 
we know. The future has a bright 
enough prospect for the young man who 
is willing to study, work and wait. Fit¬ 
ness always acts as a magnet between a 
man and a place. We may as well men¬ 
tion another fact. A winter course at 
one of our agricultural colleges will help 
any young man who proposes to reach up 
for the high places in agriculture, and in 
this connection we might ask, why should 
any one be content to take only the low 
places? 
brevities. 
Let us have good bread. 
The “Staff of Life ” takes the floor this 
week. 
This week’s R. N.-Y., with increasing 
years, shows it is growing well bred. 
The Bread Special has driven the hogs 
out of this issue. We shall tell “all about” 
them next week. 
Secretary Woodward informs us that 11 
Dorset ewes have given him 20 lambs—all 
well and thriving. 
The Duchesse d’ Angouleme, the American 
Pomological Society determines, is now to be 
called—Angouleme—not Duchesse or Duchess^ 
W e are having one of our Wyandotte-Dorkl 
ing cross-bred pullets sketched to show our 
readers something of the shape we are breed¬ 
ing for. 
In 1882 the R. N.-Y. raised 600 potatoes 
from seeds of the English Magnum Bonum. 
Not one of these seedlings ever amounted to 
anything. 
You will notice by “Discussion” this week 
that the ladies want to conduct their contest 
so that there will be no chance for a man to 
beat them. 
Yes, Indeed, every one should have a bobby 
There is no sort of a conveyance that will 
carry one through more surely and safely. 
Of course, there are hobbies and hobbies. 
The shoes of the two horses at the Rural 
Grounds are taken off in the spring, after all 
danger of freezing weather is past, and re¬ 
placed not until freezing weather in the fall. 
“What are you farming for?” Don’t 
forget to answer that question when you write 
us again. A number of answers have already 
come in. This will make a good topic for 
New Year’s. 
The whole story about Mushroom Culture 
will be told by Wm, Falconer in our New 
Year’s number. Mr. Terry will also give an 
interesting account of the tools used in pro¬ 
ducing and harvesting a large crop of pota¬ 
toes. 
Our lady friends are still sending in their 
names freely for the Women’s Natidnal 
Potato Contest. A few men apparently of 
the dog-in the-manger type, oppose this 
project. It is too late, dear sirs—too late, 
quite. 
Catawbas are now selling at 35 cents the 10- 
pound basket. Most of us can afford to have 
grapes for breakfast while the price remains 
so low. In fact it is a wise economy to have 
fruit of some kind for breakfast the year 
round. 
Read what Mr. Glidden says on page 835 
concerning the new corn-husker. This im¬ 
plement “promises to revolutionize agricult¬ 
ure.” Agriculture is being so generally 
“revolutionized” nowadays that it is small 
wonder that old farmers, are made a little 
dizzy. 
Don’t forget that charcoal is good for 
E oultry. Powdered and placed in the dust- 
ath, it gives good results. It is also good to 
use it in soft food now and then at the rate of 
a tablespoonful to a quart of food. It assists 
digestion. Charcoal is frequently given to 
men and cattle; why not to poultry? 
It now seems that the Prentiss (white) 
grape which was unfavorably regarded by 
the R. N.-Y. some years ago, has by no means 
fulfilled the promise of its introducers. We 
were reproached at the time, but we have our 
reward now. It is not a pleasant feeling for 
a journal to have advocated the extensive 
trial of a new, high-priced fruit that finally 
disappoints every one. 
Last week a box of Victoria (Miner) white 
grapes was received from H. B. Spencer, 
Rockport, Ohio. This splendid variety is be¬ 
coming more and more (though slowly) popu¬ 
lar as it well deserves to be. For hardiness 
and productiveness it is not excelled. It has 
every good characteristic except quality. 
But it is better than the Pocklington and as 
good.as its parent.the Concord. 
