THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
ANational Journal for Country and Suburban Home 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 84 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1888. 
“ What a bright, happy home this old world 
would be 
If men when they're here could make shift 
to agree, 
And each said to his neighbor , in cottage 
or hall, 
'■Come, give me your hand—we are all breth¬ 
ren all.'" — Nicoll. 
CHANGE OF CLUBBING TERMS. 
The Weekly Inter-Ocean and the R. N.- 
Y., one year, $2.50 
The N. 7. Weekly World and the 
R. N.-Y., $2.25. 
The Detroit Free Press and the R- N.- 
Y., $2.25. 
The Courier-Journal and the R. N.-Y., 
$2.50. 
The lowest possible clubbing rates 
with any journal in America will be given 
on application. Subscribe through the 
Rural New-Yorker. 
-- 
"Rood tillage is a good thins. Jethro 
Tull believed it was everything but the 
fact is that a first-rate crop of corn cannot 
he raised on an impoverished field, no mat¬ 
ter how much tillage is given to it. or how 
favorable the season may be.”—J. W. J., 
page 862. 
The Souvenirs to the Women’s 
National Potato Contest, amount in 
money value, to nearly $800 up to date. 
A revised list of the donors will appear in 
a week or two. Meanwhile, our lady 
friends are sending in their names freely 
for the contest. We feel like heartily 
thanking them for their interest and 
enthusiasm. Who knows what good may 
come out of this friendly contest? 
‘•The farmer does not burn straw. The 
clodhopper does. The farmer is out of 
debt, or on the way to be, with a broad, 
smooth, open road in front of him, and his 
smile is like a spring morning. The clod¬ 
hopper is in debt, and likely to stay there.” 
—Fred Grundy, page 861. 
A small tuber of the Rural New- Yorker 
Potato No. 2 will be sent to our. yearly 
subscribers who apply, without any 
charge whatever. It will be sent, as the 
weather permits, from time to time, so that 
all shall receive a tuber before the planting 
season commences. applications are 
now in order. No doubt this potato will 
fail in many parts of the country, but 
from the reports thus far received, it may 
be said to be the nearest approach to a per¬ 
fect potato at present known. 
“1 have become thoroughly disgusted 
with the practice of letting grass stand till 
it is ripe and the leaves are dry. If the 
haying is out of the way, one has time to 
fight weeds and insects.”—J. W. Newton, 
page 863. 
- ♦ «« ♦ » ♦- 
Five yearly subscriptions at $2 each 
will entitle the sender to one copy of the 
R. N.-Y. for one year. 
It is assumed that when two lady sub¬ 
scribers meet or visit each other next 
spring and summer the first question to 
ask will be, not “How do you do?” but 
“How is your Contest Plot?” 
“ There is just as much profit in a mis¬ 
take, if you mnke it soon enough in life, ns 
there is in many successes”—Unit, page 862. 
Fifty symposiums on subjects which 
are of vital importance to farmers, dairy¬ 
men, gardeners, etc., will be presented 
to R. N.-Y. readers during 1889—a con¬ 
tinuation of the work of this year which 
has proven so acceptable to them. 
Here is the way one N. Y. State sub¬ 
scriber puts it: 
“What am I farming for? ^1 guess it is 
to keep those ‘old croakers’ that, like 
the parrot, proclaim that ‘farming don’t 
pay ’ as well as the sparrows from starv¬ 
ing.” 
“There is one thing we have done in 
Inte years that I am satisfied is wrong. 
Science would teach it, and practice proves 
it—that is, allowing seed potatoes to sprout 
badly before planting.”—E. Davenport, 
page 863. 
Mr. Jab. McFarland, of Watertown, 
Wis., writes as follows: 
“ I am much pleased with the interest 
the Rural takes in the potato. For 
three years I have had a very poor potato 
crop; but the past season I raised a big 
crop according to the Rural’s plan. I 
believe the yield was over 600 bushels per 
acre—all nice and clean. I used sulphur 
as directed by the Rural, and for the first 
time in my experience the Early Ohioes on 
black land were free of scab. The other 
kind I raised was Thorburn, and they 
too were free from scab. 
The 150 different varieties of the 
R. N.-Y. rye-wheat hybrids and wheat 
crosses are looking splendid. Some of 
them were planted a single grain one foot 
apart each way; others closer in the drills, 
though all the drills are one foot apart. 
It is a beautiful little field of living green, 
almost as well covered by the plants as if 
the wheat had been thickly sown. It was 
lightly mulched with city stable manure 
as soon as the soil became so frozen as to 
bear a man’s weight, care being used not 
to cover the plants themselves. It would 
amaze our friends were they to be told 
just how much time, labor and expense 
we have, from first to last, given these hy¬ 
brids and cross-breds. Let us hope that 
the future will prove that it has not all 
been thrown away. 
Last Tuesday the N. Y. City Board of 
Aldermen adopted an ordinance provid¬ 
ing that packages of vegetables offered 
for sale in the public streets must weigh 
as follows: 
Barrel of spinach, 40 pounds; of sprouts, 
50; bushel of potatoes, 60; of turnips, 
carrots, beets, and parsnips, 50; of sweet 
potatoes or onions, 55; of tomatoes, 60; 
bag of string beans or wax beans, 40; of 
cranberry or Lima beans or green peas, 50. 
Every package must be marked plainly 
with its correct weight in letters and 
figures at least one inch high. Fine of 
$10 for false marks of weight or other 
violation of the ordinance. 
This ordinance has caused much dis¬ 
cussion in previous years. We shall give 
the opinions of some of those who are 
deeply interested in this matter, in a few 
weeks. 
A Telegram from Columbia, South 
Carolina, tells us that melon growers of 
the State have just held a convention at 
Biackville for the purpose of organiz¬ 
ing a Watermelon Alliance or Trust. 
Planters of over 6,000 acres were present. 
The melon-growing region of the State 
extends from Branchville to the Savannah 
River opposite Augusta, and last season 
the shipments from that section amounted 
to over 2,000,000 melons. The projected 
association proposes to establish agencies 
in New York, Philadelphia Baltimore, 
Boston, and Chicago. Uf late the mar¬ 
kets have often been so glutted that prices 
have hardly paid freight and commissions, 
and in some instances the growers not 
only lost their melons, but were brought 
in debt by their shipments. After the 
example set by the Delaware peach-grow¬ 
ers, it is proposed to collect information 
as to the supply of melons in each market, 
to regulate shipments, and to secure low¬ 
er rates of freight, all of which will tend 
to put more money into the pockets of the 
producers. The “cullud” population are 
likely to be chief objectors to this “wah- 
tuhmihyn Trus.’” 
English agricultural journals are agi¬ 
tating against the admission of Canadian 
cattle as a counter-blast against the 
American agitation for the admission of 
cattle from the United States. It is 
argued that the importation of Canadian 
cattle is ruinous to British live stock in¬ 
terests, and the government is urged to 
withdraw the concession to Canada, thus 
placing the Dominion and the States on 
the same footing. The Live Stock Jour¬ 
nal says that this concession was never 
intended to refer to fat cattle, the im¬ 
portation of which has now grown to a 
regular trade. As a pretext for the em¬ 
bargo they advocate, the papers insist 
that unless the cattle are slaughtered at 
the port of debarkation, the trade must 
bring on disease and disaster. The fact 
that no contagious disease exists among 
Canadian cattle seems to have no weight 
with these advocates of protection for 
British beef. Of course, the United 
States can offer no objection to a pro¬ 
tective policy in the United Kingdom; 
but its supporters should be boldly out¬ 
spoken in its favor, instead of urging its 
adoption merely as a safeguard against 
live stock diseases which have no exis¬ 
tence. 
THE WOMEN’S NATIONAL POTATO 
CONTEST. 
E STIMATED value of souvenirs con¬ 
tributed to Dec. 1st., $670. 
John Saul, Washington D C., $10 
in choice plants to be selected from his 
catalogue. 
Henry Stewart, Highlands, N. C., 
$6.50 in the five works of which he is the 
author, viz., Culture of Farm Crops, 
Dairyman’s Manual, Shepherd’s Manual, 
Irrigation for the Farm, Orchard and 
Garden. 
Pomeroy and Pearson, Lockport. 
N. Y., $9 in one set (No. 4) Botsford 
Wagon Springs. 
Giddings and Read, Rutland, Vt. $65 
as follows: 
Ten prizes of 20 bulbs each of Wood¬ 
bury’s choice gladioli. 
Ten prizes of one peck each of Rogers’s 
Seedling Potato. 
Ten prizes of one pound each of the 
new potato Vermont Wonder, not yet 
offered for sale. 
Ten prizes of one pound each of Read’s 
Red Giant, not yet offered for sale. 
Ten prizes, $1.50 each of seeds of any 
kind to be selected from their 1889 
catalogue. 
Chas. J. Wright, Fergus Falls, Minn. 
Five dollars in cash. 
Bowker Fertilizer Co., Boston, 
Mass, $42.50 in one ton of Stockbridge 
Potato Manure. 
SOME THINGS FOR THE NEW 
YEAR. 
T HE man represented in our first page 
picture proposes to make a business 
of preparing for the New Year. It is a 
new ! way of looking at it—this representing 
the past year as an old Jew. He takes all 
the regretable things of the year and 
carries them away. It is a very pleasant 
change from him to the happy wife and 
children who bring hope, courage and 
faith in the place of the discarded dis¬ 
appointments and failures. There is a 
whole sermon in the picture; can you not 
take a lesson from it? 
And as somewhat in this connection, 
we might mention a few things that oc¬ 
cur to the R. N.-Y. as coming among the 
things we would like to see done in 1889. 
Our experiment stations ought to 
organize a series of experiments with 
poultry. 
Farmers ought to use their available 
supply of manure as the measure of their 
cultivated fields. In other words, they 
should never try to farm more land than 
they can fertilize. 
Farmers’ wives should study the 
Rural’s Bread Special. There is nothing 
like strengthening the “staff of life.” 
Apple growers should use more Paris- 
green . There are too many wormy apples 
offered for sale in the cities. 
That farm garden should not be ne¬ 
glected as of old. 
Those scrubs should “go.” 
That worry, that “blue” feeling and 
that discontent should all be kicked out 
of the house together. 
AMERICAN CORN AT THE PARIS 
EXPOSITION. 
T HE great international Exposition at 
Paris, France, will open on May 5, 
next year, and close on October 31. 
Congress has appropriated $250,000 for 
making a grand exhibition of American 
products there. All exhibits will be 
transported free of cost, and ample space 
has been secured for a fine display. Of 
all our exports 86 per cent consist of 
cereals and other agricultural products; 
still only the insignificant sum of $25,000 
has been assigned to the Department of 
Agriculture to make a proper represen¬ 
tation of the products of America’s 
greatest industry. Professor C. V. Riley 
has charge of this department. Probably 
the grandest show will very properly be 
that of corn. The New York Produce 
Exchange has under consideration a plan 
for a special corn exhibit, for the purpose 
of developing a wide interest on the sub¬ 
just of Indian corn in its various prepar¬ 
ations as food and for use in the arts. 
At all former European international ex¬ 
hibitions, the United States, the greatest 
corn-growing country in the world, was 
outrivaled in this respect by Italy, 
Roumania, and several other countries 
where corn growing is a comparatively 
insignificant industry. The plan ot the 
proposed exhibit involves the erection of 
a separate pavilion after the design of 
the famous Corn Palace that attracted so 
much attention at Sioux City, Iowa, last 
year and this. The roof, columns and 
chimney, are to be of corn-fodder, while 
the interior and exterior will be entirely 
covered with stalks and ears. The 
columns, balustrades and lattice work 
will be formed of ears and leaves. There 
will be emblems of husbandry, and 
mottoes significant of fertility, all made 
of corn. The flags of the United States 
and of France will float proudly from 
two corn-covered towers, while streamer*! 
from the roof will tell the world the 
names of our great corn producing States 
—Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana. Photo¬ 
graphs will show the interiors of our Pro¬ 
duce Exchanges, and a colossal map of the 
United States with colored areas will in¬ 
dicate the great corn-producing districts, 
while statistical charts will tell the 
amount of the annual production and ex¬ 
portation. An American kitchen will be 
established in which all known prepara¬ 
tions of corn will be cooked in American 
ovens according to American recipes, 
and with American liberality all will be 
distributed to admiring visitors gratis. 
A competent man will deliver 10-minute 
lectures at the close of each hour every 
day during the Exposition on the merits 
of Indian corn and the various modes of 
preparing it. The cost of the plant, the 
outlay for the exhibits and the running 
expenses for six months will,it is estimat¬ 
ed, be not less than $30,000. In view 
of the enormous yield of our corn, 
our exports are comparatively insigni¬ 
ficant—not much over 100,000,000 
bushels a year, and what we send 
abroad is mostly used as stock feed. 
There is no doubt that if the merits of this 
fine grain as human food were better 
known among the poorly paid population 
of Europe, the demand for it would in¬ 
crease a hundredfold, and with an en¬ 
larged foreign market, the prices to the 
producers here must be more remunerative. 
BREVITIES. 
TO THE CONTEST. 
Women yonn« and old. 
Women short and tall, 
Women mild and bold. 
Come you one and all. 
Conquerors may you he 
In the contest, bidden, 
Stretched from sea to sea 
With an army hidden. 
Friends and DOtatoes still 
Have many, many eyos, 
So work j ou with a will, 
Tu—ber lauded to the skies. 
e. a. c. 
Thirty-ninth year of the R. N-Y. 
Save the R. N-Y. index. There are few, 
if any other rural journal indexes prepared 
with so much care. 
Adieu, good friends, for 1888. We shall be 
pleased to call on you 52 times during 1889, if 
only we could be assured of a hearty welcome. 
It is to be honed that the insect disease 
described by Mr. Gillette on page 861 will ex¬ 
tend wherever chinch bugs abound. Is it 
possible to propagate this disease? 
Mr. Terry evidently does a good deal of 
riding in his potato culture. This must give 
a good chance for thinking. It takes think¬ 
ing to raise a good crop of anything. 
Newly budded roses, opening spring, sun¬ 
rise, youth—the New Year may well be com¬ 
pared to these. But it is to be regretted that 
the New Year opens in dreary January. 
It ought to be ushered in in the month of roses 
and summer charms—June. 
Of the 1,437 students on whom Cornell 
University has conferred degrees within the 
last 20 years only 45 are engaged in agricul¬ 
ture. Thus the agricultural college connected 
with the University—one of the best equipped 
in the country—has turned out an average of 
only two and a half “honored” farmers per 
annum for the last twenty years. 
“Mr.J. S. Woodward, of New York, is just 
the man whom the New Jersey Horticultural 
Society wants to succeed Hon. Norman J. 
Colman as Commissioner of Agriculture. A 
resolution to that effect has been adopted, in 
which President-elect Harrison is urged to 
appoint him. By another resolution the 
society also expresses its entire satisfaction 
with, and appreciation of Commissioner Col- 
man’s management of the office, and the 
great services he has rendered horticulture.” 
t. G. 
One of Many: —“I have at last decided to 
enter the Potato Contest. Although I am 54 
years old, I love enterprise and out-door 
work, and if more of it was done by ladies 
and it was acknowledged to be lady-like, there 
would be more health, wealth and happiness. 
I feel as proud of doing out-door work as of 
playing the organ or washing or working at 
embroidery. It is good, honorable, profitable 
work that will win the day. I trust the 
Rural’s work may go on till its Editors’see a 
reform in[all they try to amend.” mrs. j. e. 
