AUG 17 
542 
THE BUBAL HEW-YOBStEB. 
been to pocket as much public money as pos¬ 
sible, secured from the nation and the State, 
as well as counties, townships, cities and such 
gullible innocents as can be induced to take 
stock, which will all be wiped out in a short 
time; but the few will have filled their pock¬ 
ets. The fact cannot be controverted that 
the raw material for the manufacture of 
sugar in this country, no matter what it is— 
be it cane, sorghum, beets, or anything else— 
can not be raised and handled at the present 
high price for labor in this country, and com¬ 
pete with the product of the unpaid or ill-paid 
labor of the islands of the ocean and other 
countries. When sugar can be laid down iu 
our ocean ports for 4K cents per pound after 
having paid the duty, what is the use of 
Americans trying to make it at a loss, even 
after the receipt of national and State help. 
If the time ever comes when we will have to 
make our own sugar in order to have any, we 
can make it from Maine to California, and 
from the Lakes to the Gulf; but not at present 
prices unless there be a fall in the current 
price of labor. 
R. N.-Y.—The newspaper article referred 
to discusses the probable profit of sugar-mak- 
iDg in Kansas. It appears that efforts have 
been and are still being made to locate sugar 
mills in the sorghum-growing sections of that 
State. The plan pursued was explained in 
the R. .N.-Y. two years ago. The town where 
the factory is located is to provide the neces¬ 
sary money and the factories are to be operat¬ 
ed by experts who take part of the stock be¬ 
sides good salaries for their services. Sever¬ 
al towns have already raised in the aggregate 
$500,000 for the purpose of starting these fact¬ 
ories, while as yet there are no official figures 
to show that the business is certain of yield¬ 
ing a profit. The article goes on to state that 
no figures have ever come from the factories 
at Fort Scott, Topeka or Conway Springs to 
show that they have ever made any profits or 
even paid expenses. It is also claimed that 
as soon as the new factories start up, Prof. 
Swenson, who claims to own a patent on tho 
process to be employed, will commence suit for 
infringement, which suit will involve great 
expense. 
A. M. Bonebrake who is connected with 
the Fort Scott Mill, is quoted as saying that 
the mill paid running expenses, but not the 
expenses and interest on borrowed capital. 
He says there will be no money In Kansas 
sugar until a refinery is established at Kansas 
City or some other central point, that can use 
the sugar for refining and utilize sirups. Ten 
mills like the one at Fort Scott can give bus¬ 
iness to such a refinery. Though not having 
much to do with the sugar business, the 
following extract from this gentleman’s re¬ 
marks is interesting: 
“ Kansas has been a State of waves on 
money-making, but the waves recede too 
rapidly for the man who desires a permanent 
investment, and fortunes have been lost be¬ 
cause the infection became general. The 
Kansan is yet numerous who invested his all 
in wheat-growing, and wheat kings sailed high 
until their aerial ship burst, and down they 
came, pauperized. There was the sheep dis¬ 
ease, which spread so rapidly, and took such 
serious hold that there is not a county in the 
State but is the home of men who had visions 
of a trip to Europe on the proceeds of mutton 
and wool, but they did not go. Then came 
the era of silver mines in Colorado in which 
were buried more than $3,000,000 of good 
money, for which five figures would represent 
all the returns. The people in Colorado fat¬ 
tened upon the money of people who would 
get rich in a short time, and who, in their 
fancy, traveled only in private cars, with uni¬ 
formed servants to wait upon them. The 
town-lot mania is of recent date, and while 
many grew rich out of speculation, very many 
more “ hung on ” just a little too long, and 
are owners of fine farm property, if they only 
had enough of it. 
Through all these stages the money loaners 
thrived and prospered, and demonstrated the 
wonderful resources of Kansas, which has con¬ 
tinually advanced and grown rich in spite of 
these drains upon the people—the speculative 
portion of them.” 
HOTEL SWILL: HOW IT SHOULD BE USED. 
Col. F. D. Curtis, Saratoga County, 
New York.—A writer in the Rural on page 
477, very properly commends “ hotel swill ” as 
an excellent food for swine. These gather¬ 
ings from the kitchens and tables of hotels and 
boarding-houses contain a great variety of 
food, and, as a rule, the mess is well balanced; 
that is, made up of very good proportions of 
the nitrogenous and carbonaceous elements. 
Fed in limited quantities, it will promote a 
healthy growth; or, if fed liberally, it will 
fatten hogs rapidly. It is well calculated for 
either pigs or older swine. When there is a 
stinted supply there is rarely any trouble; 
but when the supply of “ swill,° exceeds the 
daily wants of the hogs, there will be disease. 
The cases of extensive mortality among hogs 
fed on hotel swill are numerous. They are 
usually charged to “ hog cholera,” and after 
the hogs are all dead and the neighborhood 
has ceased wondering how this epidemic got 
among them, the thing is tried over again 
with similar results. The 'second experiment 
in attempting to keep the hogs on this food, 
is usually the last. At Willard Asylum in 
New York State, a few years ago, death took 
all the hogs which were fed on the aslyum 
swill and the same thing occurred at the 
Northampton, Mass., Asylum. The hogs fed 
from the swill of the large hotels at Saratoga, 
have, at different times, died, and also those 
fed on the slops from other large establish¬ 
ments. In all hotel swill there is a great deal 
of starchy food—bits of bread, pies and pud¬ 
ding wastes. These remnants ferment rap¬ 
idly, and become the foundation for an active 
and general ferment of the whole mass. Jn 
hot weather they will ferment in a few hours, 
or perhaps right away, and especially as the 
fresh swill is kept in the same vessels from 
which the old has been taken, and these retain 
the germs of ferment. Under these conditions 
these starchy and the sugary portions of the 
swill become active irritants in the stomachs 
of the swine, or reach such a degree of ferment¬ 
ation as to become poisonous. This kind of food- 
poison, from day to day, soon produces scours, 
and then dysentery or cholera, as it is called, 
and the hogs die. There is in the swill another 
kind of food which is even worse in its effects 
than the ones I have described, and that is 
the meat. This is mixed all through the swill, 
and is acted on by the germs of putrefaction, 
and in this state it is eaten by the swine. 
Putrid meat is also inflammatory and poison¬ 
ous. The hogs eating this kind of food, day 
after day, are sure to be taken with a malig¬ 
nant dysentery—“ cholera ”— and to die very 
soon. All of this trouble is unnecessary 
and if my suggestions are adopted, it can be 
readily avoided. At the asylums and hotels 
mentioned, all hotel swill and house gather¬ 
ings should be fed before any fermentation or 
putrefaction takes place. It should be gath¬ 
ered twice a day in not weather and no more 
should be given to the swine than they will 
eat up clean at each meal. The residue should 
be buried where the hogs cannot get at it. 
The vessels in which the swill is collected or 
transported should be changed every day and 
thoroughly washed out. The hogs should have 
access to the ground, and they should have 
all the coal ashes, cinders and salt they want. 
The coal ashes can be dumped into their in¬ 
closure by the load and the salt kept always 
in a tight box where they can get what they 
want. Where these precautions are taken 
there will be no dysentery, and the best of 
pork can be made. Too many hogs should 
not be kept together, especially in a close 
range. The smaller ones should be by them¬ 
selves—15 or 20 in one bunch are as many as 
should be together. There should be a shed 
under which they could lie out of the sun and 
storms. The bottom of this should be dry, 
the troughs should be kept free from mud 
and filth. A great deal of valuable food is 
often allowed to go to waste for lack of man¬ 
agement of hogs on common-sense principles. 
“positive knowledge.” 
A. L. C., Catonsville, Md.—“A Cooley 
Man” says: “I know that cream from various 
sorts of milk raised in the Cooley, when 
run according to rule, and the divisions made 
by spaces, comes nearer to yielding all the 
contents of butter fat in it than that raised by 
any other device.” That is a strong state¬ 
ment and one would .naturally suppose that a 
“Cooley Man” had tried all other devices for 
raising cream. It is very satisfactory to have 
such positive knowledge; but we ought to be 
sure we have it before we make such strong 
assertions. Some years ago I set my milk in 
submerged cans in a tank of ice-water; the 
result, so far as the cream was concerned, 
was satisfactory; but the labor of lifting out 
the cans for skimming was not, so I bought an 
Occident Creamery, which was much more 
convenient and saved much labor. I had a 
prejudice in favor of submerging the milk, 
and did not expect any better results from the 
change, so I was very pleasantly surprised to 
find that the butter showed a gain of exactly 
50 per cent, at tne next churning. I attribut¬ 
ed this gam partly to the variation in the 
yield of milk, but it continued, and 1 was 
forced to the conclusion that submerging 
milk was not the good thing I thought it was. 
Now how does “A Cooley Man” explain this 
gain if he “knows” that the cream raised in the 
Cooley comes nearer to yielding all the con¬ 
tents of butter fat in it than that raised by 
any other devicef I cannot explain it, as I 
“ know ” so little about these things that I am 
always ready to have my opinions upset at 
any time and in many ways. I am trying to 
learn what lean though, and have lately been 
weighing the cream to see how many pounds 
it took to make a pound of butter. Prof. 
Babcock said recently, in the Jersey Bulletin, 
that it required about 6}£ pounds of cream 
raised in a Cooley Creamer to make a pound 
of butter. This he said in arguing against 
the claim that Jersey cows had made a pound 
of butter from—well, say less than 10 pounds 
of milk. The.result of my weighing has been 
that at four different churnings, I made one 
pound of butter from 3%, 3%, and 3% pounds 
of cream and the last time from a fraction less 
than three pounds of cream raised in the Oc¬ 
cident Creamery. I suppose Prof. Babcock 
got his “know” from several different tests, 
and “A Cooley Man” must have got his 
“ know ” from trying all the devices used for 
cream-raising; my “know”comes from only 
four trials and I expect to make the fifth to¬ 
morrow, and will not be much surprised if 
there should be much difference in the result. 
I will say that my cream is from the mixed 
milk of nine cows, so that the freedom from 
water in the ftilk cannot be attributed to one 
phenomenal animal. 
ABOUT SLUG SHOT. 
Benj. Hammond.— Regarding recent state¬ 
ments in the R. N.-Y. as to “Slug Shot,” it is a 
well known fact that the finer a powdered 
insecticide is made, the more effective it is. 
In order to get plaster as fine as possible be¬ 
fore mixing it with the other ingredients that 
enter into “ Slug Shot,” it is first double¬ 
ground ; that is, it is grouud as fine as flour, 
and it is then bolted. These processes cost 
more than the plaster itself; in other words, 
the work more than doubles the cost of tl e 
plaster. In the next place, if potato beetles 
were the only insects for which “ Slug Shot ” 
was used, it would simplify matters very 
much; but it is used for a great variety of in¬ 
sects, and hence other poisons, such as to¬ 
bacco, etc., have to be incoiporated with it. 
This still further increases its cost. Then the 
fact is overlooked that three-quarters of the 
Slug Shot sold, is retailed in five and ten- 
pound packages, to people with small gar¬ 
dens, who have neither the time nor the 
skill to mix Paris-green with plaster. It takes 
only from 15 to 25 pounds of “Slug Shot” for 
an acre of potatoes if it is properly dusted on. 
Consequently, very few farmers buy it by the 
barrel. It is unjust to compare the cost of a 
barrel of plaster mixed with Paris-green with 
the selling price of a small package of Slug 
Shot or any other insecticide. Take, say, five 
pounds of the plaster and Paris-green; and 
put the mixture in bags nicely labeled; send 
it, say, 100 miles by freight; add to its cost 
two or three profits with the cost of advertis¬ 
ing, and it will be found that it cannot be 
sold at a price less than that asked for “Slug 
Shot.” In the potato-growing sections farm¬ 
ers seldom use insecticides in the form of a 
powder; as a rule, they use London purple 
and water, applied withasprinkling machine. 
The consequence is that there is little or no 
demand for insecticides by the quantity in 
powdered form. 
“ CRANBURY FARMING 1 ’ AGAIN. 
D. C. L., Cranbury, N. J.—On page 510 
of the Rural a reference is made by N. D., 
N. Y City to the articles published by the R. 
N.-Y. on our system of farming at Cranbury 
He assumes that I could not nave over 40 
acres in grass, and that at two tons per acre I 
could not sell over 80 tons of hay. The Rur¬ 
al’s reference, on page 512, to my letter in an¬ 
swer to its questions should have answered all 
his objections except in one or two instances. 
I mowed last year 42 acres, and sold over 90 
tons of hay. This year I mowed 38 acres and 
will sell without a doubt over 100 tons of hay. 
I do not feed my cattle any hay except in un¬ 
favorable weather when I have to house them 
through the night. The R. N.-Y. will re¬ 
member the piece of grass near my outbuild¬ 
ings, containing about seven acres, that has 
been mowed for four years without the appli¬ 
cation of fertilizers of any description. I am 
quite confident the hay from it will weigh 
three tons to the acre. My wheat will 
this year yield over 30 bushels per acre, and 
my corn now bids fair to be a heavy crop. I 
cannot speak so confidently of my potato crop 
this year. I would not at this time estimate 
it at moro than 175 bushels per acre, and if 
the present wet weather continues I may lose 
many by rot. I am told potatoes are rotting 
badly in Monmouth County, near here, and 
about Freehold. In reference to wintering 
steers, if we could buy them in the fall at 
prices corresponding to those at which we 
have to sell them in the spring, we could of 
course winter them at a profit. 
SHALL BANANAS BE ADMITTED FREE OF DUTY? 
J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wis.— My gen¬ 
eral idea has been, and still is, that all trop¬ 
ical fruits and spices should be admitted free 
of duty, provided they could reasonably be 
classed among our necessary articles of food 
now in general use among the masses of our 
population. Bananas, pineapples, cocoanuts, 
etc., are not in general use, and are, in fact, 
but very little used except iu our towns and 
cities, and even there, much the greater por¬ 
tion of them are used either by the wealthy or 
well-to-do classes. It is possible that the 
trade in our home-grown fruits may be slight¬ 
ly affected by the large amounts of these for¬ 
eign and tropical fruits that are thrown upon 
our markets at certain seasons of the year; 
still 1 imagine that the increase, either in 
the sale or the prices of our home-grown 
fruits, would be hardly perceptible if they 
were entirely shut out of our markets. To 
sum up the matter in a few words : I think it 
very unjust to the great masses of our popu¬ 
lation to let the above-named fruits in free of 
duty and still keep up a heavy duty upon 
sugar, an article that is, or ought to be, upon 
the table of every citizen of our country. If 
I had the authority I should reverse the du¬ 
ties and do it immediately. 
THE “ GOOD ” PEACH. 
E. B. G.. Manchester, Pa.—T he “ Good ” 
Peach to which reference is made in the R. 
N.-Y. of August 3, originated about 20 years 
ago in the Jot of the late Mr. George Allright, 
York, Pa. When the tree first came in near¬ 
ing the fruit was so fine and attractive that 
Mr. Allright was induced to exhibit some at 
the county fair where it attracted universal 
attention. It was there that I first noticed it 
and I at once commenced propagating the 
trees and had no trouble in disposing of all 
I could raise right here in York; consequently 
tho peach is not much disseminated, and is 
new to the outside world. It has of late come 
into the hands of several prominent fruit 
growers, who are enthusiastic in its praise. 
The tree is a very vigorous, healthy grower 
and abundant bearer. The fruit is of large 
to very large size, of a creamy white, 
sweet, melting and of delicious flavor, supe¬ 
rior to any peach ripening at its season—the 
last of September to October. As to its repro¬ 
ducing itself from seed, I have no experience, 
but I am very doubtful, and no one should 
buy trees so raised under the impression that 
he will get the genuine “ Good ” Peach. 
ACTINIDIA AT THE WEST. 
Prof. J. L. Budd, Ames, Iowa.— I have 
just read in the Rural, with much interest, 
the notes on Actinidia polygama as grown on 
the Rural Grounds; but the impression should 
not be conveyed that this or any other mem¬ 
ber of the Camellia family will do well in the 
cold North, or west of the great lakes. With 
us the A. polygama suffers severely in win¬ 
ter, and in the open sunshine its foliage burns 
in summer, yet for a summer screen for shady 
porches and arbors we have nothing better, 
as it comes up quickly, and its foliage has the 
half-tropical aspect of the Madeira Vine. On 
the Rural Grounds, and near the coast south¬ 
ward, the Actinidia arguta will be apt to 
prove the handsomest and most useful species. 
As seen in arboretums in Europe, the foliage 
is larger, darker in color, and more shining 
than that of A. polygama, and tho flowers 
are larger, more numerous, and pure white 
in color. In addition, the fruit is edible and 
agreeable in taste and flavor. The hardiest 
species is A. callosa of the Ameer region; but 
the foliage is smaller and les3 pleasing in ex¬ 
pression, and the flowers are small and few in 
number. 
AN EXPLANATION IN ORDER. 
The following letter dated the 24th of July, 
has been received from Prof. C. V. Riley 
(United States Entomologist) now at the 
Paris Exposition : 
Editor Rural New-Yorker: 
Among the few papers which I have sent to 
me regularly from Washington is the Rural 
New-Yorker. In the issue for July 13th, 
page 463, you quote what you call a remark¬ 
able statement from me, published in the 
American Agriculturist. Will you permit 
me to say in the columns of the R. N. Y 
that I have not written a line to the Amer¬ 
ican Agriculturist since Mr. Orange Judd 
went out of it. Hence I have made no state¬ 
ment in that paper, nor is the language which 
you quote,nor the impression which it conveys, 
in any way mine. It could not have been 
quoted from anything I have written, and 
therefore I disclaim it entirely. I have not 
seen the copy of the American Agriculturist 
from which it is taken, anct am therefore un¬ 
able to offer any explanation or solution of 
the matter. This is, of course, not tho first 
time that I have been similarly misrepre¬ 
sented (even in your columns); but ordinarily 
I cannot And time to take notice of such mis¬ 
representations. I have too much else to do. 
While writing this note, however, let me 
also say that the article iu the same issue, 
page 469, credited to Bell’s Messenger and 
giving antaccount'oflthe^Agricultural Exhi- 
bition’herednjtParis,^islreallyjtaken] from'an 
