584 
THE BUBAL MEW-Y©BE£B. 
SEPT 7 
with a heifer so young it would check her 
growth and development so as to impair her 
future usefulness. 
M. P. C. Scranton, Pa. —Of the different 
varieties of asparagus planted in the Rural 
Grounds two years ago, which are the most 
desirable? 
Ans.—F or one reason or another, the plants 
started with vigorous growth unequally. 
This was probably due to the size and age of 
the roots, the way they were packed and had 
been kept, etc , etc. Another season will be 
required before we can make any'serviceable 
report. 
“ Subscriber ” Bluff Point, N. Y. —In com¬ 
petition for a prize for the best yield of pota¬ 
toes on an acre would it be a “square deal” 
to raise a crop of early potatoes, and before 
digging them, plant another crop of late pota¬ 
toes? It would all be on the same acre 1 
Ans.—I t would depend upon the conditions 
of the offer. If the R. N.-Y. oifercd such a 
priz», it would consider that hut one crop 
would be fair, and it would make this point 
one of the conditions. 
F. A. C., Glendale, N. Y. —1. Will ashes 
soften bones so that they can be readily pul¬ 
verized fine enough to be used as a fertilizer? 
2. Are old bones that have laid out for sev¬ 
eral years as good as any? 3. Would it he 
advisable to take up and transplant runners 
from spring-set strawberry plants. 
Ans.— 1. Yes, but it takes a long time, and 
the method is deemed impracticable. 2. Yes, 
in so far as phosphoric acid is concerned. 
They lose some nitrogen. 3. Yes. 
DISCUSSION, 
HOTEL SWILL'AS FOOD FOR SWINE. 
Henry Stewart. Macon County, N. C.— 
No doubt my friend Col. Curtis, who knows 
more about swine and a good many other 
things than most people, is right in his re¬ 
marks about the unwholesomeness of hotel 
swill for feeding swme. But it is evident 
that the basis of his objections are not quite 
pertinent to the subject. Chemistry is not 
always to be depended upon, as when the New 
York Experiment Station, some years ago, re¬ 
ferred to “ putrid” brewers’ grains as contain¬ 
ing all the requisite elements for feedirg 
dairy cows, and so gave rise to groundless ob- 
jecMons to the use of this valuable food in a 
proper condition, that is when fresh and 
sweet, or preserved in silos as was the custom 
in the b<-st dairy districts in New York State, 
long before silos for fodder were ever thought 
of in America. So the objections raised 
against hotel waste because it is sometimes 
fed improperly, are equally groundless, as 
also those raised against it when fed in excess. 
All kinds of food in a putrid state, or if given 
in excess, are detrimental, but it should go 
without saying that no kind of food should be 
used in this condition or to excess. 
Moreover, the swine fed at the places refer¬ 
red to are not always kept in a healthful con¬ 
dition. I have seen them belly-deep in ordure 
and a sickening mass of decaying food and 
half-liquid mud. It is simply a case of using 
good food in a bad way. A farmer who could 
procure a supply of this valuable food con¬ 
taining bread, scraps of meat, vegetables, 
potato and apple parings with the waste soup 
all combined, and in a fresh, wholesome con¬ 
dition, would be able to make the very best 
meat, and if the pigs were provided—as all 
pigs should be—with dry, clean pens and al¬ 
lowed a run in a pasture lot, they would be in 
no danger from disease. It is not the food, but 
the wrong manner of using it that is to be ob¬ 
jected to. 
J. E. S., West Concord, N. H.—Since 
reading wbat has been said in the Rural 
about feeding hotel swill to swine, I have 
been talking with some parties here who feed 
this product. This is wbat they say: 
PINE*'GROVE FARM. 
Swill for this farm is gathered in old lard 
or pork barrels set' in a common express 
wagon. The hotel and saloon swill is taken 
between five and six o'clock, p. m. every day, 
and the street swill four times a week, in the 
forenoon. He pavs $100 a year to one hotel, 
and the «ame to one saloon; for the street swill 
he pavs nothing. All swill is fed uncooked 
and without grain to all kinds of swine, ex¬ 
cepting those that are fattening; to these 
scalded corn-meal is given in addition to the 
swill. The surplus is stored in the swill-house, 
and none over two days old is fed in summer. 
For a hog one year old or more a common 
barn shovelful of swill is considered enough 
for a feed with all the drink required: all that 
is eaten at once is fed twice a day, and on this 
feed superior exhibition animals are raised as 
well as hogs for pork. Hogs that hare had 
nothing but swill are all ready for slaughter. 
Experience, says the owner, is indispensable 
to success in feeding swill and of the ordinary 
grain-fed hogs seven-tenths would die if full- 
fed on this waste. The pigs from sows used 
to it, are equal in growth to any grain- 
fed pigs and suffer no greater mortality The 
hogs are sometimes sick from eating this re¬ 
fuse. This is caused by the carelessness and 
and inexperience of the help in feeding. Fish 
and lobster refuse should always be removed 
from the swill, and all sour and moldy sub¬ 
stances should be put into the compost heap. 
All sick animals are removed to new pens, 
supplied with fresh earth; their diet is re¬ 
stricted to water with a little green stuff. The 
pork is of prime quality and in active de¬ 
mand. The profits of this feeding depend on 
the location, the distance one is obliged to 
haul the swill and what has to be paid for it. 
In the present case the owner thinks fully 
50 per cent, is profit, besides the manure. The 
hotel and saloon each make from one and a 
half to two barrels a day. The swill saves all 
grain until fattening-off time, and the owner 
would quit the business if obliged to use 
grain. The herd is made up of thoroughbred 
Chester-Whites, Poland-Chinas, Small York¬ 
shires, and a breed styled the Hampshires, 
with excellent grades of each of the above 
strains. All his hogs show a surprising uni¬ 
formity and superior development that are 
rarely seen, even in herds fed highly on grain. 
Cholera he regards as the result of over-feed¬ 
ing, filth and crowding, and he thinks that 
more swine are made sick or injured by over¬ 
feeding than by starving. In support of this 
opinion, he shows his herd of 150 swill-fed hogs 
with no sickness among them. All were quiet 
as 1 passed there at noon and the hogs were ly¬ 
ing lazily about the yards. There was no rush¬ 
ing pellmell to the troughs and squealing like 
bedlam. Surely swill-feeding is a success 
here. 
N. H. INSANE ASYLUM FARM. 
Here the swill is collected from the main 
buildings twice each day—at 9 a. m. and 2 
p. M. —and drawn to the barn in a plank cart. 
It is there thinned to a slop and fed to the 
hogs—all they will eat up clean. No grain 
except shorts is fed to brood sows when suck¬ 
ling. Corn meal is fed to fattening animals. 
As the swill is fed fresh no storage room ex¬ 
cept the gathering cart is required. No at¬ 
tempt has been made to raise and fatten hogs 
on swill alone; the swill is considered perfect¬ 
ly safe as feed, and no more losses are exper¬ 
ienced than would naturally be expected In a 
herd of 125 head of hogs confined in a barn 
cellar. Recently 16 two-year-o<dsthat averag¬ 
ed, live weight, 465 pounds, were sold. 
The profit of swill feeding is in utilizing wbat 
would otherwise be wasted, and in saving 
nearly all grain in making pork. The man¬ 
ager can make no approximate estimate of 
the cost of a pound of pork, or of the value of 
swill as compared with corn. He thinks that 
hogs would pay for their feed and care by 
their work on the manure pile and by their 
own droppings, even if the pork were worth¬ 
less. 
Last spring out of nearly 75 farrowed, only 
a few small pigs were lost, and these were fed 
on the ordinary swill, when weaned. 
“the single tax.” 
A. C. C., Farmington, Minn.— In Mr. 
Chamoerlain’s first article in regard to legis¬ 
lation needed concerning monopolies, he gave 
a brief review of “ Henry George’s plan.” 
Doubtless Mr. C. intended to make a plain 
and true statement, but in fact he did neither. 
He says it consists of removing all tax from 
all other property of every sort and putting it 
all on land values in form of rent paid to the 
State.” 
This statement, together with the italicised 
word rent, would be apt to cause one to think 
that Henry George intended to have the State 
assume the function of a landlord and lease or 
rent the land to the user; for how else can 
you pay tax in the form of rent? But, in 
fact, Henry George’s plan is to abolish all 
taxes except that,on land values, irrespective 
of improvements. 
This tax would be paid as now in the form 
of a tax. The justice of this method lies in 
the fact that economic rent (or that value 
that attaches itself to land on account of the 
growth of the community) belongs to the com¬ 
munity; while personal property and im¬ 
provements on land, being produced by the 
labor of an individual, belong to the indivd- 
ual. Thus the Henry George plan would 
not allow the community to take what belongs 
to the individual, nor allow the individual to 
take or retain what belongs to the community, 
or, in other words, to the State. So in reality, 
it would not be what Mr. C. says, but the 
opposite—raising public revenue by taking 
rent (economic rent) in the form of a tax. In 
the same article, Mr. C says, <the R. N.-Y 
saw fit to publish it in italics on another page(: 
“The world does not owe every man a liv¬ 
ing.] It.does, however, I think, owe him a fair 
and equal chance to earn one If he can and 
will.” All “ single-tax ” men will agree with 
Mr. C. so far. That sentiment has the right ring 
mit—“fair and equal.” But to Mr. C. it is 
simply a “ glittering generality.” Or does he 
see wbat justice is, but yield the point for 
fear of opposition? For see what follows in 
his article: “ That is. it owes him the possi¬ 
bility (italics mine) of needed access to na¬ 
ture’s materials and forces, etc ” Now see: 
in the first place Mr. C. declares for an 
“ equal" (italics mine) opportunity and then 
drops from the “sublime to the ridiculous”by 
making it only a possibility of needed access, 
etc. Wouldn’t it have been fully as well, if he 
saw no way to guarantee an equal opportunity, 
to have crossed out that paragraph altogether? 
But there is a way. There is always a way 
to justice. Tax men in proportion to their 
opportunities for producing wealth—or, in 
other words, equalize opportunities by making 
the holder pay into a common fund a sum in 
proportion to the value of his opportunity. 
Mr. C. says, further, that “since property is 
the result of labor wisely expended on mater¬ 
ial, and since land is material, pbilosoDhy seems 
to show that property may rest in improved 
land.” 
Philosophy may “ seem ” to show, but it 
does not show it. What it shows is that prop¬ 
erty may rest in improvements of land. In 
fact, all property is an improvement of land, 
for all wealth is the result of labor on land; 
Mr. C. says history seems to show that individ¬ 
ual ownership of land is the best incentive to 
human progress and to the highest and best 
civilization. But every-day observation shows 
that it produces an aristocracy that does no 
work, yet enjoys every comfort and luxury 
that labor works ud from land; while labor 
that produces it all has barely enough to keep 
from starving; and is known as the “ pauper 
labor of Europe.” 
Mr. C. lays down what he considers the just 
principles of taxation, and assumes them as 
granted. No! no! Mr. C., theyare not just, 
neither are they granted. Over 60,000 men 
and. women in these United States have signed 
a petition slip containing a single name and 
address, asking Congress to investigate the 
single-tax idea. No! no! not granted by any 
means; all over the world to some extent and 
in English-speaking countries in particular, is 
the single-tax idea being discussed; and earn¬ 
est men and women are working for it with 
a religious zeal that distinguishes the lover of 
justice. 
WHEAT EXPERIMENTS; SEEDLING 
APPLES, ETC. 
J. D., Foster’s, Ohio.— According to 
promise, I write to the Rural about my 
wheat experiment. The wheat was drilled on 
corn ground, and on account of wet weather 
the corn did not mature till very late. Then, 
just as 1 commenced to drill, a cyclone blew 
down the shocks and about lbO rods of fence, 
which put me back several days. It was 
about the fifth of October when I had finish¬ 
ed. As soon as the ground froze hard enough 
to bear a wagon, I scattered about half a 
load of straw thinly over it as far as it would 
go, and along with it different kinds of 
manure. The wheat looked well early in the 
spring, but we had very dry weather until too 
late for the rain to be of any benefit to the 
wheat. All the early-sown wheat made a 
fair crop, but the late-sown is all a failure. 
Still the manured wheat was better than what 
was not manured, and the mulched was about 
as good as the manured. 1 finished plowing 
the ground on August 7th, and am going 
to drill about 200 pounds of fertilizer to the 
acre, sow wheat and grass this fall, and 
clover in the spring. I had about II acres of 
oat and wheat stubble, five of which wore 
manured with stable manure, and the other 
six with fertilizer at the rate of about 175 
pounds per acre. The fertilizer was a mix¬ 
ture of bone and tobacco stems ground, at 
the rate of 800 pounds of bone and 1,200 of to¬ 
bacco stems to the ton. The wheat was 
drilled on September 18 and 19. and grass seed 
sown at the same time. It made a good crop, 
though as I have not thrashed it yet, I cannot 
give the yield per acre. The Timothy is very 
fine and promises a large crop for next har¬ 
vest. I could see very little difference be¬ 
tween the effects of the manure and those of 
the fertilizer. Soon after commencing to 
drill, I forgot to fill up the feriilizer box. 
The fertilizer ran out at the lower end of the 
field, so that the width of one drill was left 
without auy fertilizer. The wheat on that 
strip was not half so good as that on either 
side of it, and I can yet point out the place by 
the difference in the Timothy. One of my 
neighbors is going to use ashes, mixed with 
acidulated bone from the Bowker Company’s 
factory. Should there be an extra yield, I 
will let the Rural know. 
Several years ago, at the Rural’s sugges¬ 
tion, I planted seeds from apples and pears. 
Five trees grew from the seeds of a Rambo 
Apple, only two of which survived the cold 
of a very cold winter shortly afterwards. 
One of the two is an early sweet apple; the 
other resembles the Maiden’s Blush, but I 
think it is a better apple. It is just beginning 
to ripen now, and is loaded with fruit, so that 
I have had to prop the branches to keep them 
from breaking. The crop was very full last 
year also, but not quite so full as this; but 
the apples were much larger. The tree in 
growth resembles a Rambo. I showed it last 
spring to a man who had worked several 
years in a nursery. He pronounced it a 
Rambo. 
artificial heat for chicks. 
P. H. Jacobs, Hammonton, N. J.— The 
experience of “L.,” given in the Rural of 
August 24, in attempting to raise chickens by 
artificial heat, is rather discouraging; but the 
difficulty was due to the mistakes of “L ,” 
and not to the system. He forgets that the 
domesticated fowl, unlike its wild progenitor, 
can do well without nuts or acorns, though in 
his case no harm was done. He attempted to 
raise chicks in winter with the warmth under 
them, (which he did not learn from the old 
hen,) by placing them on a loft, with a stove 
in the room below. The experience given 
shows that “L.” verified what he has been 
warned agaiDst several times in the Rural, 
but his letter will have the effect of cooling 
the ardor of those who may be favorably in¬ 
clined to the artificial method. With facili¬ 
ties within my reach for observing the hatch¬ 
ing and raising of thousands of broilers an¬ 
nually, I will state that artificial hatching is 
as safe and certain, (and more so when large 
numbers are considered) as the natural mode, 
but we place the warmth over the chicks and 
also keep the room warm as well. Had ‘ L.” 
given his chicks a warm room on the ground, 
with an opportunity to go out-of-doors on 
clear, nice days, with a warm, snug brooder 
at night, he would probably have succeeded. 
He fed them rabbit meat, and “still they 
died,” so he says. Certainly, for very young 
chicks can endure but a limited feeding of 
meat. He thinks artificial incubation, “out 
of nature,” and was so informed by those high 
in poultry lore (probably not in experience) 
and he noticed that the young chicks hovered 
over the register, which plainly indicated that 
they preferred to hover near the warmth, as 
they would have done in a brooder. To raise 
chicks properly let the heat be over them, 
and let it be high enough to prevent crowd¬ 
ing. A young chick is really as naked as a 
young baby, and must be kept warm. 
Its food must not be too indigestible, or bowel 
disease will result. A novice may not succeed 
at first, but it is as easy to raise young chicks 
in brooders as it is to do most other things 
that are properly understood. 
a tariff on potatoes. 
C. C. W., Grand Bay Ala.—Y es; give us 
a tariff on bananas. If protection is such a 
good thing, give us a plenty of it and then I 
hope the farmers all over the country will go 
in for a tariff on potatoes, and so prevent our 
markets from being glutted with the product 
of foreign “pauper labor” and assure to home 
producers a living price for their tubers. 
Of course, it will enhance the cost to every 
consumer by the amount of the import duty, 
but don’t the consumers have to pay all 
tariff taxation anyhow? 
R. N.-Y.—There is already an import duty 
of 15 cents per bushel on foreign potatoes. 
They can be grown so cheaply, however, in 
Canada, especially in Prince Ed ward’s Island 
and the other maritime provinces, that even 
after the payment of this tax, they can com¬ 
pete successfully in our sea board markets 
with the home-grown product in ordinary 
seasons, 8iid be sold for less in seasons of 
scarcity and consequent high prices. In such 
seasons large imports of potatoes are made 
from Scotland, England, Ireland, and the 
European Continent, especially from Holland 
and Germany, and the cost of production is 
comparatively so small, and the ocean freight 
so low, that they find a profitable market here 
even after paying duty. When, a few years 
ago, the potato crop was unusually short, 
European potatoes were quoted in the Chica¬ 
go market, and a few shipments were made 
even as far west as St. Louis. If the foreign 
crop be large this year, therefore, it is likely 
that any deficiency that may exist in the East¬ 
ern States will be supplied from Canada and 
Europe rather than from the Western States, 
and foreign imports are pretty sure to keep 
down the prices of the domestic product. 
THE CRANDALL CURRANT. 
Frank Ford & Sons, Ravenna Ohio.— 
In the editorial notice which appeared in the 
R. N.-Y. in reference to the Crandall Cur¬ 
rant, the Editor tays: “We do not see any 
reason for assumiug that this is a hyorid. 1 ' 
It is possible that it is not; but there 
are several reasons for our belief that there 
