THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
APRIL 26 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
Address 
RURAL PUBLISHING CO., 
78 Duane Street, New York City. 
SATURDAY, APRIL 26. 1879. 
CASH vs. CREDIT. 
“ Pay as yon go” is an old saw but a 
wise one. It is the cheapest way and the 
safest. To run in debt is an American 
habit and there is no other nation in the 
world where credits are so popular as with 
us. We borrow with the greatest facility. 
The thought of pay-day rarely troubles 
the intending borrower ; and the borrower 
and the debtor through purchase stand 
precisely in the same position ; they are 
both borrowers in fact. It is only rarely 
that we come across a man who has the 
reputation of being a “ solid” man, with¬ 
out any bubbles of credits in his busi¬ 
ness, and buying only for cash. The 
practice is so general that business is 
built, up on that basis ; sales are made in 
anticipation of a year’s credit or even 
more, and public sales are never, or hardly 
ever, announced unless with the heading 
‘ ‘ credit sale” preceding them. At a cash 
sale one gives the actual value of what he 
buys and many who are tempted to buy 
at credit sales, will avoid a cash sale from 
habit if not from necessity. 
The difference in the cost price of ar¬ 
ticles so purchased is an enormous tax on 
industry, self-imposed, it is true, but 
none the less onerous for that. This is 
poor management. “The destruction of 
the poor is their poverty.” If we consid¬ 
er this ancient, but true proverb, in its 
narrowest sense, we shall miss its most 
valuable lesson. There are poor men 
financially considered; but for one of these 
who becomes so by unavoidable necessity, 
there are a hundred who make themselves 
poor. There are poor managers of their 
affairs ; poor business men ; poorfarmers ; 
poor readers; poor thinkers, and those 
with poor memories upon which the re¬ 
sults of mistakes sit but lightly or rest 
not at all; and these are each and all 
worse off than the man who is poor as 
regards money alone. A man with brains 
and the capacity to use them ; who can 
foresee chances of profit and who can 
seize them as they come ; who is shrewd, 
prompt in action and enterprising, is a 
rich man as compared with one who 
possesses none of these advantages, hut 
who has only money at command There 
are rich poor men, and poor rich men ; 
and these soon change places. “I have 
entered into a patnership” said one, “ my 
partner finds the money and I find the 
experience. ” After a time this one said 
“I have dissolved partnership ; I have 
now the money, and my partner has the 
experience.” It will always be thus: 
the poverty of the man who is poor in 
business ways, destroys him. 
There are some maxims in business 
which a man, and especially a farmer who 
is generally defective in this respect, 
should write on the first page of his mem¬ 
orandum-book or diary, and read over 
every day. Some of these are : “ Owe 
no small debts.” “ It is better to borrow 
money on a note, or a mortage and pay 
a moderate interest on it, than to have a 
number of small debts out” “ Buy for 
cash.” “Sell for cash.” “ Do not 
buy a thing that you do not want. ” “ Do 
not want a thing because it is cheap.” 
“ Avoid auction sales. ” “Never en¬ 
dorse a note” “ If you wish to oblige a 
friend and have the money, loan it to him ; 
but put your name on no man’s paper. ” 
“ An endorsed note comes due always at 
an inconvenient time.” “Never count 
your money until it is in your pocket. ” 
Many others might be added : but here 
are enough. Ii' you want good authority 
for these, we may refer you to Solomon 
first, in whose ancient writings all these, 
and many more of similar import, may be 
found. Since his day these maxims have 
been iterated and reiterated until they are 
trite enough, but yet the great majority 
of men ignore them. 
A man becomes prosperous by attention 
to small details. “ Small leaks sink a 
ship.” A habit of looking after small 
matters causes a man to carefully regard 
larger affairs; while on the contrary, 
looseness in the former respect, produces 
carelessness in regard to the latter. A 
business man who regards economy and 
safety, will never fail or become embar¬ 
rassed ; and there is nothing else in the 
way of business that is so economical or 
safe as dealing for cash. There may be 
men who consider that a debt, is a debt; 
that there are no degrees or differences in 
this respect. But there are debts and 
debts; and some are excessively more 
costly and burdensome than others. 
We consider this subject of so much im¬ 
portance, that we think it a duty to devote, 
some effort to put it in the clearest light 
before our readers, bo that they may see 
it to their interest to go hereafter on a 
cash basis in their dealings. We expect 
to use figures to elucidate the subject, 
and having devoted here as much space 
as can be afforded to introduce it, we 
leave it for the present for our readers' 
consideration. 
-- 
PROFIT OF CORN-GROWING, EAST AND 
WEST. 
Our Eastern agricultural papers and 
their correspondents, and the talkers at 
agricultural meetings, are very fond of 
arguing from statistics—which show larg¬ 
er average yields in the East than in the 
West—that Eastern farmers can grow 
corn as cheaply as their Western brethern. 
There is no bottom to such statements so 
long as corn can be grown in the West 
without manure or fertilizers. Neither, 
when it comes to manuring, can our hill 
farmers ever grow com as cheaply as it 
can be grown upon prairie and plain 
lands. But there is no doubt that, by 
the adoption of Western methods of til¬ 
lage, a great reduction can be made in 
the cost of our com crops. The gang 
plows, the planters, smoothing harrows 
and two-horse cultivators used at the 
West, can as well be used on all moder¬ 
ately level Eastern lands, and thus one 
man can tend about as many acres of 
com in one section as in the other. 
There are already many instances where 
crops of com have in this way been made 
at very low cost even in New England. 
And time, which “ sets all things even,” 
is working for this kind of equalization 
with the laspe of each succeeding year. 
The fertility of Western corn lands is de¬ 
clining ; the increase in cattle both for 
beef and for the dairy in that section, the 
demands of a rapidly-growing city and 
village population there, the uses of 
grain for sugar-making, distillation and 
other manufactures, all point to higher 
prices for Western produce ; while the 
adoption of Western methods of culture, 
the improvement of seed, and greater 
skill in fertilization of the soil and the 
handling of large crops, all tend to cheap¬ 
en Eastern com to the growers. There¬ 
fore we may look for a continous increase 
of the com crop on all suitable Eastern 
lands, and a consequent decrease in the 
demand for Western corn on our farms, 
if not in our towns and cities. This is 
well for both sections ; for the West 
ought to make its com into meat and 
other compacter forms before shipping it. 
That is the way to prevent further de¬ 
cline in the fertility of Western farms, 
and to give more profit to Western farm¬ 
ers. 
-*-*-*■- 
THE FARMER’S ROAD TO SUCCESS. 
“You must be sure of two things,” 
said Caleb Garth to Ered. Yincy. “ You 
must love your work and not be always 
looking over the edge of it, wanting your 
play to begin. And the other is you 
must not be ashamed of your work, and 
think it would be more honorable to you 
to be doing something else. You must 
have a pride in your owu work and iu 
learning to do it well, and not be always 
saying, ‘ There’s this and there’s that— 
if I had this or that to do, I might make 
something of it.’ No matter what a man 
is, I wouldn’t give two-pence for him,” 
here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter and lie 
snapped his fingers, “ whether he was the 
Prime Minister or the rick-thateher, if he 
didn’t do well what he undertook to do. ” 
We have often wished we could impress 
these ideas upon the minds of every young 
man in the country, and especially of 
young fanners and farmers’ boys. Every 
one who will bring his life in accordance 
with them, will most assuredly win suc¬ 
cess. “ You must love your work. ” This 
you can easily leam to do if you will give 
your thoughts proper direetiou. There 
is not in the whole list of industries one 
that has so much of real interest as farm¬ 
ing. It embraces the whole list of sci¬ 
ences—chemistry, geology, physiology, 
animal and vegetable ; mmerology, bot¬ 
any, entomology—there iB not one that 
does not belong directly to the farmer 
and upon which he cannot, if he chooses, 
draw at will. In what is more pleasure 
than in gaining information? To the 
farmer the whole exhaustless book of Na¬ 
ture is open, for him to read as he labors. 
Every hour of every day turns a new aud 
interesting page. If he will but read it, 
he cannot fail to love his work. 
“You must not be ashamed of your 
work. ” Why should you ? It shows a 
weakness one should blush to own, when 
the very best men of our own and all 
other times have united in its praises. 
“ The most healthful, most useful and 
most noble employment of man ” deserves 
better than that any one should be 
ashamed of it. 
“ You must have a pride iu your own 
work, and in learning to do it well.” It 
is just this that makes all the differ¬ 
ence between success and failure. The 
farmer who works constantly under com¬ 
pulsion and goes to his labor with the 
feeling of a slave, without ambition, with¬ 
out enterprise, is a slave, and will always 
remain so, and his wife and children are 
with him in servitude bound down by 
the bonds his want of pride in his work 
impose upon him. But let bucIi a man 
determine he will raise a better crop than 
his neighbor, and his ambition is at once 
aroused, his energy is excited, his success 
nearly assured, and a pride awakened 
which is the promise of better work iu 
future, Aud it is better work in all de¬ 
partments of agriculture that is needed— 
better soil, better seed, better culture. 
To do well what one undertakes to do 
is a duty. No matter what the task may 
be—plowing a furrow, planting a seed, 
building a bridge, painting a picture, 
writing a sermon, teaching a child, any¬ 
thing from smallest to greatest, he who 
fails to do it as well as he can, is guilty 
of fraud. No man worketli for himself 
alone. The laborer is certainly worthy 
of his hire, but the world has a right to 
demand that the products of his labor 
shall be as good and as great as lie can 
make them. The man who, being able 
to work, remains idle, defrauds the com¬ 
munity by just so much as he, by his 
productive labor, could contribute to its 
wealth, aud he who produces less than 
he might, owes a debt to society he can 
never repay. 
The path of duty, then, for the young 
farmer is a plain one. He must love 
his work and not be ashamed of it; he 
must take pride in what he does aud he 
must do well what he undertakes to do. 
Besides, the path is not only a plain, but 
it is a pleasant one. An occasional Thistle 
may obstruct the way, but it will be 
easily removed, while Roses blossom on 
either side and the end is success. 
THE TULIP TREE. 
It has occurred to a writer in the Lon¬ 
don Gardeners' Chronicle that our Tulip 
Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) would 
form a valuable tree for town planting, 
“as it is a robust grower, and I should 
think from the smoothness of its bark and 
polished foliage, it would stand smoke, 
smut aud dust almost as well as the 
Plane and Poplars.” “ What grand ob¬ 
jects they would be,” he says, “along 
the Thames embankment, and along our 
public parks and squares!” This Tulip 
Tree is one of the noblest trees iu cul¬ 
tivation, and it shows how little our 
people study such matters that it is so 
seldom seen in our parks and squares.” 
The same writer says: “It is in the 
autumn, however, that these trees are the 
most striking, their leaf coloration being 
then grand in the extreme, and I have 
regretted that I could not preserve the 
leaves with all the rich and beautiful 
tints they then assume. ” Do the leaves 
of the Tulip Tree assume such beautiful 
fall tints as this writer describes ? All 
that we have ever seen turn yellow, the 
ordinary color of dead leaves. Or do the 
leaves assume richer colorings in England 
than here ? 
-- 
Economy.—This will apply to labor 
of all kinds. It is economy to have every 
thing ready before beginning work, ft 
is economy to have good tools, a good 
start, a fast-wallring team and a good hired 
man. It is economy to feed the teams 
well and take care of them. It is econo¬ 
my in order to raise good crops to sow 
good seed of the best varieties. It is 
economy to ditch or tile-drain heavy land 
and all "land which is springy, if it is to 
be sown with crops. In other respects 
rnauy farmers could with profit practice 
more economy. They should save more, 
and waste less. They should shelter tools 
and keep them in good repair. They 
should secure crops in season. They 
should continue to use up all materials to 
the best advantage. Manufacturers un¬ 
derstand this and learn to save the refuse 
materials and waste nothing. 
A Wild Garden.—At this season of 
the year, again the early spring flowers 
and ferns are putting forth their tender 
growth. Every lover of Nature admires 
these beauties of the vegetable kingdom. 
Select some nook iu the garden or in the 
yard, and transfer some of these favorites 
where they may be often seen and studied. 
Remember to study the nature of the 
plants which are removed. If they like 
shade, or sun, muck, wet or dry soil, give 
them their choice of these. With a very 
little encouragement and an opportunity, 
the children will delight to do this part of 
the work. It will keep them busy, teach 
them to love Nature and their rural 
homes. Give our wild plants a chance. 
-»- 
BREVITIES. 
Hlnt for the Season. —“ Now or never.” 
Ur with the Lark and to bed with the Robin! 
Good reports regarding hardiness of the 
Snyder Blackberry reach us from the West. 
Mb. J. J. Thomas finds only a slight differ¬ 
ence between the Peaches “Amsaen” and 
" Alexander.” Mr. Geo. Husmann, of Mis¬ 
souri, prefers “ Amsdcn.” 
Prof. Beal states iu the Fruit Recorder, and 
Mr. Thomas, of the Country Gentleman, in¬ 
clines to the same, view, that scraping the stems 
of Apple trees is worse than useless. 
TnE Large-leaved Hemlock is one of the 
most desirable of dwarf evergreens. While 
the species has been seriously injured by the 
past winter, the above variety (macrophylla) 
has not been harmed in the least. 
Owe of the hardest things for horticulturists 
to do is to displace the Concord Grape and the 
Wilson Strawberry. They have au immense 
‘•constituency” all over the country, and then- 
friends stick to them like leeches. 
Do not forget to sprinkle the nests of sitting 
hens with sulphur. When they come off their 
nests for their daily bit of recreation, have 
ready for them all that they need, so that they 
may return to their work contentedly. 
Two of the mistakes made In our seed distri¬ 
bution were these : A subscriber applied for ten 
varieties of seeds and specified that he did not 
want any potato. He received ten potatoes and 
no seeds. Another subscriber w ho wauted all 
potatoes received the ten varieties of seeds. 
We asked Mr. S. B. Parsons, who has devot¬ 
ed years to the study of the Queen of Flowers, 
wbat Hybrid Perpetual Roses he would choose 
could lie have but two? His answer shows 
that he is not carried away with the late “ im¬ 
provements ” of that flower, viz., Gen. Jaque- 
iniuot aud Madame Plantier. 
Much was said last year about the advan¬ 
tages to be derived from harrowing wheat in 
tlie spring. But many trials seem to show 
that it is not specially helpful. 
“ Oh ! friendly to the boat pursuits of man ; 
Friendly to thought, to virtue and to peace, 
Domestic life In rural pleasure passed.” 
A careful look over our Raspberry planta¬ 
tion shows us; first, that It lias not been so much 
iujured as we had supposed; second, that sev¬ 
eral varieties which are believed to be among 
the hardiest have been injured more than some 
other varieties which are generally believed to 
be among the less hardy sorts. The best defi¬ 
nition or a hardy Raspberry is that from 
which in the long run we can pick the most 
berries.” 
Mu. E. E. Barnet, who is at so much pains 
to enlighten the public respecting the durabil¬ 
ity Ac. of the Catalpa, and especially of the 
variety Speciosa, quotes from the Rural New- 
Yorker Of fifteen years ago: “The Catalpa in 
the most durable wood known, excelling Black 
Locust, Red Cedar, and Mulberry in that it 
has no sap wood, so that trees of three or four 
years’ growth would not rot when set iu the 
ground for fence-stakes, hop or bean-poles.” 
Weaker than a woman has won golden 
opinions from our subscribers. For several 
months we have been in daily receipt of let¬ 
ters praising it in uustinted terms, which has 
been very gratifying, as we are at great pains 
and no little expense to secure stories which, 
in our opinion, deserve a place in our columns. 
It is extremely difficult to find a story that is 
dramatic, intense and at the same time pure 
in tone. The average author is seemingly 
impressed with the idea that, to make his tale 
piquant, he must cither introduce impossible 
adventures aud caricatures of ordinary hu¬ 
manity, or (what is still more to be condemned) 
the morality (?) that disfigures most French nov¬ 
els. Our present serial will be completed in the 
course of six or seven numbers, when we will 
begin another which we have no doubt will 
rival in popularity the old favorite, Weaker 
than a Woman. 
We call the attention of every reader to the 
remarks on this page under “ Cash against 
Credit.” Read it everyone, trite as the subject 
may appear. Credit is becoming the bane of 
farmers to a degree that few who ask and 
accept it realize. The borrowed dollar of to¬ 
day is looked upon as if it were in part a gift, 
and the fact that to-morrow wc may have two 
dollars to pay lor the use of it, is not consid¬ 
ered. We propose so to present this subject 
in a series of articles, as to oblige farmers to 
feel its vital importance. We therefore urge 
our request that both old and young—but more 
especially the latter—will read what we have 
to say patiently and thoughtfully even though, 
at the outset, they may deem that we can offer 
them no instruction upon a subject which from 
early times has been uphorized to death- That 
millions of dollars are squandered yearly in the 
purchase of agricultural implements alone, 
that, if these were bought for cash, might 
have been saved to the farmer and his family, 
is stirring proof that the lessons of rhesc apho¬ 
risms, like the most self-evident laws of health, 
are by many disregarded the same as if they 
had never been written. Agricultural imple¬ 
ments are necessities to modern agriculture. 
No other journal has more persistently set 
this forth than the Rural New-Yorker. But 
in the business of farming there is no margin 
of profit which allows the farmer to pay double 
the value of an implement for the privilege of 
using it a year before it must be paid for. A 
mortgaged home with us stands foremost 
among the dreaded things of life. But it is the 
part of wisdom rather to pay seven per cent, 
on a mortgage-debt than twenty-five per cent, 
for the privilege of not paying for goods when 
purchased. 
