THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
June 20 
456 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMEB'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
nKHBEUT W. COLLIXGWOOD, Editor. 
Du. Walteu Van Fleet, i . , . 
Mils. E. T. Koyle, ^Associates. 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, 
equal to 8s. 6d., or 8Vi marks, or 10*4 francs. 
“A SQUARE DEAL.” 
We believe that ev'ery advertisement in this paper is 
backed by a responsible person. But to make doubly 
sure we will make good any loss to paid subscribers 
sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising 
in our columns, and any such swindler will be publicly 
exposed. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we 
do not guarantee to adjust trifling differences between 
subscribers and honest responsible advertisers. Neither 
will we be responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts 
sanctioned by the courts. Notice of the complaint must 
be sent to us within one month of the time of the trans¬ 
action, and you must have mentioned The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
Name and address of sender, and what the remittance 
is for, should appear in every letter. 
Remittances may be made in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
THE RURAL NE'W-YORKER, 
409 Pearl Street, New York. 
SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1903. 
The prizes for best pictures and plans for a Grange 
hall were won by the following; 
Firs t—Dufay Wright, New York 
Second—Lewis T. Colby, New Hampshire 
A picture of the building which seemed best to the 
judges is shown at Pig. 162. The New Hampshire 
building wili be pictured next week. Considering the 
importance of the Grange and what it means to most 
of its members it must be said that most Grange 
buildings lack both distinct character and comfort. 
The buildings erected for public schools or libraries 
are generally built so that a stranger can tell what 
they are for. It ought to be the same with a Grange 
hall. There ought to be something about it that 
carries the stamp of a dignified farm organization. 
Very few Grange buildings have any such character. 
On page 452 will be found a question regarding the 
use of fertilizers from Alaska. The same letter 
brought an order for The New Rhubarb Culture. The 
R. N.-Y. goes everywhere, and we answer questions 
from about every civilized country. When we think 
of a man growing rhubarb and discussing fertilizers 
in Alaska we begin to realize how the odd corners of 
this country are developing. 
* 
A BILL changing some forms of public education 
was recently before the English Parliament. A pub¬ 
lic protest was to be made against it and, in response 
to a call, 350,000 people crowded together at an open 
public meeting. Busy men stood for hours in that 
great crowd, willing to put up with the inconvenience 
if their presence could add to the protest. They recog¬ 
nized the force of such a gathering. The farmers of 
New York State must learn to recognize the same 
thing if they are ever to obtain what they need at the 
agricultural college. We are told to keep quiet and 
let the politicians carry the appropriation through. 
Nonsense! Unless the farmers themselves make a 
noise and show their power they will never have a 
college that will satisfy them. 
* 
Among recent immigrants entering New York with 
the intention of making a home in this country was 
an educated young Greek. He was healthy, of good 
character, possessing comfortable means and suifi- 
ciently educated, according to report, to speak, read 
and write five different languages. After a brief de¬ 
tention by the authorities, first in the “pen” at Ellis 
Island, and afterwards under surveillance outside, he 
was deported and sent back to Greece. The reason 
for this was that, being an expert in the currant busi¬ 
ness, he had been engaged by a Greek currant im¬ 
porter in this country to take charge of a branch of 
the business, and was thus held to conflict with the 
contract labor law! The Greek’s employer asserted 
that it was impossible to find a man in this country 
possessing the same expert knowledge, and offered to 
advertise for such a man, to obtain evidence of the 
fact, but Secretary Shaw considered that such an ad¬ 
vertisement might be so worded as to bar out all but 
the imported man, and ruled against it. It is some¬ 
what difficult for the layman to understand the justice 
of this ruling, when, day by day, the ignorant toilers 
who crowd the city sweatshops, or drudge as the 
slaves of great corporations, come into the country 
without ^jhindrance. Secretary Shaw may have con¬ 
strued the letter of the law, but not its spirit. 
The funny man in some western paper tells of a 
farmer who hired a city boy: 
One morning: he told the boy to go and salt the calf. 
The boy took a quart of salt and rubbed It all over the 
calf, working it into the hair. A lot of colts scented 
the salt and hunted the calf up. They licked all the hair 
off the poor calf’s back. The farmer tried to catch the 
calf to wash it, but the calf, thinking he wanted to lick, 
too. ran through a hole in the fence and disappeared 
down the road. 
That man had no business to assault the boy for 
applying the salt wrong. It was his business to show 
the boy how to do the work, and to see that he start¬ 
ed right. That is the trouble with many farm boys. 
They are told to do things and never shown how to do 
them right. How can anyone expect a boy to acquire 
judgment except by wise direction and fair oversight? 
* 
The New York Experiment Station at Geneva need¬ 
ed new buildings and equipment. No one denied this 
need or questioned the justice of the request for the 
appropriation needed to supply them. No one but 
Gov. Odell. He not only cut down the appropriation 
for buildings, but actually chopped off part of the 
sum needed for paying running expenses. He has 
thus seriously crippled one of the most useful insti¬ 
tutions in the State. We notice a tendency to excuse 
Gov. Odell for work of this sort—because of the “con¬ 
dition of the State’s finances!” There is no reason 
why he should be dealt with so tenderly. He had no 
business to cut that appropriation or to hold up the 
bill which provided for the agricultural college. Such 
cheese-paring comes with bad grace after spending 
$50,000 of the public money on a useless junket to the 
St. Louis Exposition! 
* 
Michigan florists are protesting against the State 
law, requiring all florists who sell plants classed as 
nursery stock to file a $1,000 bond with the Agricul¬ 
tural Department, binding themselves to handle only 
such stock that has been inspected under the directon 
of the Department and to keep a correct list of the 
names and addresses of the parties sold to. They 
think this law unnecessarily severe, and an injustice 
to the many florists who deal with such stock in a 
small way. The Detroit Florists’ Club recently adopt¬ 
ed a resolution condemning the measure, and will try 
to have an amendment made. It can be readily seen 
that the State authorities cannot make fish of one 
man and flesh of another; all dealers in nursery stock 
must be treated alike, yet a florist, who often handles 
such stock merely as an accommodation for his cus¬ 
tomers, wjll find the requirements of the law extreme¬ 
ly burdensome. Such a jobber would naturally object 
to filing the required bond, as the stock is, presum¬ 
ably, inspected by the nurseryman from whom he pur¬ 
chases his planting material. 
* 
E^^RY editor has probably had an argument with 
the man who cannot understand the difference be¬ 
tween the written word and the spoken word. This 
man writes what may truly be called “hot stuff.” To 
print it as he wrote it would be. like catching a 
boarder by the throat and pouring boiling coffee into 
his mouth. If the editor is true to his business he 
cools off the reader’s words and prints them in such 
form that his subscribers can and will absorb them. 
There are other readers who find fault with an editor 
because in discussing their pet subjects he will not 
use a mustard plaster where he knows a soothing 
liniment will be far more effective. Such men, if 
brought face to face with the responsibilities that go 
with the printed word, would either ruin a paper in 
a short time or become so cautious that their words 
would carry no force whatever. An editor will some¬ 
times yield to pressure and indulge in intemperate 
and half-digested statements of fact, but he makes a 
mistake by doing so. It is hard sometimes to go 
serenely on waiting for the truth to develop in the 
minds of readers, and yet that seems to us the high¬ 
est ideal of journalism. 
« 
Mr. Mapes brings up an old question this week in 
his plea for a true combination among milk pro¬ 
ducers. There can be no doubt about the great bene¬ 
fits which such a combination, fairly and justly man¬ 
aged, would give to milk producers. They have no 
fight against the consumers, and the man who milks 
the cow should never antagonize the man who buys 
the quart of milk. It will be the worst possible policy 
to give the consumer to understand that the farmer 
is trying to make him pay more. He pays enough 
now. We want him to use more milk than he now 
does. It will be far better for him if the farmer can 
obtain a fairer share of what he pays. Suppose the 
consumer pays seven cents a quart for his milk, 
while the farmer receives two cents or less. The dif¬ 
ference, five cents, goes to mere handlers. The con¬ 
sumer must be made to see that it is to his interest 
to help the farmer obtain a fairer share than the pit¬ 
tance that is now doled out to him. Have we any 
faith that he ever will see it, or that, seeing it, he can 
help right the wrong? Yes, but we know that it must 
be a slow and perhaps a disappointing growth of edu¬ 
cation. We have faith in the development of justice. 
Men must grow before their desires can be gratified 
or even all their rights come to them. The milk situ¬ 
ation is now filled with injustice to the producer, but 
it is not hopeless by any means. True progress has 
been made during the past five years. Let us there¬ 
fore keep up the agitation hopefully and fairly. The 
right will develop in time! 
* 
It looks as though there has been serious dis¬ 
honesty and very poor management in the Post Office 
Department. We have not discussed the matter be¬ 
fore, because we wanted to make sure of the facts. 
We regret to say that the Rural Free Delivery 
Division seems to have been taken by some of the 
rascals for their underhand schemes. We have sus¬ 
pected this for some time. New routes have been 
established simply to curry favor with politicians, 
and the whole system seems in danger of falling into 
a scheme for serving the politicians rather than the 
people. The time has come to clean out the whole 
nest if need be. The farmers of this country want 
this mail service but, above all things, they want it 
honestly carried out. Clean out the rascals who have 
been taking bribes from manufacturers, and lining 
their pockets in various ways. This service must be 
cleaned up even if some of the rural routes have to 
be discontinued. We cannot afford to enjoy any pub¬ 
lic convenience that is to be used as a shield for fraud 
and bribery. Put the rascals in jail! 
* 
We can all remember the fierce discussion over the 
fumigation of nursery stock which made so much 
bad feeling two years ago. At that time many fruit 
growers were in favor of compelling every nursery¬ 
man to fumigate all the trees that left their nurseries. 
Others were not prepared to urge compulsory fumi¬ 
gation, but would leave it to the grower to demand it 
and to patronize only such nurserymen as would sat¬ 
isfy the demand. We judge from the notes from nur¬ 
serymen printed on page 449 that the latter plan has 
proved more popular. We conclude that fumigation 
will clean the trees of San Jos6 scale, but that it does 
not seem to destroy all the aphis. It has injured 
trees, especially those wanted for Fall shipment. It 
would appear that most nurserymen fumigate only 
when customers demand it, and there seems to be no 
way of proving that they have done so. Some States 
have laws which aim to compel fumigation, but we 
do not understand that they are strictly enforced. If 
a customer wants his trees fumigated, the surest thing 
for him to do is to buy of the nurseryman who wili 
give the best guarantee that it is done. 
• 
BREVITIES, 
Come, now, let us have that cure for laziness! 
Can a writer make himself pen-wise by pounding 
foolish things? 
Now we want all the Information we can get about 
using nitrate of soda to quicken the drought-dried 
meadow. 
The way for a man to find himself is to lose himself 
in some work that he loves. No one finds himself through 
mere play. 
One thing about this peculiar season is that we mi.ss 
the cheerful voice of the man who puts it all on “forest 
destruction.” 
The article by Mr. Cook on mowers is worth studying. 
We expect to have a series of articles on the use of 
machinery and practical farm mechanics. 
A Maine judge has sentenced a druggist for selling a 
patent medicine because it proved to be an intoxicating 
drink. It had more “rum” than many a drink sold over 
the bar. 
Our friend Mapes is certainly right in urging farmers 
to sow turnips for cow food. If the drought dries up the 
prejudice against turnips and cabbage it will be a bless¬ 
ing. It is, anyway. 
A reader in Iowa sent this cheerful note May 29; 
“Nine days’ steady rain now; picking strawberries in 
rubber boots, coats and hats; only thing that helped them 
out of dry month past.” 
The eggs of Oyster-shell and Scurfy bark-lice have 
just hatched in the North. The young are crawling and 
now is the time to kill them by spraying the trees with 
common soap or whale-oil soap, one pound to eight gal¬ 
lons of water. 
Experiments seem to show that real progress is being 
made toward learning the “trade secrets of the legumin¬ 
ous plants”—that is, how to obtain fertilizer nitrogen 
from the air. It has already been done, but the cost 
is too great thus far. 
Those references to western land sharks on page 450, 
recall a recent Winter when, according to report, wolves 
were seen prowling about the suburbs of Chicago. One 
of the newspapers asserted that these ferocious animals 
were not really wolves; they were merely western real 
estate agents! 
