857 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Events of the Week. 
DOMESTIC.—Thirteen miners were killed and great 
damage w'as done by an accidental explosion of gas No¬ 
vember 24 in Coal Mine No. 20 at Bonanza, Ark. When 
the explosion occurred there were about 175 men in the 
various shafts. All escaped without injury except the 
13. The force of the explosion was terrific, and timbers 
were torn from the walls of the passages for several 
hundred yards.About $30,000 worth of purebred 
cattle on the way to the fat stock show of Chicago were 
slaughtered in a railway wreck at Crown Point, Ind., 
November 26. It was a rear end collision on the Pan 
Handle Railroad and took place in the heart of the city 
during a blinding snowstorm, when it was impossible for 
the trainmen to see 10 feet ahead. A train had stopped 
to put off a car and had just sent back a flagman to 
warn the approaching stock train. He was too late, and 
the second train crashed into the freight at full speed. 
. . . . The Pennsylvania State Board of Health met 
at Butler. Pa., November 28, to investigate the cause of 
the typhoid epidemic, which has already attacked more 
than 1.200 persons. At the close of the meeting the mem¬ 
bers declared that the water furnished by the Butler 
Water Company is the sole cause of the breaking out of 
the disease. During the Summer the Boydstown dam 
of the Butler Water Company was washed out by a heavy 
storm. Before the new dam was completed, it is alleged 
ihat the company pumped water from the creek bed near 
town, when there were fever cases by the score on the 
tributaries of the stream, while the people thought the 
water was coming from the old dam. Many families are 
in destitute circumstances, the wage earners having been 
taken ill.Chained wrist to wrist, their clothing 
covered with blood and dust and dirt, two beardless boys, 
Peter Niedermeier and Harvey Van Dine, sat November 
27 in the presence of Mayor Harrison and Chief of Police 
O’Neil, of Chicago, calmly confessing to their share in 
a three months’ career of crime which has included eight 
murders, the wounding of five others, and a long series 
of robberies. The two young bandits, neither of whom 
is over 21 years of age, together with their companion, 
Emil Roeski, who is no older, were captured near Liver¬ 
pool, Ind., November 27, after a fight in which they bat¬ 
tled against policemen, railroad detectives, railroad labor¬ 
ers and farmers. In this battle, which began at a dug- 
out in which the boys had taken refuge, and continued 
during their flight, T. J. Sovea, a brakeman on the Penn¬ 
sylvania Railroad, was killed; Joseph Driscoll, a detec¬ 
tive on the Chicago police force, was shot fatally, and 
Matthew Zimmer, a detective on the Chicago police force, 
was shot in the head and arm. Niedermeier was wound¬ 
ed in the hand by bird shot. Van Dine was similarly 
injured, and sustained in addition a flesh wound in the 
left thigh. Roeski was shot in the right hip. The three 
men were wanted by the police for complicity in the 
murders at the car barns of the Chicago City Railroad 
Company on August SO, when two men were killed, a 
third badly wounded, and $2,250 stolen from the company. 
Gustave Marx, who murdered Officer John Quinn, of 
Chicago, November 21, when the policeman endeavored 
to place him under arrest, confessed after his capture 
that he, in company with the three men, had committed 
the crimes at the car barns.November 26 four 
firemen at Omaha and one at Cincinnati were killed by 
the collapse of floors in burning buildings. The loss at 
Omaha was $300,000 and at Cincinnati $60,000. 
The Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N, Y., was destroyed 
by fire November 28; one man killed; loss $250,000. 
■Whitecapism in Lincoln County, Miss., which has re¬ 
vived during the last two weeks of November, has grown 
much worse and has resulted in the killing of Henry 
Lisle, a negro farmer of excellent reputation. Several 
Whitecaps were arrested last Spring, and this and the 
energetic efforts of Gov. Longino, it was thought, had 
suppressed the evil, but it has started up worse than 
ever. Certain negroes were ordered to leave the county, 
and failing to do so were visited at night by a large body 
of armed Whitecaps on horseback. The house of Eli 
Hilson was riddled with bullets, but no one was killed. 
That of Henry Lisle at Green Grove was next visited and 
Lisle was killed. The attack on Lisle’s house was the 
second made by the Whitecaps, who visited it two weeks 
before, ordered Lisle to leave and fired into the house. 
He refused to go, and the second visit resulted in his 
death. Public sentiment in the county is strongly against 
the Whitecappers. Gov. Longino has promised to take 
action in the matter.Seven hundred cases of 
measles were reported in Plymouth, a mining town near 
Wilkesbarre, Pa- December 1. There are placards in over 
three hundred houses. The health officers say they are 
unable to check the epidemic.December 1 re¬ 
ceivers in bankruptcy were appointed for all the property 
of John Alexander Dowie at Zion City, Ill. Dowie has 
been hard pressed by his creditors, especially since it 
was announced that his recent mission to New York had 
proved unsuccessful financially. Dowie is known to have 
accumulated a large sum as the head of the Christian 
Catholic Church. The assets of the organization have 
been estimated at several million dollars. There was a 
large outlay of money, however, when Zion City was 
started in Lake County. Dowie is said to have much 
money tied up in the lace and candy industries there, and 
it was recently reported that neither of these con¬ 
cerns was a paying investment. Dowie’s differences with 
the Stevenson brothers over the management of the lace 
factory cost him more than $100,000. The other suits re¬ 
cently begun In the Lake County courts are said to ag¬ 
gregate a large sum. The area of Zion City is 650 acres. 
The number of followers is estimated at 6,000. The New 
York crusade cost $280,000. The value of Zion City, esti¬ 
mated, is $10,000,000. The cost of the site was $1,000,000. 
'The cost of lace factory was $500,000; cost of candy fac¬ 
tory, $25,000; cost of improvements in Zion City, $3,000,000. 
ADMINISTRATION.—Postmaster-General Payne has 
made public a 12,000 word abstract of the report of Fourth 
Assistant Postmaster-General Bristow on the investiga¬ 
tion of the Post Office Department scandals, which he 
has been making since last March. The report Itself is 
10 times as long, but the abstract purports to give in as 
lew words as possible the results of the work of the in¬ 
spectors, and is accompanied by a “Memorandum” writ¬ 
ten by President Roosevelt, in which he comments upon 
the facts set forth in the report and delivers a denuncia¬ 
tion of the corruption that has been exposed by the Re¬ 
publican administration, with his personal characteriza¬ 
tion of evil-doing on the part of Government officials. 
The President expresses regret that the statute of limi¬ 
tations applies at the expiration of three years from the 
time of the wrongdoing of officials, and urges that the 
time limit be extended to at least five years, as recom¬ 
mended by the Attorney-General. This is generally taken 
to mean that Heath would be prosecuted if the law did 
not operate to prevent it. One somewhat surprising fea¬ 
ture of the President’s memorandum is his accusations 
against Gen. Tyner, who was summarily removed from 
tlie office of Attorney for the Post Office Department 
and who the public has hitherto believed was the victim 
of dishonest and designing subordinates. The President, 
however, says Tyner was knowingly and wilfully cor¬ 
rupt. He promises to use every endeavor to convict the 
indicted men, and in closing his memorandum uses this 
phrase: “The toleration of the wrong, not the exposure 
of the wrong, is the real offence.” The so-called Tulloch 
charjfes. relating chiefly to the lax methods employed 
in the Department when Heath was First Assistant 
Postmaster-General, are not referred to in the report 
now made public. They involve charges against the ac¬ 
counting officers of the Treasury and Post Office depart¬ 
ments, accused not of downright corruption, but of “com¬ 
placency” in the methods of Heath and other otticial.s, 
and they are now being investigated by Charles J. Bona¬ 
parte and Holmes Conrad, the special commission ap¬ 
pointed for that purpose by the President. The report 
of this commission will be dealt with later. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—The thirtieth annual meeting 
of the Horticultural Society of Southern Illinois con¬ 
vened at Salem November 24 for a two days’ session. 
There was a fair attendance of horticulturists from 
Vincennes, Olney, Alton, Carbondale, Centralia and other 
places. Major Tweed delivered the address of welcome, 
and the response was by the president of the Society, J. 
W. Stanton, of Richview. The reports of the officers 
were made and the various committees appointed. Pro¬ 
fessor J. W. Lloyd, of the State Experiment Station, 
made a talk on marketing the muskmelon. and A. V. 
Schormerpour on marketing fruits. 
'i'he thirty-seventh annual meeting of the Northern 
Illinois Horticultural Association was held at Rockford 
on December 9 and 10. 
November 18 Commissioner Kracke pressed a case 
against a wholesale butter dealer in New York for sell¬ 
ing renovated butter to a retailer as creamery, the re¬ 
tailer being quite innocent of the deception. The whole¬ 
saler was fined $100. Another case pressed by the Com¬ 
missioner was a wagon peddler from Jersey City, who 
sold oleo on Staten Island as bargains in creamery but¬ 
ter. As it was his first offense, and the peddler prom¬ 
ised to quit the business, he was fined $50. 
The annual meeting of the Colorado State Horticultural 
Society waa held at Denver November 30—December 2. 
Farmers representing 10 Western States gathered in 
Chicago December 1 to discuss a plan of merging their 
local bodies into a National organization, with a view 
to securing better prices for products. W. F. Hendricks, 
president of an organization in Oklahoma and southern 
Kansas, said that his society had 20,000 members and 
was anxious to affiliate with any national body that 
would benefit the agriculturists. L. B. Day described a 
plan of farmers operating their own elevators,' a plan 
which has been in successful operation in Nebraska for 
several years. The farmers, he explained, subscribe for 
elevator stock, and when sufficient funds for a new ele¬ 
vator are secured, work on the structure is begun. Other 
speakers were John Ames, of Wisconsin, and Robert 
Lindbloom. 
The Connecticut State Board of Agriculture will hold 
its annual mid-Winter meeting at Middletown, December 
15-17. An extensive programme has been prepared, and 
a number of well-known speakers will be present. 
REASONS FOR SUBSTITUTIONS OF VARIE¬ 
TIES MADE BY SOME NURSERYMEN, 
The nursery business is an exceedingly vexatious one. 
Nurserymen are subjected to great strain of body and 
mind. Their profits are small in proportion to the risks 
they have to take. At this moment I have several car¬ 
loads of trees that are caught by Winter on the railroad 
line from a neighboring county where we have a branch 
of our nursery. The packing business of nearly a whole 
year must be done in a few short weeks of fickle weather 
in early Spring when every patron desires immediate 
attention. There are thousands of varieties of apples 
and nearly as many of the peach, pear, plum and other 
trees. People living in different sections of the country 
have heard of a local apple that is not known elsewhere, 
or they have heard of a rare variety that few nursery¬ 
men hav^e, and in sending in their order they call for 
these rare or little-known varieties. In addition to the 
large number of varieties of fruit trees there are the 
different grades or sizes of trees, therefore a patron may 
call for a variety that the nurseryman has in different 
sized trees from those ordered. 1 have known at our 
nurseries the packing floor of a large building seriously 
obstructed with boxes of trees which contained the com¬ 
plete order of the purchaser with the exception of one or 
two small items. These boxes are thus waiting with the 
hope that the desired trees may be secured of other 
nurseries. Finally It is found that the varieties cannot 
be secured. Now, what Is the nurseryman going to do’ 
He has received an order for a certain number of trees, 
has nearly all of the trees wanted, but there are a few 
trees of one or two varieties that he has not and cannot 
purchase. Here is a dilemma. The honest nurseryman 
then writes the patron, asking what he shall do, re¬ 
fund the money for such trees or send other varieties 
as near like the varieties called for as possible, but 
correctly named. The fraudulent nurseryman, and he is 
niimernns for the reason that his patron.s have almost 
made him fraudulent, finds the easiest way out of the 
difficulty is to take trees of another variety, remove the 
labels from them and attach the labels bearing the name 
that the patron desires. Of these three methods adopted 
by nurserymen the fraudulent one is the most acceptable 
to patrons. The buyer of trees unpacks his box and 
finds everything precisely as ordered, apparently; the 
labels say so at least. The more honest nurseryman re¬ 
ceives severe censure from the purchaser and is liable 
to be forever after condemned, and yet he may have 
done his patron good service, and very likely has sent 
him varieties of those substituted that are even better 
than those he ordered. 
The honest nurseryman does not substitute wildly, or 
without discretion or thought. If his patron has ordered 
1.000 Baldwin apple trees, or 100 Niagara grapevines, or 
500 Elborta peach trees, he would not think of making 
substitution in such an order, nor would he substitute 
for a novelty like the McPike grape or the Green Moun¬ 
tain grape, or something that was rare or high-priced. 
He would feel that in such a case as that substitution 
would not be acceptable. In my own business I have 
sometimes substituted, but when the patron wrote that 
he was dissatisfied with the varieties sent I have re¬ 
funded the money. It was my intention when I made the 
substitution to refund in case the substitution was not 
acceptable. If the nursery business could be conducted 
as is the dry goods or the grocery business, every order 
filled the day it came in and orders filled every day of 
the year, there would be less substitution. If, in your 
dealings with a nurseryman year after year, you find 
that he always seems to have in stock every variety 
your long list calls for, you have reason to suspect dis¬ 
honesty. If, on the other hand, he often writes you that 
there are certain varieties named in your list that he 
cannot supply, you have reason to believe that he is an 
honest man. The fact that certain localities of this big 
country call for certain varieties of trees that are not 
grown in other localities makes it almost Impossible for 
any one nurseryman to supply all the varieties called for 
in the extended list of varieties. When orchardists write 
me for prices on a long list of varieties I have often and 
usually to reply that certain kinds I cannot offer since 
we do not grow them. This often leads to our losing 
the order. I remember one instance in which the patron 
wrote us later that he had given the order to a nursery¬ 
man in my neighborhood whose principal business was 
in selling through agents. The order was. filled at the 
end of the season after this nurseryman had used up 
nearly all of his varieties in filling the agent’s orders, 
and yet the patron informed me that this nurseryman 
had on hand every variety called for in the extended 
list, and he preferred to give the order to him so it could 
be filled entirely by one firm. I have reason to believe 
that a large portion of these trees were dishonestly 
labeled. I know of a small nurseryman in this State 
whose entire stock of apple trees during one season con¬ 
sisted of one block of varieties bought of a neighbor at 
low prices. While there were only eight varieties in this 
lot of apple trees this nurseryman, by fraudulent label¬ 
ing, was able to furnish his patrons with every variety 
that they might call for. These facts are not only known 
by myself but by many of his neighbors. There was 
once a large wholesale nursery firm in Ohio whose solici¬ 
tor would call at our office and reveal before our as¬ 
tonished eyes a list embracing nearly one thousand va¬ 
rieties of apples. For a few years the trees of this nur¬ 
sery were in great demand, owing to the fact that they 
claimed to have varieties that could not be bought else¬ 
where, but after a time it was learned that they manu¬ 
factured their varieties through false labeling, and they 
have since been forced out of business through lack of 
patronage. I have thrown some of the responsibility of 
fraudulent labeling on the patrons of nurseries, who are 
so ignorant of the conditions prevailing that when the 
nurseryman attempts to treat them honestly he is 
condemned, and the dishonest nurseryman, who labels 
fraudulently, gets the orders, and is applauded, tempor¬ 
arily at least. ^ NtrasERTMAN. 
POULTRY ON THE PACIFIC COAST. 
That poultry is profitable is true and our prices as a 
rule are higher than the East; at least, I believe so. To¬ 
day strictly fresh eggs are 40 to 50 cents per dozen; com¬ 
mon chicks in the piarket are down and bring 10 to 11 
cents, although anything nice brings 12% cents. 'Turkeys 
range from 18 to 22 cents dressed; geese, $9 to $12 per 
dozen; ducks, $5 to $7 per dozen; markets full of wild 
ducks and pheasants help to bring price down. We do 
not have the extremes of temperature found in the East. 
Our main drawback in Oregon is our very damp Winter. 
The only locality on the coast where they are making an 
unqualified success of poultry as a business, is Petaluma. 
Cal. Many are doing very well as the fine homes, etc.i 
testify. I understand the chief drawback at Petaluma 
is the dense fog that comes in from the ocean every 
evening. I cannot vouch for this, but have heard roup 
is very prevalent. Some years ago an enthusiast started 
a poultry farm on Protection Island (off the Washington 
coast), but it did not last long. I fully believe that a 
good living could be made right here on hens, but just 
now I know of no one who has made it go to a remark¬ 
able extent. e. j. ladd. 
Oregon._ 
BUSINESS BITS, 
The Annual Almanacs sent out by some firms contain 
much useful information. The A. M. Seeding-Mch. Co., 
Springfield, O., offers to send 1904 edition to any reader 
of The R. N. Y. asking for iL This is specially prepared 
for farmers’ needs. Just drop a postal for it. 
Ross Bros., the well-known agricultural implement 
people of Worcester, Mass., find they have quite a stock 
of farm tools on hand, and are offering real bargains 
rather than carry them over to another season. The 
tools are all standard makes, and this sale offers a good 
chance to get next year’s supply of tools at a small cost. 
Another engagement just consummated by F. F. 
Proctor is that of Dan Daly who is at once the most 
popular and the most personally eccentric of all the light 
opera comedians of this era. Fresh from a starring tour, 
Daly has made a long jump into vaudeville only after 
long and careful consideration, .and. incidentally, after 
he had been offered a salarv larger than ever before 
paid to a single “turn” in vaudeville. Daly’s engagement 
like that of Miss Chesebrough. is also an exclusive one 
for the Proctor theatres. His “specialty” is so arranged 
that It introduces Daly in all the characters in which he 
has made “hits” in comic opera. When in New York, 
Albany or Montreal, Proctor’s theatres will afford an 
evening’s amusement. 
The Angle lamp is something which should specially 
appeal to people in the country. For them kerosene oil 
must continue to be the means of illumination. The 
Angle lamp makes the most of this, everybody’s lighting 
material. It tends to put them on a par with those who 
have the advantage of city residence and gas and electric 
light systems. The Angle lamp makes the right use of 
oil and that means a soft, meilow. even light, which 
neither gas nor electricity yields. Its construction makes 
it a shadowless lamp; does not get in its own light. 'There 
is an entire absence of offensive odors, it consumes but 
little oil; about one-half as much as the ordinary lamp. 
A booklet setting the merits in detail may be had free by 
writing the Angle I.amp Cojnpanv 76 Park Place, New 
York City. 
