8 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 6 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homti. 
Established 1850. 
Herbert W. Collingwood, Editor. 
Dr. Walter Van Fleet, 1 
H. E. Van Deman, VAssociatea. 
Mrs. E. T. Royle, j 
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 8*4 marks, or 10J4 francs. 
ADVERTISING RATES. 
Thirty cents per agate line (14 lines to the inch). Yearly order* 
of 10 or more lines, and 1,000-line orders, 25 cents per line. 
Heading Notices, ending with "Adv.," 75 cents per 
count line. Absolutely' One Price Only. 
Advertisements inserted only for responsible and honorable house* 
We must have copy one week before the date of issue. 
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 NEW-YORKER, 
409 Pearl Street, New York 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1900. 
At the meeting of the Consolidated Milk Exchange, 
December 27, it was decided to reduce the price of 
milk to the producer one-fourth cent per quart. This 
brings the price down to $1.52 per 40-quart can, within 
the 26-cent freight-rate limit. A fair Exchange would 
be no robbery. 
* 
A poet called a European peasant “brother to the 
ox,” and straightway various people who can do 
nothing but talk and write without thinking called it 
an insult to the farmer. We know that a dairyman 
will starve to death unless he gets close enough to 
the cow to call her sister. A cattle feeder should feel 
proud when he can make an ox feel so happy and 
contented that the animal will call him brother. At 
the present price of beef we would like to have 100 fat 
ox-brothers. The farmer doesn’t need such sympathy. 
The closer he gets to his barnyard relatives the better 
off he will be. 
• 
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Taylor be¬ 
lieves that we should do something to stop the flood 
of immigration coming into this country. He says 
that the immigrants from northern Europe, who go 
w r est to work on the farms, add to the productiveness 
of the country, bu£ those from Italy, Spain, Hungary 
and Turkey herd in the cities, becoming peddlers or 
sweatshop workers, or they go to the mining regions. 
They are not desirable, and too many of them are 
coming into the country. This class may become a 
real danger to the institutions of the country. The 
open door may be held too widely open. 
• 
Gov. Mount, of Indiana, in a recent speech, made 
the following statement: 
I emphatically favor removing all tariff protection 
from every industry that belongs to a combination 
formed in restraint of trade. I think this is a necessity, 
and that it would go a long way toward eradicating 
the trust evil. I would also favor a law that would 
compel a combination, when it reduces prices in one 
place to crush a competitor, to make exactly the same 
price for the whole market. 
The R. N.-Y. has frequently advocated the same 
thing. We would go further, and revise the patent 
laws fairly, so that these great combinations cannot 
use them to bleed the public. The way to fight the 
trust is to take away from it the privileges and pro¬ 
tections which belong to the people. 
• 
TnE dairymen of this country demand that two bills 
be passed by the present Congress. What is known 
as the Hill-Grout bill will render oleo subject to the 
laws of the State in which it is sold. When this bill 
becomes a law, oleo cannot be made and packed in 
Chicago and then shipped to New York and sold in 
defiance of our State laws. One would think that 
such a law is so fair and just that there could be no 
serious opposition to it, yet the oleo men will fight it 
savagely because the very mainspring of their busi¬ 
ness is an attempt to deceive or dodge the law. The 
other measure is known as the Davison bill, which 
will compel the manufacturers to pay a tax of 10 
cents a pound on all colored oleo which they make 
and sell. We have favored this tax because it seems 
the simplest and easiest way to force the manufac¬ 
turers into fair dealing. The present law suits them 
because most of their stuff is sold as butter, at butter 
prices, and the tax of two cents gives them a greater 
margin of profit than the butter maker can obtain. 
If they will not be honest in selling, let us go right to 
the factory and make them at least stand on even 
terms with the farmer. Of course the manufacturer 
will fight this bill, just as a thief would fight for his 
booty. This bill never can be put through Congress 
if American dairymen sit still and wait for somebody 
to work for them. The time has come for action. It 
is suggested that a fund be raised for the purpose of 
sending men to Washington who can influence Con¬ 
gressmen and help along the bills. That’s a good 
idea, but more good will be done by sending 1,000,000 
personal letters to Congressmen out of New York and 
New Jersey alone. Every man who makes or eats a 
pound of butter should spend at least 10 cents in 
postage stamps. Write to each of your Senators, and 
at least three letters to your Member of Congress. 
Don’t go to them hat in hand, and ask them if they 
please won’t be good and vote for these bills. You 
are not their servant—they are working for you. Be 
brief and tell them right up and down that you don’t 
■want seeds, or circulars, or reports, but that you do 
want that bill. Write one of these letters at once, and 
follow it up a month later with another stronger than 
the first. 
* 
An English warship has seized several cargoes of 
American flour which were being shipped to a South 
African port, probably designed for use in feeding 
the Boer army. This places the English authorities 
in a hard position. Food is about as necessary to the 
Boer army as guns or bullets, yet it is even more 
necessary to the English people. If flour is now de¬ 
clared “contraband of war,” and subject to seizure, 
such a ruling would be brought up against England in 
case she went to war with any European nation. Her 
grain or food would then be seized anywhere on the 
ocean, and this would mean starvation on the British 
Islands. The Boers can probably get along without 
American flour, but the English themselves cannot 
do so. 
• 
As an antidote for the disease of “Farming don’t 
pay,” we suggest that the patient commit to memory 
the letter on page 3, from that old Iowa farmer. Think 
of it! At the age of 56 this man invested his money 
in a worn-out and broken-down farm, though he 
knew nothing of farming. He has made a living for 
17 years, and now sells the farm for nearly three 
times what he paid for it. That man had faith in 
agriculture. He loved his farm. He beautified it, and 
improved it. He planted the best hopes and work 
of his life there. Of course they grew up into beauty 
and usefulness, and added value to the farm. Of 
course it was a “hard job.” We will thank you to 
show us anything that amounts to a pinch of salt that 
hasn’t been ground out of the flint. People buy farms 
for what they will produce in pleasure or profit. The 
greatest Chance in agriculture to-day is the oppor¬ 
tunity to buy a farm with a poor reputation at a low 
price, and then build up its character by sensible 
scientific methods. 
* 
-*> This criticism has been made by a New England 
man who attended the recent meeting of the New 
York State Dairymen’s Association: 
In many respects I do not think your meeting as good 
as ours. You ask why? One reason—95 per cent of the 
men who attend our meetings are real live working 
dairymen, who want help for their own work. From 
what I saw, and questions asked, I think that not over 
one-third of your attendance was made up of this class. 
They were men who had an “ax to grind”—dairy imple¬ 
ment men, officials, owners of tenant farms, creameries, 
and cheese factories, retired farmers, but very few of the 
real live working class. 
Another man who was present said: “The dairymen 
of New York are helped too much.” He meant that 
the meetings are conducted and controlled, not by 
actual, working dairymen, but by State officials and 
those who do most of their farming by proxy. In 
many other States this condition is reversed. The 
farmers themselves control the meetings, and the 
Agricultural Department and the experiment stations, 
instead of being “the whole thing,” are glad to follow 
the crowd. 
* 
Secretary Gage, of the National Treasury, in a 
recent speech, which was intended to explain his late 
extraordinary financial maneuvers, highly lauded the 
banker as a most needful factor in our industrial sys¬ 
tem, but drew the rather unfortunate parallel between 
him and the miller “who grinds the grist with equal 
fineness for all, and takes his just toll.” This is a 
comparison farmers are likely to appreciate, for 
though the local miller has been swept out of exist¬ 
ence by the milling trust, his memory is yet green. 
We all know how the miller flourished and waxed fat, 
while the farmer who grew the grain became lean 
and poor. The “just toll” many times seemed to 
weigh about as much as the grist itself. But at any 
rate the miller took his toll for a real tangible ser¬ 
vice, one that the farmer could not perform himself, 
but the toll of the banker, by contracting the cur¬ 
rency and expanding debts and credits, is largely ar¬ 
tificial and unnecessary to an honest and straight¬ 
forward method of transacting business. The banks 
may be trusted to grind exceedingly fine the scanty 
earnings of all producers, the farmer, the laborer and 
the miner, but the justice of their very heavy and 
numerous tolls may well be questioned. 
* 
In New York State a special committee has been in¬ 
vestigating the treatment of consumptives. It will 
recommend that consumption be considered a con¬ 
tagious disease, much the same as scarlet fever and 
smallpox, and that local boards of health be given 
power to regulate and protect, as in the case of other 
diseases. It will suggest State and local hospitals, 
where consumptives may receive special treatment. 
It will be well to realize what it will mean to class 
consumption as a contagious disease. It is not likely 
that patients in the earlier stages of consumption 
will ever be regarded as dangerous, but without doubt 
the tendency is toward laws that will permit the re¬ 
moval of advanced cases to hospitals or reservations, 
where they cannot readily spread the disease. Years 
ago such a law would have been considered cruel, and 
an invasion of personal rights. Now, we think a ma¬ 
jority of the people will consider it just. 
• 
The newspapers have widely discussed the life and 
services of the late D. L. Moody—the revivalist. 
Many people ridiculed him in life. Many church 
people did not agree with his methods, yet at his 
death there was a general agreement that a good and 
useful man had passed away. There is no shade 
thrown upon the kindly words spoken of the dead. 
Why is this? Simply because Moody was recognized 
as an earnest, sincere man. Even those who did not 
believe as he did, understood that Moody would stand 
or die for his convictions, and they respected him for 
it. The power for good that strong, earnest men or 
women can exercise is almost beyond belief. They 
speak, or write, or live simple unrecorded lives. The 
people with whom they come in contact do not 
agree with them, and yet their earnestness and sin¬ 
cerity is respected, and makes for them an influence 
which they, themselves, do not comprehend. The 
world loves and respects earnestness and sincerity. 
No other qualities can build up an enduring power 
and influence. 
* 
BREVITIES. 
NAMING THE BABY. 
Our youngest child now comes upon the stage; 
Young Volume Fifty-nine now makes his bow, 
He hopes your kind attention to engage— 
He’ll try to stir you up and show you how. 
What shall we name him? Let the truth be told 
That “Volume Fifty-nine” is far too long 
For such a little youngster—one week old. 
We want a name brief, sensible and strong— 
“William the Conqueror”—one waggish friend 
Suggests, but that seems rather heavy, too; 
Of course, he’ll conquer ere he strikes the end, 
But William turns to Bill when sifted through 
The sieve of usage; now, if you’ll agree 
To pay for being sponsor, why we will 
Tack on what talks all over land and sea, 
And call our coming volume Dollar Bill. 
Of course, a duck loves a ducking. 
“Wild oats” is likely to be a soiling crop. 
Wanted— the best cure for the “big head.” 
Those “vetch cranks”—page 9, put up a good argu¬ 
ment. 
Providence for miles ahead, sees the road we are to 
tread. 
If you would have your egg to hatch—induce the egg’s 
mama to scratch. 
Corn that will make a Brahma lazy, will drive a Leg¬ 
horn quite egg crazy. 
A HOG-wallow full of filth and disease germs is no lux¬ 
ury for the hog, says Mr. Brown, on page 3. 
New England doesn’t seem to think much of the Fili¬ 
pinos. Strange, for they are surely brown bred. 
The Supreme Court decides that colored pupils may be 
separated from the whites and taught in separate schools. 
Unless a farmer love his farm, it’s easy to be seen, 
that he will ne’er be much beside a flesh and blood ma¬ 
chine. 
There seems little doubt but that the common mos¬ 
quito is capable of carrying malaria from one human to 
another. 
Chicago is discussing the enactment of a curfew ordi¬ 
nance to restrain the children. Why not educate the 
parents, too? 
It seems that some one of our readers has had experi¬ 
ence with almost anything that is asked about. All we 
need to do is to ask. 
Mr. Cook makes a good point on page 14 when he sug¬ 
gests that constant association with oleo will put inferior 
fats in a man’s conscience. 
Become familiar with fumigating facts in Prof. John¬ 
son’s article on first page, but do not permit familiarity 
with cyanide to cause disregard of its deadliness. 
Six highly-educated performing goats, valued at J2.500, 
died of laurel-poisoning in Philadelphia recently. The 
cultured but indiscreet animals ate some of the Christ¬ 
mas decorations in the exhibition hall, and the best medi¬ 
cal skill was unable to save their lives. 
