' 1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
73 
Events of the Week. 
DOMESTIC.—An automobile cab ran away in New York 
City January 18, injuring the motorman seriously; the 
man inside escaped by jumping. . . . The Virginia 
House of Delegates has passed a measure requiring sep¬ 
arate cars for blacks and whites on all railroads. . . . 
Smallpox is reported from 14 counties in Indiana, but some 
of the doctors diagnose the disease as chickenpox. . . . 
During a fight among Sicilians in New York City January 
21, three persons were killed. ... A severe earthquake 
shock was felt in Mexico January 19, the disturbance be¬ 
ing felt from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In Colima seven 
lives were lost, and 60 persons injured. . . . The Senate 
Committee on Pensions has been investigating a swindle 
perpetrated on negroes, who have been persuaded that the 
Government is going to pension all those formerly held as 
slaves. The swindlers prevail upon their victims to join 
an “association,” paying membership fees and monthly 
dues, in the hope of getting a pension, and the swindle is 
so widespread that its perpetrators are believed to have 
obtained over $50,000 from it. The swindle has been aided 
by unthinking Congressmen, who have been prevailed 
upon to introduce bills for the pensioning of ex-slaves, 
thus giving substance to the fraud. . . . The English 
steamship Ardandhu, from New London for Halifax, was 
in collision January 23 with the steamer Herman Winter, 
off Vineyard Harbor, Mass. The Ardandhu was almost 
cut in two, but by keeping the bow of the Winter in the 
hole she was kept afloat until most of the crew were taken 
off. Two men were drowned. . . . Weather forecaster 
H. A. Hazen died in Washington January 23, the result 
of being run down by a bicycle rider. . . . Owing to the 
prevalence of smallpox in Oklahoma, the post offices at 
Remus and Avoca will be closed, and mail from certain 
points will be fumigated. ... A serious prairie fire was 
raging in Teton County, Mont., January 24. Lack of 
snow and constant winds have dried the prairie grass so 
that it is very combustible. Much hay and a number of 
ranch buildings have been destroyed. 
CONGRESS.—The vote on the Currency bill will be 
taken February 15. . . . January 19, the General Pen¬ 
sion bill for 1901 was passed; it carries a total of $145,000,000. 
. . . Representative Payne, of New York, introduced a 
bill providing for free trade with Porto Rico. . . . Jan¬ 
uary 22, the proposed amendment to the Constitution of 
North Carolina, disfranchising the negroes, was discussed 
with some acrimony. . . . January 23 the Roberts case 
was discussed in the House. Roberts made a vigorous de¬ 
fense of polygamy, defying expulsion or exclusion. The 
Philippine question was again discussed in the Senate. 
Senator Ross advocated the establishment of a separate 
department to care for colonial dependencies. 
PHILIPPINES.—An expedition has started to Samar 
and Leyte, which are held by the insurgents. The Ameri¬ 
can blockade and the levies of the Tagal army have 
caused great suffering among the people, and hundreds of 
them are almost starving. The troops in northern Luzon 
are still pursuing bands of robbers. Several engagements 
were reported January 18, our troops driving out the in¬ 
surgents. . . . The revolt in Negros was headed by the 
chief officers of the autonomous government, elected last 
November. They have been arrested, and will be ex¬ 
pelled from the Island. . . . Five companies of Ameri¬ 
cans routed 800 insurgents at Lemery January 20. The 
campaign in southern Luzon has resulted in opening the 
coast of Laguna de Bay and the west coast of Panay to 
unrestricted trade. 
CUBA.—An investigation of the women’s prison at Ha¬ 
vana shows a disgraceful state of affairs. The place is 
unspeakably filthy, and there is total disregard of sani¬ 
tary conditions. There are no cots or blankets, and the 
inmates sleep on the stone floors. Moral conditions are 
revolting. Gen. Wood is instituting reforms. . . . The 
Law Commission is working to establish police courts all 
over the Island, to expedite justice. Special attention 
will be paid to the punishment of perjury, against which 
there is no existing law, and which is so common that it 
may be called a national vice. 
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.—The plague Is spreading among 
Asiatics in Honolulu; 27 deaths have been reported. The 
Hawaiian government is now feeding 2,500 people in the 
detention barracks. There is much destitution among 
Hawaiians and Japanese whose houses and goods have 
been burned. Every effort is being made to prevent the 
disease from spreading to the sugar plantations. A house- 
to-house inspection is being made. This has revealed 
several cases of leprosy, that had escaped the vigilance 
of the authorities. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—At the annual meeting of the 
Fruit and Vegetable Packers’ Association of New Jersey, 
the cannery price of tomatoes for the coming season was 
fixed at $6 a ton. 
A recent decision by the Philadelphia Court of Common 
Pleas decides that while a dealer in oleo may be punished 
for coloring his product in imitation of butter, he cannot 
be compelled to color It any distinctive color, such as pink. 
The Montreal (Quebec) Poultry Association held its 
regular exhibition January 17-22. 
The American Rose Society will hold a rose show in the 
Eden Mused, New York City, March 27-29. An extensive 
display of roses and other flowers is expected. The secre¬ 
tary of the Society is Leonard Barron, 136 Liberty street, 
New York City. 
Switzerland has opened her markets to American fruit. 
January 19, revenue officers at Rochester, N. Y., seized 18 
cases of unmarked oleo, shipped from the Aurora Produce 
Company of Chicago. 
The twenty-eighth annual session of the New York State 
Grange will be held at Herkimer February 6. It will be 
an important meeting, and a large attendance is expected. 
The New Jersey State Horticultural Society has elected 
the following officers for 1900: President, Henry E. Hale, 
Princeton; vice-president, W. H. Reid, Freehold; secre¬ 
tary, Henry I. Budd, Mount Holly; treasurer, Chas. L. 
Jones, Newark. 
The following States have enacted laws compelling an 
entomologist’s certificate to accompany all nursery stock 
shipped into them: Georgia, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Cali¬ 
fornia, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, 
Colorado, and Kentucky. 
The act known as the Barlow bill, providing regulations 
for the importation of nursery stock, which failed of pass¬ 
age in the LVI. Congress, has been reintroduced by Con¬ 
gressman J. W. Wadsworth, of Geneseo, N. Y., at the re¬ 
quest of C. L. Watrous, chairman of the committee on 
legislation of the American Association of Nurserymen. 
The convention of Iowa and Nebraska farm implement 
dealers was held recently at Omaha. It was the general 
opinion among them that the year will see a light trade, 
the great advance in prices making the farmers very con¬ 
servative in buying. 
A beet sugar factory with a capacity of 500 tons daily 
is to be built at Lyons, N. Y., by the Empire State Sugar 
Company. It is said that 3,000 acres of beets are already 
pledged. 
The State of Washington has passed a law, which be¬ 
came operative January 15, requiring nurserymen and 
dealers in nursery stock to obtain licenses and file bonds 
of $1,000 each, to insure compliance with the laws requir¬ 
ing inspection of all nursery stock, and the destruction 
of trees or plants infested with insect pests. 
THE WESTERN NEW YORK HORTICUL¬ 
TURAL SOCIETY. 
A Remarkably Successful Meeting. 
The annual meeting of this famous old Society, held at 
Rochester, January 24-25, was remarkably successful. 
Such an outpouring of fruit growers was never seen be¬ 
fore. The hall was crowded, and hundreds were unable 
to enter. The continued success of this organization is 
not to be wondered at, when we consider that it is the 
local representative of the oldest, and in some respects, 
the most favored fruit-growing section in the world. 
There are strong and capable men at its head, and the 
best experts in the country come each year to discuss 
their season’s experiments. We hope to give a synopsis 
of what the speakers said, but it is impossible to report 
or describe the spirit and good feeling which filled the 
meeting. 
LAND VALUES.—Mr. Geo. T. Powell said that, between 
1871 and 1893, there was a depreciation of 50 per cent in 
the value of land in New York State. This depreciation 
was most marked on land which had been devoted to the 
production of cereals. Wherever an attempt has been 
made to grow large areas of grain in competition with 
the West, there land value had decreased; wherever land 
has been used for the production of fruit, it has increased 
in value. Apple orchards 20 years planted, and now in 
full bearing, show an average value of $75 to $200 per acre; 
but the average value of cereal farms ranges from $10 to 
$50 per acre. Some of the earning profits of orchards in 
western New York are astonishing. On one 118-acre farm, 
the 12-acre orchard returned the owner an income of 
$1,725 in 1898, and $2,800 in 1899. Another 300-acre farm with 
15 acres of apples, shows an income from the orchard of 
$2,282 in 1898 and $2,650 in 1899. A five-acre orchard now 
90 years old gave net returns of $650 in 1899. Several 
orchards are now earning six per cent on a valuation of 
$1,400 per acre. What does all this show? It shows that 
it will not pay the farmers of New York State to grow 
grain in competition with the West. Put out more or¬ 
chards. The relation of fruit-growing to land value is that 
whoever will devote his acres to fryit-growing will raise 
the value of the land. 
THE FERTILIZER TRADE.—Dr. W. H. Jordan, of the 
Geneva Station, said the American people have great con¬ 
fidence in law as a remedy for all kinds of evils. Since 
our last meeting, the State of New York has enacted a 
new feeding-stufT law, and an amendment to the fertilizer 
law. The New York law provided that the expense of 
fertilizer inspection should be defrayed out of public 
money. Twenty-eight other States have fertilizer inspec¬ 
tion laws, but in most of them the expense is borne by the 
fertilizer manufacturers themselves. The New York law 
has now been amended to throw the cost of inspection on 
the manufacturers, and to require that all brands offered 
for sale in the Spring shall be registered by the preced¬ 
ing November. Up to the present time, 77 manufacturers 
have registered 440 brands^ as against 190 manufacturers 
and 2,260 brands last year. What has become of the other 
manufacturers? Have they been driven out of business? 
No. These men, who formerly registered as manufac¬ 
turers, were simply mixers, who bought materials, mixed 
them, and put their names on the bags as manufacturers. 
No large fertilizer manufacturers have gone out of busi¬ 
ness as a result of the new law. A half-dozen brands of 
commercial fertilizers are just as good as a half thousand; 
and since the new law has reduced the number of brands 
four-fifths, it Is a distinct benefit to the farmer. As a 
rule, the prices of commercial fertilizers are higher this 
year than last. It has been supposed that the reason 
for this is the shutting out of these small dealers, but 
this is not so; the real reason is the combination of large 
fertilizer manufacturers to control the market. 
We have been taught that each crop takes from the soil 
a certain amount of certain foods; and that the farmer 
must put back in fertilizers the same amount of the same 
foods. In most soils, there Is plant food in great abund¬ 
ance, but it is not all available. It is a good business 
policy to make this storehouse of plant food available be¬ 
fore applying additional fertilizer. I very much doubt 
the advisability of always returning to the soil every¬ 
thing we take from it. Some soils will endure heavy 
cropping for many years without becoming depleted in 
certain kinds of plant food. The day of the complete fer¬ 
tilizer is gone. We have settled down to the conviction 
that we must fortify the soil at its weak points. How 
shall we know what are its weak points? Certainly not 
by sending a sample to the chemist for analysis. He can 
only tell the total amount of plant food in it; not what 
the plant can use. The farraer must handle this problem 
himself, on his farm, by a series of intelligent fertilizer 
experiments. It is rather a tough knot for some farmers, 
but the more of these tough problems there are the more 
rapidly agriculture will advance. The dullard will go to 
the wall, and the intelligent experimenting farmer will 
take his place and reap his profits. 
FRUITS IN THE QUESTION BOX.—The Windsor 
cherry is a coming market variety for western New York. 
In 1898 Mr. S. D. Willard received a net return of 10 cents 
per pound for his Windsors; in 1899, 12 cents. According 
to Mr. Geo. T. Powell the tree is unusually resistant to 
disease. The fruit Is extra large, dark colored, and 
sweet. It ripens in early July in eastern New York. 
Another promising cherry is the Bing, a variety which is 
grown somewhat on the Pacific coast. It resembles Wind¬ 
sor, but will average larger. Western New York cherry 
growers must have a dark-colored cherry for market; the 
yellow varieties are all right for home use, but not for 
shipping. 
Currants have not been a paying crop of late years for 
most growers. With the increased demand arising from 
the enactment of pure-food laws, there is reason for be¬ 
lieving that this is only temporary. Mr. A. D. Barnes, 
of Mt. Hope, is one of the largest growers in the State. 
He sold most of his crop of Pres. Wilder currants in 
Boston last year, at 10 cents a box. The general experi¬ 
ence with varieties has been that Versaillaise is better 
than Cherry. Fay is a standard but weak in wood. Pres. 
Wilder is very valuable for market, and White Imperial 
for home use. Mr. Geo. T. Powell, of Ghent, told about 
picking 16 quarts of Fay from a single bush of pedigree 
stock. 
A question on the outlook for apple growing In western 
New York brought only favorable replies. Everyone said 
“good.” Although Mr. Van Deman introduced Ben Davis 
as the business apple of the country, not excepting New 
York State, they would have none of it. The old Bald¬ 
win is still the favorite, with Twenty-Ounce and Green¬ 
ing in no less esteem. Rome Beauty and York Imperial 
are being planted to a limited extent. Grimes Golden 
should be in every family orchard. Mr. Van Deman says 
that York Imperial is running Ben Davis an even race in 
many parts of the country. 
Mr. C. M. Hooker, of Geneva, sent a lot of cold-storage 
Duchess pears to London, which returned $13 to $14 per 
barrel. The Japan plum, Wickson, is reaping golden 
opinions on the shores of Seneca Lake. Some extra fine 
l'ruit produced by heavy thinning brought $3 per 15-pound 
case in New York City, or $12 per bushel, when Lom¬ 
bards were bringing but 50 cents per bushel. The Wick¬ 
son has had the reputation of being a shy bearer, and Mr 
Willard has hitherto condemned it for that reason. He 
has now more faith in its productiveness. Red June and 
Burbank are the best market varieties of Japan plums 
for this section. Abundance is of fine quality, but not 
as good a shipper as the other two. Canned Burbanks 
are second in quality only to Reine Claude and French 
Prune. October Purple has been a disappointment to 
most growers thus far. All Japan plums need heavy 
thinning to be of good size. Thinning also lessens the rot. 
SPRAYING FRUIT TREES. 
The question of spraying fruit trees to prevent 
the depredations of insect pests and fungous dis¬ 
eases is no longer an experiment but a necessity. 
Our readers will do well to write Wm. Stahl, 
Quincy, Ill., and get his catalogue describing 
21 styles of Spraying Outfits and full treatise 
on spraying the different fruit and vegetable 
crops, which contains much valuable informa¬ 
tion, and may be had for the asking. 
NEW STRAWBERRY 
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It Is the firmest, latest and best.keeping straw¬ 
berry yet introduced. Extremely large, immense¬ 
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