1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER: 
537 
Publisher’s Desk. 
Last week we received an order to 
run the following advertisement. The 
blank lines represent the name and ad¬ 
dress of the proposed advertiser: 
f— BUTTER, EGGS and 
Walllull • FAHM PRODUCE. 
Address-, —-—,-. 
We replied that we should be pleased 
to run his advertisement, but as he is an 
entire stranger to us, we would have to 
have satisfactory reference as to his in¬ 
tegrity and financial standing before we 
could introduce him to our readers. He 
wrote back very indignantly that he 
would not trouble his neighbors about 
so small a matter, and attempted to get 
the order accepted on a big bluff. It is 
running regularly in some farm papers. 
He may be all right, but it bears all the 
earmarks of a big fraud, and the farmer 
who slaps him goods takes desperate 
chances. There is nothing particularly 
new or unusual in this matter. We have 
similar experiences with other frauds 
every week, almost every day. We give 
this one special prominence merely to 
call attention to our general position on 
such matters. When we run an adver¬ 
tisement for any house we feel reason¬ 
ably sure, after investigation, if the firm 
be new to us, that readers may deal with 
them safely and expect a dollar’s wortu 
of goods for every dollar sent them. If 
you want any goods that are advertised 
in -these columns, you will be sure of 
getting the very best makes, and at right 
prices. The best houses are our custom¬ 
ers. The frauds we give short courtesy. 
We carry regularly cards for responsi¬ 
ble commission merchants, and goods 
may be sent them with safety any time, 
subject only to the usual vicissitudes of 
trade. __ 
MARKET BRIEFS. 
Picked Up Here and There. 
POULTRY.—On account of the unusually 
light receipts this week, the price on live 
fowls and old roosters advanced %-cent 
per pound. Live turkeys, ducks and geese 
are very dull. In dressed poultry, large 
Spring chickens were most wanted, but 
they were scarce. The supply of squabs 
was large. 
HOPS.—The indications are that the crop 
in this country, while fair, will not equal 
last year’s output. It is quite possible that 
the home trade will take nearly all our 
yield, so that little will be left to help make 
up the shortage in England. This would 
naturally increase prices a little, but it is 
too early in the season to make any definite 
predictions. 
NEW USE FOR THE STAFF OF LIFE.— 
Two little ragged street boys were pound¬ 
ing each other over the head with chunks 
of bread, apparently thinking it great fun. 
They had in some way got hold of one of 
those slim loaves about 18 inches long, look¬ 
ing like a stick of wood, and each had a 
piece big enough for a club. This will seem 
like a strange amusement to country boys. 
COMPARISON OF MILK PRICES.- 
Since October, 1899, the Exchange price in 
this city has been one-fourth to three- 
fourths cent higher than for the previous 
year. The highest figure reached was 3Vi 
cents for November and December, 1899. 
The present price is 2%c., one-fourth cent 
higher than last July. The producers are 
seeing the wisdom of making preparations 
for handling the surplus milk at home in 
creameries and cheese factories, and con¬ 
siderable work has been done in the past 
few months in this line. If care is taken 
not to flood the New York market, the price 
will naturally hold up to a better level. 
VEGETABLES.—The potato situation has 
improved. Receipts from the South are 
dropping off, and the Long Island crop will 
not be rushed in fast enough to overstock 
the market. The better grades of sweet 
potatoes are selling well. Some red ones 
are seen, but they do not bring so much as 
the yellow varieties. Long Island cabbages 
are plenty and dull. Trade in cucumbers 
is weak for everything except small ones 
for pickling. A few boxes of Jersey egg 
plant are selling at a fair price. Green 
corn is coming in freely. But little of it is 
really prime. Prices run from 50 cents to 
$1.75 per 100. There are too many tomatoes 
in the market. Ripe ones get soft quickly 
when exposed to heat, and have to be sold 
at low prices. It is doubtful whether many 
are wasted, however, as the ketchup-makers 
can use them no matter how rotten. Re¬ 
ceivers complain that many shippers have 
not sorted the tomatoes properly, often put¬ 
ting green and ripe ones in the same car¬ 
rier. No one wishes such a mixture. 
TWO ODD TROPICAL FRUITS that 
have a sale here to a limited extent are the 
sapodilla and tamarind. The former in 
size and shape resembles an apple quince. 
The outside is a rusty-brown color and a 
little rough. When ripe the flesh is a red¬ 
dish yellow, fine-grained and very sweet. 
The seeds are flat, about the size of a lima 
bean, and imbedded in the solid flesh. The 
tamarind grows on a large tree, and is of 
the legume family. The fruit is a brown 
pod four or five inches long, somewhat re¬ 
sembling that of the locust in shape, but 
thicker. Inside is a kernel surrounded by a 
pulpy substance, highly acid, and of a pe¬ 
culiar flavor. When put into hot water, it 
dissolves, making an agreeable drink, pre¬ 
ferred by some to lemonade. 
STREET CAR HORSES are used better 
than formerly. Most of them are in good 
flesh, and any that get lame are disposed 
of at once. Open sheds are put up at in¬ 
tervals along the line, where fresh horses 
are kept, and the others stopped to rest, 
drink and cool off. In hot weather the 
hose is turned on them. Some object at 
first, but soon get accustomed to it. Of 
course, it would be dangerous to throw 
cold water from a spring or well upon a 
heated horse, but the temperature of the 
water from the New York City hydrants 
gets up to 70 or over during July and 
August. The water in the storage reser¬ 
voirs, unprotected from the heat of the 
sun, is still warmer, but it cools a little in 
running through the underground pipes. 
Some New York buildings are supplied with 
water from artesian wells directly under¬ 
neath. This water is quite hard, but a little 
cooler than the regular city supply. 
FRUITS.—Some good early apples, chiefly 
the red varieties, are now offered, but they 
sell slowly. While there is never any lack 
of demand for good Winter apples, no mat¬ 
ter how many other fruits are on the mar¬ 
ket, the Summer apple is not such a stand¬ 
by. It is lacking in flavor and keeping 
qualities, and in the minds of many people 
early apples and doctors’ bills are closely 
associated. The chief attraction in the fruit 
market now is the peach. Receipts are 
nearer ripe than last week, and the stock 
has to be disposed of quickly. There is not 
much difficulty in doing this, however, for 
buyers are finding out that the peaches are 
really fit to eat, and an agreeable change 
from the unripe and wormy stuff offered 
earlier in the season. Receipts of water¬ 
melons are much smaller than last week, 
and the better grades are selling at an ad¬ 
vance. There is usually one big water¬ 
melon rush during the season, and at that 
time it would be difficult to convince re¬ 
ceivers that there was a short crop any¬ 
where. It is said that the Georgia yield is 
1,500 cars less than an average, and now 
that the bulk from other sections is in, this 
shortage is noticed in an unusual dropping 
off in the receipts. Large quantities of 
muskmelons would be consumed if of good 
quality, but the bulk so far has been in¬ 
ferior, and a poor muskmelon is worse than 
worthless. The berry trade is about over, 
and business has been less profitable than 
usual this season. w. w. h. 
GREAT PROSPERITY IN IOWA. 
The recent rain reminds me that eastern 
readers who are distressed with a drought, 
might be refreshed by news from this land 
of plenty, for the Garden of Eden could 
not well have surpassed Iowa as it is this 
Summer. Although there is drought in 
Minnesota, the Dakotas and north and west 
of these States, and a very severe drought 
at that, Iowa is favored. Crops here never 
looked better. We have had just about two 
rains a week all through our growing sea¬ 
son, just enough to give the needed mois¬ 
ture, and hindering cultivation but very 
little. Corn is excellent. No, that is too 
tame an adjective. It is just grand, and 
a glorious sight to behold these days. 
There are no poor fields. Even that on the 
poorer land, and that which has been poor¬ 
ly tended, is looking very well. Other crops 
are also in first-class shape. Haymaking 
is exciting business on account of the effort 
to dodge showers. Still, most of it has 
gone up in good shape. 
It does a man good to get away for a 
while from the place where he was born 
and brought up, even though that spot be 
the most favored place on this green foot¬ 
stool. I have experienced this truth in my 
own life, and I have seen it illustrated this 
Summer in the experience of my hired man, 
George, who came here last March from 
southeastern Illinois. He will go back there 
soon, and the present indications are that 
he will marry, settle down and live the 
rest of his life in that locality, but he will 
be a larger man, and with a wider view, 
for having seen other ways of living and 
farming than his own. Ways of living and 
of farming, and people themselves, are 
vastly different in localities separated by 
only a few miles, even out here in the 
breezy West. Each locality has a way for 
itself, in spite of the constant drifting of 
population, the ubiquitous newspaper, and 
all the other means that tend to keep us 
homegeneous. George has never ceased to 
wonder at the luxuriance with which every¬ 
thing grows here. He has remarked more 
than once that he wished some of the old 
Wabash County farmers could see the field 
of corn which he has tended, and it is a 
beautiful sight. He wonders at the soil, 
so deep and dark and rich-looking, so mel¬ 
low and easily worked. He wonders that 
it retains its mellow condition all through 
the season, and that it does not wash as 
badly as their soil, although the surface of 
the ground is more rolling. He was sur¬ 
prised when I put him to cultivating shal¬ 
low; something new. He wonders at our 
lack of large timber here, and the large 
number of old bachelors. He wonders at 
our way of caring for cattle, and the great 
number some farmers have here, and the 
wonderful prices some of the purebreds 
bring. Our treatment of hogs is also 
strange, and it is impossible for him to un¬ 
derstand why anybody is willing to pay 
what seems to him two and three prices 
for pigs. I have a few persimmon trees in 
the garden, carefully tended; with them 
they are a nuisance, and while they have 
a few carefully-tended artichokes, up here 
they are a bad weed, and the same is true 
of horseradish. Although they have more 
telephones than we do, yet a boy from 
their county who went to the agricultural 
college was looked on with contempt. 
Wages are $5 to $8 a month less for farm 
help, and price of farm lands not much 
more than half as high as here. Half the 
weddings occur on Sunday, while here they 
never do. 
Now, is it not worth his while to know 
these things, even though it kept him 
away from his sweetheart for six months? 
Is it not worth the while of any of us to 
know how our neighbors farm? Not neces¬ 
sarily because they farm better than we 
do, and we have a chance to learn from 
them, but because the knowledge of itself 
will broaden us, and then he is a stupid 
man indeed who cannot learn something of 
value from the poorest farmer he comes 
across. But there is another thing. A man 
who is raised in one community comes to 
feel that that place is the center of the uni¬ 
verse, and to look at every other place from 
that center. I do not say that he thinks 
this, for theoretically he knows better, but 
he feels this way without knowing it, or 
thinking about it. When he goes away for 
a time one of the queerest sensations he has 
is that he is away from the center of things, 
way out on the edge in fact, and he has to 
fix the directions of distant points all over 
again. It is only at the expense of time and 
mental effort that he adjusts himself to his 
new center, but he can never go back to his 
old home and feel as he did before. The 
above is not figurative language, but was 
literally true in my own life, and it will 
aptly illustrate what happens to a man’s 
ideas about farming, people and life in gen¬ 
eral by a little travel. Every piece of 
knowledge that a man puts into his own 
soul, makes him that much more of a man. 
A bigger man, and he can never go back 
into his old shell. e. b. w. 
Newton, Iowa. 
See Inspection in New York. 
The Commissioner of Agriculture, under 
the provisions of Chapter 225, Laws of 1899, 
appointed four agents to carry out the work 
of inspection of bees. Up to the present 
time the work of these agents has been 
confined to a few counties, where diseases 
have been most injurious to this great in¬ 
dustry. A compilation of the reports of the 
agents since the work began on the first of 
May to the 21st of July shows as follows, 
viz: Number of apiaries visited, 633; num¬ 
ber of colonies examined, 14,763; number of 
colonies diseased, 4,689; number of colonies 
condemned, 2,604; number of colonies de¬ 
stroyed, 214. The colonies destroyed were 
so badly diseased that no treatment could 
save them, and those condemned were sim¬ 
ply set aside for treatment. The Commis¬ 
sioner will be pleased to receive letters from 
those in this State who have bees, and he 
is anxious to do anything he can to in¬ 
crease the product of the apiaries. 
That “ Wade" System of Farming. 
As to “A New Plan for Southern Farm¬ 
ing,” known as the “Wade” system, as 
outlined in The R. N.-Y., page 463, it 
might be all right for the landowner, but 
all wrong for the laborer. A large ma¬ 
jority of the farm laborers of Georgia are 
colored. This class of people, while they 
may not be very wise, have too much wis¬ 
dom to accept such a proposition, when 
already operating a more advantageous 
system of farming than the one suggested 
in The R. N.-Y. This system may briefly 
be stated as follows: The landowner fur¬ 
nishes the land to the laborer and gets 
in return for the use of the land one- 
fourth of the crop raised; sometimes he 
gets as much as one-third of the crop 
raised and the laborer gets three-fourths 
or two-thirds, as the case may be. Hence, 
this “Wade” system would not work well 
in Georgia. r. p. wright. 
Ga. Agricultural Department. 
As to the “Wade system” of farming in 
this State, if such a system has ever been 
practiced in Louisiana, I am entirely Ig¬ 
norant of the fact. The usual system of 
share farming in this State is as follows: 
The landowners furnish the land, the 
teams, feed, the implements and the seed. 
The landowner and the tenant divide the 
crop equally, the tenant doing all the 
work and feeding himself. j. a. lee. 
Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture. 
School 
Teacher’s 
Headache. 
It’s not a new variety of headache. 
It’s the old pain consequent on condi¬ 
tions which result from study, confine¬ 
ment, and careless eating. It is only 
one symptom of a derangement of the 
stomach and organs of digestion and 
nutrition. Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical 
Discovery cures headaches by curing the 
diseases which cause them. 
"I was troubled with very frequent headaches, 
often accompanied by severe vomiting,” writes 
Miss Mary Belle Summerton, of San Diego, Du¬ 
val Co.. Texas. ” Bowels were irregular, and my 
stomach and liver seemed continually out of 
order. Often I could eat almost nothing, and 
sometimes absolutely nothing, for twenty-four 
hours at a time. I was entirely unfit for work, 
and my whole system seemed so run-down that 
I feared a severe sick spell and was very much 
discouraged. I was advised to try Dr. Pierce’s 
Golden Medical Discovery, and clicl so with such 
satisfactory results that before finishing the 
third bottle I felt perfectly able to undertake 
the duties attending public school life, and con¬ 
tracted to do so. I most heartily advise those 
suffering with indigestion, and its attendant 
evils, to give this great medicine a fair trial.” 
Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets keep the 
bowels healthy. 
theAD VANTAGES 
of a low down wagon.duch as easft 
of loading, saving of heavy lift¬ 
ing, saving the land from cutting up and 
ratting, are derived from using a set of 
Electric Steel Wheels 
They convert your old wagon into a low 
down handy wagon at the lowest possi¬ 
ble cost. They are made of Bteel with 
either direct or staggered oval steel 
spokes. They are made in sixes to tit any 
_ wagon. A set of these wheels means 
thit yon have practically two wagons:—A low one for the 
farm and a hign one for the roads. A ny height vou want, 
and ail wide, non-rutting, easy draft tires. Write at once 
for catalogue, prices, etc. 
Electric Wheel Co., B0Y88 ,Quincy, III. 
How to Drain Land Profitably. 
On every farm there is probably some land 
that could be made more productive by under¬ 
drainage. Properly drained land can always 
be worked earlier, and more profitably. The 
best and most 
economical way 
to drain is ex¬ 
plained in the 
book, “Benefits of Drainage and How to Drain.” 
which is sent free by 
JOHN H. JACKSON, Third Ave., Albany, N. Y. 
THE CHALLENGE PUMP 
And WATER PURIFIER 
Is the cheapest, simplest and most dur¬ 
able made. No freezing, no tubing or 
valves, nogetting out of order. Guar- 
teed to make bad water good In a 
few days or money refunded Pre¬ 
vents typhoid fever and malaria. The 
same number of turns of handle when 
old draws the same amount of wa¬ 
ter as when new. The only pump tit 
to use in water used for drinking or 
cooking purposes. Write us for prices and circulars. 
LOBKR JBKOS., Mfrs., Port Jefferson, N. Y. 
THE “HOOVER” DIGGER 
DIGS 
POTATOES 
Rapid Cleon 
HOOVER, PROUT & CO. Avery, Ohio. 
By mentioning this 
paper you can get 
illustrated book free. 
