1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Events of the Week. 
DOMESTIC.—Henry Hoffman died at East Butler, Pa., 
August 9, aged 105 years. He had only been treated by 
a doctor once in his life, when two years old. 
At Beaver Falls, Pa., August 9, fire destroyed the works 
of the Shelby Steel Tube Company and the Boston Elec¬ 
troduct Company; loss $300,000.The shaft house 
of the Parrot mine, at Butte, Mont., was destroyed by 
fire August 9; loss $100,000. The mine is 1,600 feet deep, 
and 200 men were underground, but they were rescued 
through the levels of adjoining mines.Intense 
heat prevailed over a wide area during the week begin¬ 
ning August 5. At Virginia, Ill., August 7, the tempera¬ 
ture reached 100. At Toronto, Canada, it was 99 in the 
shade and 120 in the sun. New York, Philadelphia and 
Chicago experienced the hottest five successive days on 
record.The two men who robbed a Union Pa¬ 
cific train and killed a passenger in Colorado August 5, 
were found August 10 near Goodiand, Kan. In the fight 
which followed the attempt to arrest the men both out¬ 
laws were killed.The express messenger on a 
Pennsylvania fast train was shot and killed, and the 
express safe robbed, near Columbus, O., August 11. The 
criminal was captured a day later; he was a discharged 
employee of the express company, and the crime, in¬ 
cluding the murder, was deliberately planned. 
August 12, during the storm which ended the hot wave in 
New York City, nine persons who sought refuge under 
the trees in the Bronx district were struck by lightning, 
four of them being fatally injured.At Slating- 
ton, Pa., August 12, a train on the Lehigh and New Eng¬ 
land Railroad struck an omnibus containing 25 persons, 
killing 11, and injuring 11 of the others, several fatally. 
The victims were nearly all relatives and were returning 
from a funeral.Three employees of the New 
York Steam Heating Company were killed August 13 by 
the explosion of a 15-lnch steam pipe.Small¬ 
pox has broken out among the Indians on the Devil’s 
Lake Reservation, North Dakota.Manufactur¬ 
ers of window glass have decided to raise prices 10 per 
cent.August 15, a big forest fire was raging 
near South Fork, Col., and much fine timber was burn¬ 
ing.A railroad collision at Pierson, Mich., 
August 15, killed seven persons and wounded nine others, 
one fatally. The collision was due to a mistake made 
by a telegraph operator.A race riot occurred 
in New York City August 15, caused by the murder of 
a policeman by a negro August 11. The rioting extend¬ 
ed for 11 blocks on Eighth and Ninth avenues and the 
cross streets, many negroes being beaten by hoodlums. 
.... Near Tennille, Ga., August 13, 13 persons were 
injured In a railroad wreck, caused by the train break¬ 
ing in two on a steep grade, the two sections colliding. 
PHILIPPINES.—August 12 the insurgent Colonel Gras- 
sa surrendered near Tayug with 183 men; 150 rifles and 
50 bolos were given up.General MacArthur has 
cabled the War Department a statement concerning the 
health of the troops in the Philippines. The total is 5,129 
sick soldiers, or 8.47 per cent.The cost to the 
United States of the war against the Filipinos up to 
date is $186,678,000 and 2,394 human lives. 
CUBA.—August 11, 52 cases of yellow fever wer« under 
treatment at Havana. So far the mortality has been 
about 25 per cent. 
GENERAL FOREIGN NEWS.—The Allies captured 
Yang-Tsun August 6, American casualties being about 
60. The real advance on Peking will begin about August 
15, the Allied forces consisting of 50,000 men.It 
was reported August 16 that the Allies had reached Pe¬ 
king and that the Envoys were safe.During 
recent floods in Japan, 200 people were drowned near 
Yokohama.The French torpedo boat Framee 
sunk August 11 off Cape Vincent, being run down by the 
battleship Brennus during naval maneuvers, and 50 sail¬ 
ors were drowned.Bubonic plague has oc¬ 
curred at Hamburg, Germany.Advices re¬ 
ceived from Bitlis, Asiatic Turkey, August 9, state that 
200 men, women and children were massacred by Kurds 
in the Armenian village of Spaghank. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—A shipment of 280 live steers 
was recently made from New York to Brazil. Brazil has 
declared a quarantine against cattle from Argentina, and 
meat has greatly advanced in price, so that shipment 
from this country seems likely to be profitable. 
It is said that the south Jersey tomato pack will be 
light this season. 
Estimates of the wheat crop of Minnesota and the Da¬ 
kotas show less than half the yield of 1899. 
The executive committee of the Maine State Grange 
lias arranged a series of 12 field meetings, as follows: 
August 20, Caribou; August 21, Foxcroft; August 22, Et¬ 
na; August 23, East Machias; August 24, Bluehill Mineral 
Springs; August 25, Sagamore Farm, Camden; August 
27, Merrymeeting Park, Sagadahoc and Androscoggin 
counties; August 28, Oak Grove, Vassalboro; August 29, 
Hayden Lake; August 30, East Livermore; August 31, 
place to be announced, Cumberland County, September 
1, Cornish. Hon. Aaron Jones, Master of the National 
Grange, will address the meetings. 
August 7, Governor Tanner, of Illinois, issued a procla¬ 
mation suspending the regulations ordered in his procla¬ 
mation with reference to tuberculosis among dairy and 
breeding cattle, issued June 13, 1899. The regulations are 
suspended pending action by the Supreme Court upon 
validity of the law under which the original proclamation 
was issued. 
A number of suits are being brought by western cattle¬ 
men against several firms of cattle buyers at Kansas City, 
Mo., the money involved amounting to over $1,000,000. 
The suits are based on the following statement of facts: 
Several mortgages on cattle have been given to the firm 
of Ladd, Penny & Swazey and other firms of Kansas 
City, by Arapahoe cattlemen. Some of these mortgages 
were given on cattle by men who did not own any cattle. 
Other mortgages were given by cattlemen who would 
sell a bunch of cattle and make use of the money to 
make a payment on the mortgage. It is alleged by the 
cattlemen that these sums so paid were never credited 
on the notes held by the money-lender, but that a kind 
of due bill was given Instead. Now all this paper for 
hundreds of thousands of dollars is coming due, and the 
cattle are to be seized to satisfy the debt. The cattle 
dealers have already taken 1,580 head of cattle on mort¬ 
gages, and, it is charged, have sold them without com¬ 
plying with the law in such cases. 
David G. Yates, the well-known nurseryman of Mt. 
Airy, Philadelphia, Pa., died suddenly at Poland Springs, 
Me., August 12, aged 64. 
The National Hay Association opened its seventh an¬ 
nual convention at Baltimore, Md., August 14. Over 500 
delegates were present from all over the United States. 
NURSERY FRAUDS ONCE MORE. 
Bogus Claims Exposed. 
I read the article in The R. N.-Y., June 23, under the - 
heading of Final Chapter of a Fruit Fraud, which lias 
made me somewhat suspicious of an agent who went 
through this neighborhood about the middle of June, 
representing certain nurseries in Ohio. He claimed that 
the majority, in fact, all but his firm, get the seeds from 
cider presses to plant to get roots upon which to graft 
their varieties of apples, and as they have grafted the 
Winter apples upon Summer roots so long, the old va¬ 
rieties such as the Baldwin, etc., are no longer Winter 
apples, and for that reason his firm no longer sells them. 
He said that all their Winter apples were grafted first 
on a French crab-apple root, one year old, then left for 
two years, when they were, again gx-afted to this trunk, 
and after two years’ growth more, or when the root is 
five years old, and the tree is from five to six feet high, 
it is sold. What is your opinion of these statements? 
Are the following varieties of apples extra good, both as 
to quality and keeping: Madam Lewis, Shackelford, 
Hatcher, Akin, Walker’s Beauty and Nickajack? For 
cherry trees he claims that most of the varieties are 
soft-wooded, and by absorbing the rain cause the cher¬ 
ries to rot, but the following varieties he claims are hard- 
wooded and therefoi'e resist rot and are heavy bearers 
and of excellent quality: Ida, Dyehouse and Ostheimer. 
Pi-incipio, Md. w. t. g. 
By the end of Summer the semi-annual crop of 
suckers has mostly been hooked and landed, and it is 
now too late to do much good in preventing the pub¬ 
lic from being cheated oy such scamps as the one 
referred to in the inquiry of W. T. U. Moreover, 
many who are taken in by them do not read the 
rural papers. They claim that they have no money 
or time to expend upon them. However, I have seen 
within the past year some very intelligent 
and progressive farmers and fruit growers who 
were induced to buy of another of those 
swindling Ohio nurseries. They seem to 
nourish there, and it makes me blush, for I 
am a native of the grand old Buckeye State, and 
know that the rascals do not all belong there. It 
has long been a wonder to me how men are allowed 
to take prominent places in the nursery conventions 
when they have gangs of swindling agents scouring 
the country for victims. They are a discredit to 
the organizations to which they belong. Some of 
them have been debarred from membership, but a few 
of the worst and oldest offenders are yet uncon¬ 
demned. 
The claim that most nurserymen get their apple 
seeds from the cider mills and that they do not make 
good stocks is nonsense, if nothing worse. Such 
seeds grow good stocks, with few exceptions. As 
to this one nursery using French crab-apple roots, 
I do not believe a word of it, and would not want 
my trees on such stocks if they existed. The Para¬ 
dise stock is one which is used for making dwarf 
apple trees, and these are of no value except to plant 
on village lots or some other fancy use. The double¬ 
grafting is a positive and absurd falsehood. 
Regarding the varieties mentioned, as a whole, 
they would probably all prove a delusion in Mary¬ 
land; at least, they are not standards or even prom¬ 
ising novelties, except the Akin apple, which is of 
high quality and bright red color, but is only under 
trial as yet. Madam Lewis I never heard of. Shack¬ 
elford I have long known, and while it is something 
like Ben Davis, it is not nearly so good an apple. 
Hatcher is an old Tennessee variety that is well liked 
there, but generally of unknown value elsewhere. 
Nickajack is an old southern late keeper, but of no 
value in the North. I have it in the orchard where 
I now live. “Walker’s Beauty” may refer to Walk¬ 
er’s Yellow, which is another southern variety that 
is little known and perhaps ever should be. 
As to the claims of this horticultural Ananias in 
regard to most cherries being soft-wooded and absorb¬ 
ing rain, which causes the cherries to rot, I never 
heard a more ridiculous lie. It must have been made 
up for special use upon the soft-headed victims to be 
found over the country. Ida is one of the sweet 
cherries and Dyehouse and Ostheimer are sour, but 
they are no more exempt from rot than many other 
varieties of as good or better quality. 
If anyone is not disposed to buy direct from the 
nurseries, but prefers to buy of agents, which is 
sometimes a sensible plan, let him beware of any¬ 
one who makes extravagant claims for any new var¬ 
iety, and be sure you are not misled with regard to 
old ones. The swindler’s plan is first to tell you 
some things that you know are true and get your 
581 
confidence and then make some statements that 
mystify or puzzle you: then he has you at a disad¬ 
vantage and is in a good way to fleece you. 
H. E. VAN DEMAN. . 
FARMERS’ PICNICS. 
Two Suggestions for Improvement. 
The custom of holding farmers’ picnics during late 
Summer is a growing one. On many farms there ap¬ 
pears to be a time between the completiqn of har¬ 
vest and the beginning of Fall seeding when a day 
or two can be spent away from the farm without 
serious detriment to the work in hand. 
I think all will recognize the right of the farmer 
who has given 12 hours or more per day to the culti¬ 
vation of his acres and the securing of his crops 
throughout the Spring and Summer, to take a little 
time for recreation. Having worked hard when he 
must he ought to rest his body and refresh his mind 
when he can. I must have attended not less than 
a score of these picnics during the past few years 
and have usually enjoyed them. I feel certain they 
have done much good and the custom is one that 
should be fostered and encouraged. Probably a 
large part of those who attend would not have spent 
the day so profitaDly had they remained at home. 
After saying this I trust I shall not be considered 
hypercritical when I state that in my judgment these 
. b 
picnics are not all that they might and should be. 
In other words, like many good things, they are sus¬ 
ceptible of improvement. 
Among the features to which I take exception and 
wherein 1 feel certain the average farmer’s picnic 
can be improved, 1 will mention two: First, the al¬ 
together unnecessary labor and expense in prepar¬ 
ing the picnic dinner. In many cases the extravag¬ 
ance of these dinners borders on the sinful, and the 
worst of it is that the burden falls for the most part 
upon the women of our households. As a rule fat- 
mer’s wives and daughters are generous to a fault, 
and they do not like to be imputed stingy. When 
it is known that whatever is taken in the way of re¬ 
freshments is to be placed on a common table, each 
housewife is tempted to contribute more than her 
share. She will not be outdone by her neighbor. 
It is this generous rivalry that leads to extravagance, 
both in quantity and quality. This abuse of a good 
custom leads in time to the exclusive family basket, 
and the social advantage of “breaking bread” together 
is lost. I trust that our sensible farmer’s wives will 
soon find a way to correct this abuse without sacrific¬ 
ing too much in the way of sociability, and thus re¬ 
lieve themselves of what either prohibits attendance 
or becomes an almost intolerable burden. 
In the second place, much of the speaking at these 
picnics is ot such a eulogistic and flattering character 
as to seem almost insulting when carefully analyzed 
by the intelligent farmers who hear it. Too often a 
politician or some chronic office-seeker will tell the 
farmers they were the most favored of all mortals, 
and that their life is the noblest known to mankind. 
I do not contend that farmers should always listen 
to men of their own calling. It is well at times to 
hear from men in other vocations. I do protest, 
however, against the extravagant and insincere 
praises that are often lavished by the eloquent lawyer 
or pushing doctor, upon a calling that they were 
glad to shun. No possible goou can result from such 
talk. The average farmer, instead of being grossly 
flattered, often needs to be admonished and incited to 
improve his condition. Theoretically the farmer’s 
vocation should be an enviable one. But practically 
it is not, for if it were we should hear less about the 
boys leaving the farm and thousands would be rush¬ 
ing into the business where hundreds enter upon it 
now. Let us try to respect facts. Let us character¬ 
ize farming for just what it is, and count the far¬ 
mer for just what he is worth, no more no less. I 
believe the time is coming when the farmer’s call¬ 
ing will be the most enviable that can be named. 
If those of us who love agriculture and delight in 
the life on the farm, shall intelligently resolve that 
the future of farming in this country shall show a 
signal and continuous improvement over its past, then 
the vocation will be envied. To accomplish tuis 
great end we need to infuse mo~e thought and more 
study into our farming. We must break away from 
many cherished traditions and give up that blind de¬ 
votion to the routine of our fathers, which is no 
longer adapteu to our altered circumstances. If we 
do this we shall soon have an agriculture that is 
worthy of our great country, and worthy of the pro¬ 
gressive age in which we live. 
Ohio. WILLIAM B. LAZENBY. 
Apples and Cold Storage. —I think It quite important 
that fruits placed in cold storage should be cooled off 
gradually in a dry place before entering the cold room; 
otherwise they are quite likely to become damp. The air 
between the fruit in the packages is generally quite 
moist, and if the fruit is brought from a warm place and 
put directly- into the cold room, this moisture will be 
condensed and deposited upon the fruit. On this account 
1 think it preferable to wrap the fruit either in waxed 
paper or in some absorbent paper. h. s. qoff. 
