1902 
553 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
MARKET NOTES 
MELONS.—The past week has been warm 
enough to stir up the watermelon trade. 
Just at present really choice watermelons 
are scarce. Muskmelons are plentiful and 
as usual, irregular in quality. As a rule, 
prices are running low. A decided excep¬ 
tion are some from Arizona which are 
graded uniformly as to size, and each 
wrapped in a neat paper, after the style 
of orange packing. 
PLENTY OF OIL.—Baltimore is a great 
point of export for petroleum. On July 28 
an English steamer took one of the largest 
cargoes that ever left port, 1,770,000 gallons 
of refined oil. It was stored in steel tanks 
into which it was pumped through a hose 
a foot in diameter. Next to dynamite this 
is about the most dangerous cargo that 
could be carried. Suitable lightning rods 
are put on the masts, and no one is allow¬ 
ed to smoke on or near the .vessel. 
RAILROAD ACCIDENTS.—The railroad 
companies are required by law to report to 
the Interstate Commerce Commission full 
details of accidents. During the first three 
months of this year the total number of 
passengers and employees killed was 665, 
and injured, 9,558. There were 1,220 colli¬ 
sions and 838 derailments, 221 collisions and 
»4 derailments affecting passenger trains. 
The killed and injured from falling in get¬ 
ting on and off cars was 2,204, and 60 em¬ 
ployees were killed and 1,400 injured in 
coupling cars and switching. 
APPLE BOX.—“Would not the apple box 
described on page 494 be improved by the 
use of a partition through the center?” 
h. s. w. 
We think not. The box is not so long as 
to make any additional bracing necessary. 
As it is the four sides are sufficiently 
springy to permit the fruit to be packed in 
tightly, bulging the sides a trifle. Under 
these circumstances they act like a big 
rubber band, taking up any slack and hold¬ 
ing the fruit firmly without bruising. The 
sides, top and bottom are very light, and 
the package would not hang together at 
all were it not for the solid ends, permit¬ 
ting heavy nailing. The nails used are 1%- 
inch rough wire, and they hang to the 
wood like back teeth. It is doubtful wheth¬ 
er the box would hold if ordinary inch 
smooth nails were used. In many sections 
of the East it might be impossible to get, 
at a reasonable price, lumber suitable for 
such a box. A soft brittle pine would not 
do for the thin sides. It should be some¬ 
what tough. 
LUNCH is what New York business peo¬ 
ple call the noon foddering spell, h ew work 
near enough to their homes to eat there at 
noon. Within a radius of a mile from the 
City Hall thousands of people flock out for 
something to eat. It may be a $2 course 
dinner with a dollar extra for the waiter, 
or a two-cent frankfurter with saurkraut, 
a pie requiring a similar financial outlay, 
and a one-ceht glass of lemonade, the com¬ 
bination being taken standing. In most 
cases it comes between these extremes, 
and probably more 20 or 25-cent lunches are 
eaten than any other sort. Some of the 
lunchers start at 11, and the procession 
continues until after two, but the greatest 
rush is between half-past 12 and one, as 
tiie employees of many factories and print¬ 
ing places have only half an hour to get a 
bite and bit of fresh air. The eating house 
people have to jump around like wild men 
to hand out enough stuff to satisfy the 
hungry mob. A waitress in one of these 
places told us recently that she had waited 
on 185 persons within four hours, which 
called for more activity than the average 
"hired girl” is expected to display. The 
rations that many choose could scarcely 
be called hygienic or balanced. At one 
place large plates of soup are served uoiling 
hot. We have seen one man who always 
lias two plates of this soup and a slice of 
bread. No matter how hot the weather he 
never changes. 
FRESH FRUITS.—Large quantities of 
peaches are arriving from Georgia, the 
Carolinas, Maryland and Delaware. El- 
berta still leads in quantity and sells read¬ 
ily. Some have said that the plantings of 
this variety have been too large, but the 
results this year do not warrant any such 
complaint. With common sense methods 
of marketing there appears to be no diffi¬ 
culty in handling the crop. This variety 
is making a name for itself, like Baldwin 
or Spy apples. Numerous signs like this 
are seen on the retail fruit stands: “El- 
berta Georgia Peaches, Three for 10 Cents.” 
It is a great day for any variety when its 
name becomes so closely associated with 
excellence in the mind of the consumer 
that he is glad to see it. The plum market 
is very weak. The receipts seem scarcely 
large enough to warrant this. People do 
not appear to want plums at present. It 
is one of those freakish conditions of the 
markets hard to account for. A fair trade 
is^found for the better grades of pears, 
such as Bartlett and Le Conte, but there 
is a surplus of common cooking pears, 
some of which hardly pay shipping ex¬ 
penses. The conditions with apples are 
about the same as with pears, although al¬ 
though almost anything in the shape of an 
apple can usually be sold for something. 
We have seen a few barrels of fine hand¬ 
picked Sweet Bough. This excellent va¬ 
riety is appreciated by all who have eaten 
it, either raw or baked, when just ripe 
enough; but, if picked too green, it is 
starchy, and, if sent here ripe, it soon 
spoils. Many berries show damage by the 
recent wet muggy weather. 
REJECTED LEMONS.—A duty of one 
cent per pound is charged on imported 
lemons. This amounts to about 75 cents 
per box, a charge heavy enough to cause 
importers to refuse them when they arrive 
out of condition. Very heavy losses were 
noted during the past month. Cargoes of 
47,000 and 52,000 boxes had one-half and one- 
third, respectively, out of condition. These 
damaged goods, if not utterly worthless, 
are sold by the Government at auction. At 
recent sales the fruit went for less than 20 
cents per box. A large number of the buy¬ 
ers are East Side peddlers. They sort out 
the better lemons and are able to sell them 
at greatly reduced prices. Ordinarily this 
has but little effect on the regular trade, 
but the sales of these large quantities have 
upset the business. The large lemon deal¬ 
ers complain of the action of the Govern¬ 
ment in putting this damaged fruit on the 
market, claiming that much of it is so bad 
that it should be thrown away. The Board 
of Health has confiscated stuff of this sort 
before, but. anyone who spends much time 
in the produce selling districts of this city 
knows that every day large quantities of 
stuff are sold for food that really belong 
in the garbage wagon. There are not any¬ 
where near enough inspectors to keep an 
eye on the perishable products offered for 
sale, even though they should watch as 
closely as they ought. It is probable that 
the views of the lemon men are biased on 
account of their trade being injured by cut 
prices. They look with disfavor on the 
small dealers who handle the cheap trade. 
_ w. w. H. 
FARMING IN THE RED RIVER VALLEY 
An Eastern Man Discusses It. 
Wasted Fertility.—I have been reading 
with much interest “Farming in the Red 
River Valley,” written by J. D. B., of Wol- 
verton, Minn. I have been there, right in 
the vicinity of Wolverton, but from there 
north to Hallock, 200 miles farther, and 
also east from 20 to 50 miles from the 
river. I therefore know personally of the 
truthfulness of some of the things the 
writer speaks of. What he says concern¬ 
ing the shiftlessness of the farmers and 
the -wholesale waste of fertility that is go¬ 
ing on there is not only true, but he does 
not state half the truth. One year ago 1 
spent a month in company with John 
Gould, of Ohio, and A. T. Barbaree, of 
Canada, under the guidance of Prof. T. A. 
Hovers tad, lecturing at farmers’ meetings 
from near Moorhead on the south to Hal¬ 
lock on the north, and east as far as St. 
Hillaire, in what is called the Red River 
Valley. But to an eastern man’s eyes it 
was more in the nature of a vast plain 
formed of soil of two classes. There is a 
black soil, somewhat mucky, which when 
wet is equal in stickiness to paste. This is 
called the heavy or gumbo soil. The higher 
soils were mostly of the same, only there 
was more or less black sand in them, 
which rendered them heavy or light in pro¬ 
portion to the amount of sand contained. 
All of this soil Is underlaid at depths vary¬ 
ing from a few inches to several feet with 
an alkali or yellow clay mixed with gravel. 
That in brief is the soil for a strip of coun¬ 
try 200 miles long by 70 wide, and called 
the Red River Valley. No doubt exists but 
what this soil at one time contained fer¬ 
tility to as great an extent as any on this 
continent, but nowhere in my travels have 
I met a land that is being so maltreated, 
taken as a whole, as this great plain. 
Never have I seen a country as much in¬ 
fested with land sharks, ready to gulp 
down tne hard-earned dollars of those who 
had been induced to come to the West to 
seek a home for their families as on this 
great plain. The land agent and the rail¬ 
roads practically own it, or have it in their 
power to control it. It is a land of grab, 
and the one who can grab the most is the 
best fellow. Please bear in mind when I 
speak of this part of Minnesota I am not 
speaking of a condition that "exists in the 
southern half of the State. Conditions are 
as different in northern Minnesota and 
southern Minnesota as in South Carolina 
and New Jersey. It is the Red River coun¬ 
try and that alone I am speaking of. The 
writer speaks of land that has been 
cropped 10, 15 or 20 years becoming light. 
I smile a little at that, as he thoroughly 
manifests the western spirit when any 
matter comes up derogatory to the coun¬ 
try; they all speak as lightly of it as pos¬ 
sible. They hardly wish to say: “Our soil 
is becoming so exhausted in fertility that 
it won't produce crops.” That is the truth 
in regard to it. That great rich plain has 
been so handled that much of it has been 
impoverished, and Summer fallowing won’t 
restore it. All it will do is to render a 
little fertility available for a plant to get 
hold of. He speaks of rose bushes and 
mustard, wild oats, etc., taking possession. 
Yes, there are thousands of acres in that 
condition. Old Mother Nature always does 
her best to correct the bad management of 
man. When man has by his folly rendered 
soil nearly worthless for the growing of 
useful plants, the good old Mother tries to 
correct thq mistake he made, even if she 
resorts to rose bushes, wild oats, mustard 
and tar weed. She says this land must 
have vegetable matter, and the man who 
tills it must convert these -weeds into hu¬ 
mus to get it. 
Extravagant Farming.— But what does 
the man in the Red River Country do, ac¬ 
cording to the writer? He subdues them 
and gets two crops of wheat out of them 
with the aid of a little more fertility taken 
out of the soil. Mr. Gould talked clover 
to follow the wheat as a nitrogen gatherer, 
and to add vegetable matter to the soil. 
But he was met with tne answer: “Clover 
won’t grow here”; yet as a matter of fact, 
clover was seen along the highways from 
Crookston to Hallock. The farmer was 
saying it won’t grow, and by chance a 
seed had dropped from a railway car and 
it did grow. The writer says flax is used 
to tame soil. That is a tame name for it. 
Yes, it tames it by eating up more fertil¬ 
ity and eating it faster than any crop 
known in the West. Then potatoes follow 
to take more potash out, and the tilling of 
them helps to fine the soil so that the 
wheat can get more fertility out of it. 
What then takes place? He sells out if he 
can and moves on to the West to subdue 
some of Mother Nature’s domain. If he 
can’t do that he realizes something must 
be done, and as the writer says, seeds it 
down to Timothy and pastures it with 
sheep. The sheep pasturing may exist 
near Wolverton, but not farther north. But 
even if it did, what does it do? Simply the 
sheep put back a portion that they take 
out. It takes soil fertility to grow Tim¬ 
othy. The plant takes nothing from t,he 
air. Four years of that, he says, and then 
flax, potatoes and wheat again. Now, I ask 
all sensible readers of this to figure out 
how much soil fertility has been added by 
the seeding and pasturing. No, my friend, 
your system is one of exhaustion. It is soil 
robbing, not soil feeding. 
Cost of Labor.— He speaks of 500 loads 
of manure on a farm that can’t be hauled 
because the distance is too great and labor 
$1 per day. That is a prevailing opinion 
all over this great plain; 90 per cent of the 
straw is burned. They can’t afford to pay 
$1 a day to spread that back on the ground. 
Why can they not afford to pay it? I will 
tell you; first, they don't want to. It is 
not the custom of the country. Second, 
there is truth sometimes in their not hav¬ 
ing the dollar to pay for the hauling. Those 
big wheat yields have wofully diminished 
in yield. The decrease in plain food by 
reason of bad farming aided by grasshop¬ 
pers, Chinch bugs and hailstorms in some 
places, have brought the yield of wheat 
for the past five years on the average to 
about eight bushels per acre, and when it 
has to be hauled to the elevator and sold 
for from 50 to 70 cents per bushel, there 
are not many dollars left to pay tor haul¬ 
ing straw or manure. The writer speaks 
of freight rates prohibiting the use of com¬ 
mercial fertilizers. If a man can’t pay 
the freight how in the name of sense is he 
to pay for the goods? I will answer that 
question too. Why, give his note, to be 
sure, secured by a mortgage on his crop. 
That is a common custom in that country; 
buy what you will, give a note and give a 
mortgage. The land agent has the one on 
the farm and the dealer or merchant on 
the crop, while the farmer is trying to rob 
the soil of enough fertility to pay up and 
some day have a home of his own. TIu 
first two are prosperous, the last only in 
rare exceptions is paying for a home by 
farming. Some have succeeded by buying 
in good locations, where the rise in land 
which they sold enabled them to buy a 
home and pay for it. A few lucky sales 
while the boom is on has helped them out. 
While I am at it I am going to say that 
farming in the Red River Valley, taken as 
a whole, has been a system of soil robbery, 
and a change must soon come in farm 
management, or lands will depreciate much 
faster than they have advanced. A whoop 
and a boom of anything won’t last forever. 
Land is worth just what it is capable of 
producing, just as a steer is worth so much 
for the pounds of beef in him. and no soil 
is so rich that it can’t be exhausted, and 
when exhausted is about the most worth¬ 
less thing a man can own. c. d. smead. 
Connecticut Crops. —Corn is backward, 
making good growth in stalk but not much 
in ear; will need late warm Fall to mature. 
Hay rather light, and making much re¬ 
tarded by wet weather; that cut is dam¬ 
aged by lack of sunshine. Potatoes a 
good yield, beginning to rot. Apples, 
peaches and plums unusually promising; 
pears poor. Raspberries, currants and 
gooseberries less than half crop. Black¬ 
berries, hardy varieties, large crop; none 
but Taylor, Snyder and Agawam came 
through the Winter in good condition, al¬ 
though others looked well early in Spring. 
Eastern Connecticut. h. h. b. 
IT MUST COME. 
As inevitable as the changing seasons of 
the year is the change which conies to 
every woman. And just as one antici¬ 
pates the changes of other seasons it is 
wise to anticipate 
this change of sea¬ 
son and prepare for 
it. In this way the 
discomforts and 
disasters suffered 
by many women at 
the period of 
change can be 
avoided or over¬ 
come. 
Dr. Pierce’s Fa¬ 
vorite Prescription, 
a medicine for 
every season of 
woman’s life, will 
entirely meet the 
needs of women at 
this period of 
change. It cures 
the physical ills 
and relieves the 
mental anxiety and 
depression usually 
associated with this critical period. It 
tranquilizes the nerves, encourages the 
appetite and induces refreshing sleep. 
J. S. Carlisle, Esq., of Manchester, Coffee Co., 
Tenn., writes: "I have been using your ruedi- 
ciues for the last sixteen or eighteen years in 
my Poor-house. I am superintendent of the 
Coffee County Poor-house and Asylum combined. 
Your* Favorite PrescrlptWn,’ ‘Golden Medical 
Discovery ’ and ‘ Pleasant Pellets ’ are the best 
medicines for the diseases for which they are 
recommended, that I ever used. They saved 
my wife’s life at the time of * change of life.’ I 
have been recommending your medicine to 
many afflicted women and have also guaranteed 
that if it did not cure I would pay back the 
money spent for it. I have told our druggist 
that if the people came back and said Doctor 
Pierce’s medicines did not give satisfaction, to 
give them ia ck their money and charge it to me. 
I have not once been called upon to refund. I 
have never found anything to equal the 1 Favorite 
Prescription ’ for diseases of women.’' 
Dr. Pierce’s Common Sense Medical 
Adviser is sent fret on receipt of stamps 
to pay expense of mailing only. Send 
21 one-cent stamps for the paper covered 
book, or 31 stamps for the cloth bound. 
Address Dr. R. V. Pierce, Buffalo, N. Y. 
Little Gold-mine forWomen 
The U. S. Cook-Stove Fruit-Drier 
Dries all kinds of Fruits, Berries, 
Cherries, Corn, Vegetables, etc. it 
takes no extra are. Always ready for 
use. and will last a lifetime. It works 
while you cook. Write for circulars 
and special terms to agents. Price, #5. 
K.B.Fahrney, B. 120, Waynesboro, Pa. 
SS s R00FING 
is not like others—It Is better. It Is Fire, Wind and 
Water-Proof, being a perfect roof in every way and at 
the same tinio lias the advantage of being low in price. 
Fits the steepest or llattest roofs. Anybody can lay it. 
A knife and hammer are ui 1 the tools necessary. Saves 
you money on either new orolil rooting. Semple ntn! Circulars free. 
THE A F. SWAN CO., 114 Nassau St.. NEW YORK. 
'TIGHTEN YOUK OWN BUGGY TIKES-No 
■*■ heating required; does not mar the paint: any¬ 
one can operate. Machine complete, with 100 Alumi¬ 
num Washers, sent on receipt of $2. Guaranteed to 
do the work. Your money back if not as represented. 
RAPID TIRE TIGHTENER CO., Wauseon, Ohio. 
WE COULD SAVE 
$500 a day if we could make PAGE FENCE of 
common fence wire,but It won’t hold the coll. 
PAGE WOVEN WIRE FENCE CO., ADRIAN, MICH. 
Dutton’s 
Improved 
Knife and 
Tool 
Grinder 
$2.50 each 
SAMPSON 
rOBACCO PRESS. 
CLARK’8 
DOUBLE- 
Jutaway Harrow will easily move 
15.000 tons of earth one foot In 
a day. 
ACTION 
CLARK'S SULKY 
Gang Disk 
Plow, 
From 2 to 8 feet. 
For horse or 
_ Steam Power. 
CUTAWAY HARROW CO., HI66ANUM, CONN. 
