4i4 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
June 3 
enough of his own not only to pay for all the wheat 
that may be tendered for delivery, but to margin from 
bis own means all the contracts which he may make 
to receive and pay for wheat. 
When the Harper corner was “run” in 1887, the 
price was advanced from about 80 cents per bushel to 
95 cents, and when the “eornerer’s” money, and his 
credit were both exhausted by the persistent calls for 
margins, rather than by tenders of actual grain, the 
banks holding demand loans, for which the actual 
wheat of the “cornerer” was pledged, threw it on 
the market in great blocks, breaking the price to the 
68 cents per bushel which made them whole. Doubt¬ 
less a few farmers profited by this corner, but they 
were comparatively few, as it “ran” in the Spring 
after farmers had disposed so largely of their crop. 
On the other hand, the demoralization of prices re¬ 
sulting from the collapse of the corner was such that 
it was nearly a year before the price got back to 80 
cents, although conditions were such as to warrant 
an even higher price. This was identically the effect 
of the lard corner run in 1883, so far as immediate 
effect upon price was concerned, while its develop¬ 
ment of the manufacture of lard from cotton-seed oil 
was so hastened by the collapse that it has, in my 
opinion, cost the maizs and swine growers of the 
United States thousands of millions of dollars in the 
last 16 years. No doubt the substitution of cotton¬ 
seed oil for lard would have come before now, but it 
would have come slowly, and with a less brazen front 
had not all the packers then learned what only one 
or two knew before—that is, that beef stearine and 
cotton-seed oil would, or could be made to pass for 
lard. 
Not only has the option system made corners possi¬ 
ble, and made enemies of corners 
and of the price for real products 
of the great and small elevator 
owners, but it has made enemies 
of the price of wheat of nearly 
every miller in the land, and at the 
same time, an enemy of corners. 
How Millers Hedge.—When¬ 
ever a miller buys 10,000 bushels 
of wheat to grind in his mill, he 
orders his broker to sell 10,000 
bushels of wheat on the Chicago 
market for future delivery. In the 
first week of April, he would sell it 
for July, or, more probably, for 
September delivery. The 10,COO 
bushels of wheat will be ground, 
and the flour sold in a week. At the 
end of the week, he will buy another 
10,000 bushels of real wheat, and 
put out another “hedging ” contract 
for 10,000 bushels to be delivered at 
Chicago in September, and in an¬ 
other week the second 10,000 bushels 
will have been ground into flour, 
and the flour sold and another lot 
bought, and another “ hedging ” 
contract put out for September 
delivery. In this way, like Tenny¬ 
son’s brook, our hedging miller—and 
nearly all hedge who do any business—goes on for ever. 
That is, he is never interested in more than 20,000 
bushels of actual product, and rarely in any, as he 
usually sells his flour before the wheat is bought from 
which it is to be made; but he always has out num¬ 
bers of hedging contracts, and may, and frequently 
does, have out such contracts representing all the 
grain he has ground in two, three, four and even six 
months. The result is that his great interest is in the 
contracts, and not in the wheat, and for $1 that he 
can make by a rise of a cent a bushel in real products, 
he can make 10 by a fall that will give him a cent a 
bushel profit on cash bushel represented by his out¬ 
standing contracts. In other words, his interest is 
from 5 to 100 times greater in effecting falls in the 
price for wheat, rather than advances; therefore, he 
has difficulty in finding language strong enough to 
characterize the “cornerer” who may so advance 
prices as to cause him to lose his illegitimate profits. 
The miller’s profits are not on the real wares he 
handles, but come from “ hedges ”. 
With grain dealers, great and small, hedged ; with 
millers hedged; with warehousemen hedged, and with 
every one hedged but the farmer, what chance has a 
Leiter, or a Keene, to succeed in a wheat corner, and 
who is there but the helpless farmer to aid in ad¬ 
vancing or maintaining prices for any product that 
comes within the banef j 1 influence of this pernicious 
system ? c wood davis. 
We did not have any Spring in Ohio this year. We jumped 
from overcoats and caps to straw hats and shirt sleeves. If 
my memory is correct, we have not had a frost since April 10. 
Midsummer in April is rather remarkable. To day it was 
cooler than for several weeks. I plowed all day without sweat¬ 
ing the team. Wheat in this vicinity is injured by the fly. o. M. b. 
AN OHIO MARKET GARDENER. 
A TALK ABOUT HIS CBOPS AWD SOIL. 
With the market gardener who grows crops under 
glass, as well as out-of-doors, there is a perpetual 
seed-time and harvest, and no resting period, such as 
the out-of-door farmer enjoys during the Winter. 
This form of intensive gardening is on the increase 
in the neighborhood of our cities, and it is often 
found that the production of such crops for the home 
market is far more remunerative than sending them 
away to a distance. A successful gardener of this 
type is M. M. Miesse, of Fairfield County, Ohio. Let¬ 
tuce, melons and tomatoes are his specialty, and he 
has experimented a good deal in the originating of 
new varieties. With him originated the Livingston 
Banner potato, Cannon-ball watermelon, Evergreen 
cucumber, Royal Red, Aristocrat, and Enormous 
tomatoes. 
One of the questions often asked us is the reason 
for rot of lettuce under glass, for which a recent ex¬ 
periment station bulletin advised subirrigation. Mr. 
Miesse says: 
“ We have but little rot in our lettuce. When it 
does appear, I think that it is caused by keeping the 
house too close, and not ventilating sufficiently. A 
damp heavy atmosphere is very likely to produce rot.” 
“What tool do you use to stir the surface of the 
lettuce bed while the crop is on ? ” 
“ We u r e homemade tools entirely for this purpose. 
One of them is simply a piece of wood three or four 
inches wide, shaved down a little on one end for a 
handle. Four 9-penny nails are then driven through 
the end to make a rake. This does very well for tie 
first time the bed is stirred after planting. For the 
second working, we saw a block of wood about four 
inches loDg, bore a hole in the middle of it with a 
%-inch bit to insert a handle, and nail on a piece of 
hoop iron, so as to make a species of scraper or 
harrow.” 
“ How often do you apply water to a crop of let¬ 
tuce ? ’ 
“That depends on- the season,” said Mr. Miesse. 
“ During the cloudy days of December and January, 
we may water once or twice a week, and then when 
the sun shines stronger, later in the season, say 
in April, it is necessary with us to sprinkle every 
day.” 
“ Are you troubled with mildew, which seems to be 
very annoying with some growers ? ” 
“That is a difficulty which has never appeared 
with us.” 
“ What variety of lettuce do you prefer ? ” 
“ I am now growing Grand Rapids.” 
“ How about your soil? Do you sterilize it for the 
seed-bed, and how often do you change it ? ” 
“ I have not tried sterilized soil at all. We do not 
change the soil in the beds very often. Sometimes 
we have changed to our sorrow. We have grown for 
five or six seasons on the same soil, and will grow 
that many more, or as long as the crop continues to 
do well The depth of soil in our lettuce beds is 14 
to 16 inches.” 
“ Are you using any chemicil fertilizers ? ” 
“We sometimes use a good grade of potato ferti¬ 
lizer, and some bone flour.” 
“ What do you regard as the ideal lettuce soil ?” 
“ I consider a peat soil or muck, such as celery is 
grown in so extensively, as the very best. We-have 
used thousands of wagon-loads of this. So far we 
have never used any sheep, hog or hen manure in our 
greenhouses.” 
The illustration, shown in Fig. 166, is the interior 
of one of Mr. Miesse’s lettuce houses, which construc¬ 
tion is similar to those used by a great many com¬ 
mercial growers. This is, however, a house of the 
most complete modern construction, and many market 
gardeners use similar structures less carefully built. 
It will be noticed that this house is braced with iron, 
which not only gives a firm support, with the mini¬ 
mum amount of shade, a very important considera¬ 
tion in the case of all under-glass crops, but also 
gives greater rigidity than the old-fashioned wooden 
supports. _ 
RAPE OR TURNIPS FOR GREEN MANURE. 
Can’t Sqeeze Nitrogen From a Turnip. 
I have just laid down an agricultural paper contain¬ 
ing the advertisement of a prominent seedsman, who 
claims that rape is vastly superior to clover as a ren¬ 
ovator of worn out soils. The limited knowledge I 
possess of botany leads me to conclude at once that 
the man who wrote that advertisement, lied, and we 
farmers are the “suckers” to be caught because of 
our ignorance of the habits of the different families 
of plants. I can easily understand how rape may be 
very useful to a man with a fleck of sheep, for Fall 
pasturage, lut the idea of its being used as a sub¬ 
stitute for leguminous crops, is simply preposterous. 
One of the anomalies of the present day, is the un¬ 
willingness of us farmers to acquaint ourselves with 
the underlying principles of crop production. Speak¬ 
ing on this point, a person of my acquaintance told 
me not long since of his experience in plowing under 
green crops to improve his soil. 
“Corn is the stuff! Give me ccrn 
every time ! I jest sow it broadcast, 
then when it gets 1 yaller ’, turn 
her under; you oughter see how 
meller that ground turns up next 
Spring.” 
Undoubtedly such a practice would 
add humus to a soil, but a crop of 
cow peas would do the same, with 
the addition of, perhaps, SI5 worth 
of atmospheric nitrogen. In a neigh¬ 
borhood with which I am familiar, 
a person sowed a few acres of cow 
peas four years ago. The crcp was 
a strange one; the neighbors 
watched the ou'cone, talked among 
themselves. Last Spring, something 
like 70 bushels were sold in that 
section for seed purposes. This 
Spring, there will, no doubt, be more 
still. M. GABBAHAN. 
Pennsylvania. 
They Are Rich-Soil Crops. 
Rape and turnips are entirely de¬ 
pendent upon the soil for their ni¬ 
trogen, phosphoric acid and potash, 
therefore they do not increase the 
amount of any of these substances 
in the soil, if plowed under. They will, however, 
increase the amount of vegetable matter or humus 
in the soil, but other crops will do this more 
cheaply. Leguminous crops such as clover, cow 
peas, etc., obtain a considerable amount of nitrogen 
from the air, therefore they not only increase the 
humus of the soil, but increase the supply of Ditrogen 
as well. Rape and turnips require a soil which is 
fairly fertile in order to do their best, and a soil which 
will grow rape and turnips successfully, will also 
grow leguminous crops. From these three state¬ 
ments, it will be seen that rape and turnips are not 
suitable for green manuring; at any rate, they are 
not so valuable for this purpose as leguminous crops. 
I do not know of any good farmer who uses rape or 
turnips for green manure. They are highly esteemed 
as stock food, and they should be used for this pur¬ 
pose only. Some crops will grow on extremely poor 
soils which will not grow leguminous crops, and by 
plowing under such crops, the physical condition of 
the soil may be so improved as to enable the soil to 
produce leguminous crops, notably clover, which is 
liable to perish from drought on soils poor in humus. 
Rye and buckwheat are good examples of crops that 
will grow on poor soils, and they are sometimes used as 
the forerunners of clover to prepare the soil physic¬ 
ally. Rape and turnips, however, will not grow satis- 
fajtorily on poor soils, therefore there is no excuse or 
reason for using them as green manures. 
Ontario Agricultural College. G. e day. 
Hard frost May 15 spoiled half of the strawberry blooms, 
scorched grapeB badly, cut down early potatoes, tomatoes, etc. 
Apple-tree worms are making terrible havoc; everybody is work¬ 
ing hard to keep them off, but the worms are gaining all the time. 
Wayne County, N. Y. J - Bl 
