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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
November 4 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
Herbert W. Collinqwood, Editor. 
Dr. Walter Van Fleet, 1 
H. E. Van Deman, /Associates. 
Mrs. E. T. Royle, } 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 
8 s. 6d., or 8* *4 marks, or 10y t francs. 
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We must have copy one week before the date of issue. 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
409 Pearl Street, New York. 
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1899. 
To 
January, 
1901, 
for 
$ 1 . 00 . 
New subscribers to The R. N.-Y. will 
now get the paper from the time sub¬ 
scription is received until January 1, 
1901. If you will send us a club ot 
four subscriptions, new or renewal, 
with $4, we will advance your own 
subscription one year free. Take a 
few copies with you to the polls election day, and get 
up a club. If you want more samples, drop us a postal 
card. 
We spoke last week of the certain rise in the price 
of farm implements. This will be due entirely to the 
increased cost of iron and steel. It is unfortunate 
that this increase must come just at this time. The 
manufacturers are not responsible for it, and they 
regret the necessity which compels it. Are farmers 
in a condition to pay the increased prices? Have 
crops, and the incomes from them, during the past 
year, been sufficiently large to warrant such an in¬ 
crease? In some sections possibly they have, but not 
in all, by arity means. We are making an investigation 
to learn how farmers feel about this matter. It is 
going to make interesting reading. 
It 'is announced that the deficit in the postal rev¬ 
enue for the past fiscal year only amounts to $6,610,- 
776, being the smallest since 1892. Before offering 
himself congratulations, however, Uncle Sam might 
look towards some of those unenterprising countries 
of the Old World which make their postal service pay, 
in spite of an extensive parcels post, both foreign and 
domestic, and a telegraph system, cheap and efficient, 
which forms a part of the same department. Let 
Uncle Sam kick the express company lobbyists out 
of Congress and give the people the postal rates they 
demand. Is this country run to please the transporta¬ 
tion companies? It looks so at times. 
* 
Mrs. M. H. Abbott, of West Branch, Mich., was 
elected prosecuting attorney of Ogemaw County, in 
that State, in the last general election. She took pos¬ 
session of the office in due time, and has since been 
attending to her duties to the general satisfaction of 
her constituents. The Attorney-General of the State, 
however, took exception to the idea of a woman hold¬ 
ing a legal office, and began proceedings before the 
Supreme Court to have her ousted. He has just suc¬ 
ceeded in getting a decision to that effect. This would 
seem to be the low-water mark of judicial imbecility, 
though one justice had the manliness to dissent from 
this absurd opinion in a vigorous manner. He cited 
many cases where women are holding pension offices, 
and are county superintendents of schools. The State 
confers on them the right to practice law. If the 
people see fit, by electing her to an office, the duties 
of which pertain to the practice of law, the courts 
should recognize her. The other four justices sus¬ 
tained the Attorney-General’s contention, that in the 
absence of an express provision by statute empower¬ 
ing women to fill elective offices, she was debarred, 
not being a qualified elector. It is astonishing what 
hair-splitting and strained constructions courts of 
last resort can elaborate on constitutional grounds, 
when the subject interested does not personify a big 
lot of capital. It does not require much of a prophet 
to forecast the result when “vested interests” demand 
a liberal construction of either the Constitution or of 
legislative enactments. It would seem that the whole 
sex question of employment, either in public or pri¬ 
vate capacity, should be one of personal efficiency 
alone. The truly congenial sphere of woman will 
doubtless remain in the future, as in the past, in the 
domestic circle, and nowhere does she so well fulfill 
her destiny as when presiding over a happy rural 
home, but of late competent women have made great 
inroads into employments heretofore exclusively ap¬ 
propriated by man. No fault should be found with 
this, as the public is certain to be the gainer in the 
end, if every individual can find the work that is nat¬ 
urally most congenial. The greatest cooks and femi¬ 
nine dressmakers the world has ever seen have been 
men, because nature and training have united in fit¬ 
ting them for these occupations. We have female law¬ 
yers, doctors, preachers, etc., in abundance, many 
showing the highest ability in their various callings, 
and there is no reason in common sense why they 
should not act as prosecuting attorneys, or in any other 
official capacity, if they have the ability to command 
the suffrage of their electors. It is to be hoped that 
the Michigan Legislature will pass an enabling act 
that will restore this office to Mrs. Abbott, and relieve 
the mossback Supreme Court of that State from sit¬ 
ting in judgment on similar cases. 
* 
Among the reasons advanced for the decay of farm¬ 
ing as a business, and the social disadvantage of the 
farmer, is the fact that many country people have lost 
their respect and love for Nature. How this love was 
lost is another story, but it is true that in many farm 
homes the desire to make extra money on the farm 
has nearly killed the true home feeling that was the 
power and strength of the old-time household. One 
friend puts it in this way: 
If we could increase the love for the farm as a home we 
would find it more profitable. This is not a mere idle 
fancy. I know personally of at least a dozen instances 
where an unloved farm was unprofitable—but became 
profitable as the owner came to love it and think of it 
as something more than a mere source of income. 
We think that most thoughtful people will agree 
that there is much truth in that statement. A man’s 
treasure is like a magnet which is sure to attract his 
heart. We all understand how love and ambition will 
glorify labor and bring contentment from the meanest 
toil and true profit from the hardest chance. We need 
more of the teaching and more of the inspiration that 
will help farmers to realize that the farm is the best 
place for a home, and that a true home should be the 
highest ideal of a human life. 
* 
There is no doubt about it! The people are coming 
to understand the danger from consumption. The 
man who doesn’t understand all about bacilli and 
their business-like breeding in these days of scientific 
enlightenment, is to be pitied. As an illustration of 
a way of putting scientific terms so that all may un¬ 
derstand, we make this extract from an address of Dr. 
P. J. Meyer, of Louisiana: 
Never let strangers kiss your children, unless it happens 
to be your prospective son-in-law, in which event lead him 
gently by the ear to the back gallery and give him a 
sanitary talk, and insist that if his osculatory idiosyn- 
cracy should overpower his sanitary resolution that the 
giddy oblation be laid upon the cheek or forehead or on 
the back of the neck, for remember that the sputum is 
the principal vehicle of transmission of the bacillus tuber¬ 
culosis, the diphtheria bacillus and many other disease 
germs. 
Many of us regard the prospective son-in-law as a 
robber. Private inclination would tempt us to use a 
point no smaller than a heavy boot for injecting such 
advice. While the daughters are under control, and so 
long as strangers care to kiss the boys, this off-hand 
advice is good and should be enforced. This little 
quotation is an illustration of the power in an apt 
use of words. A farmer would go to sleep over a dry 
discussion of tuberculosis, but lie takes in every word 
of such an illustration as the above. 
* 
Among possible importations from Porto Rico is 
fertilizer. There are large deposits of so-called guano, 
which have been worked for years by the natives, and 
by the Indians before them. There are said to be evi¬ 
dences that the Indians used this material as a fer¬ 
tilizer many centuries ago. Shrewd Yankees are run¬ 
ning over Porto Rico hunting for material to sell 
their friends at home. They have hit upon this guano, 
and have even had it analyzed. Samples show about 
17 per cent of insoluble phosphoric acid, less than 
one per cent of nitrogen, and nearly 2 y 2 per cent of 
potash. It is not likely that such fertilizer ever would 
pay the cost of bringing to this country. We have all 
the phosphoric acid that will be needed in this coun¬ 
try for years to come. Potash in the form of German 
salts is more available and easier to handle than in 
any material containing only two per cent. There is 
not enough nitrogen in this guano to pay to bring 
here. Possibly we shall hear before long of some 
company formed to sell this wonderful Porto Rican 
guano. We warn our readers beforehand that it will 
probably not pay to touch it. This country chiefly 
requires to import potash and nitrogen. The potash 
we are obliged to buy abroad. We do not begin to 
utilize our possibilities for obtaining organic nitrogen 
out of the air by means of clover and cow peas, but 
there will always be a need of the soluble nitrates, 
and we shall be obliged to depend on nitrate of soda 
from South America to cover this need. 
* 
Here is a man with only one leg. There is another 
with but one hand. They do not sit down and be¬ 
moan their fate, and admit that only half of life’s 
possibilities are before them. Not a bit of it—they 
work on uncomplainingly, do their best—and succeed. 
This man is blind—that man is deaf, the other has 
faced disease all his life, and still another has lost 
his dearest friend. They do not complain and despair. 
They bravely take up their crosses and do their best, 
and we are astonished to see how much they do— 
these men who are forced to drag some lame and 
halting faculty behind them. One would think that 
these brave lives would bring the blush of shame to 
the faces of the sound and strong faint-hearts, to 
whom a Potato bug or a weed become a lion in the 
way. 
* 
During the second administration of President 
Cleveland a large area of land was set apart for forest 
reservations. On some of this land there were set¬ 
tlers, and the Government issued to them, in lieu of 
the lands taken away, what is known as forestry 
scrip. This forestry scrip permitted them to take up 
Government land, either surveyed or unsurveyed, any- 
w'heie in the United States. Now it is discovered 
that a clique of timber dealers have secured a quan¬ 
tity of this scrip, paying for it only $2 to $4 an acre, 
and with it they are taking up thousands of acres of 
valuable timber lands in the unsurveyed portions of 
northern Minnesota. This scheme is perfectly legal, 
for the men to whom the scrip is issued have the 
right to sell it as they please, but the result is that 
these timber men are getting, for a ridiculously low 
pi ice, lands that will soon be worth several hundred 
times what they are now paying for them. When 
the territory is surveyed, and thrown open to settle¬ 
ment, lit is likely that there will be very little de¬ 
sirable land left. It is said that Congress will be ap¬ 
pealed to, at its next session, for some alteration in 
the status of forestry scrip, but this is only another 
case of locking the stable door after the steed is 
stolen. 
* 
BREVITIES. 
Here’s the invention of a thinking- man- 
A farmer used to drudgery and toil, 
Who oft had seen the failure of his plan 
When drought dried up the crops within his soil 
Too poor to irrigate—too game to quit 
And own defeat, he lay awake at night, 
Through weary hours his sturdy brows he knit, 
Until he heeled the stocking of his plight. 
Between the hills of ’taters with care 
He dropped some onion seed—they sprouted well - 
He then brought out the easy rocking-chair. 
And, quicker than it takes for me to tell. 
Induced his wife's fond mother to sit down 
Within the chair—the lady had her woe, 
And ready tears which frequently would drown 
Domestic joys—no need for me to show 
How at the onion’s breath the lady wept 
Most useful tears—nor did the fountain stop. 
Till like an irrigating flood it crept 
Along the rows and saved the ’tater crop. 
Sit rust fruits—patches. 
Retail beef prices show a decline. 
What is the true story about Campbell's Early grape? 
To eat one Grimes Golden apple is to long for a barrel. 
Are women more likely to “beg the question” than men’ 
Mr. Hog delivers an in sti toot lecture on feeding every 
time he squeals. 
Lots of household ideals are fathered by Mother and 
smothered by Father. 
A vet tells us that he has found a bad case of tubercu¬ 
losis in a Colorado steer. 
Ihe chances are that you throw more bouquets to your¬ 
self than you do to your wife. 
“I WOULD like to be long on ‘shorts’ just once,” said the 
cow, as she gazed at the feed bin. 
Come now, wise men, be a little wiser, so as to hit the 
understanding of those not so wise. 
“We are in the throes of a political campaign!” Many 
candidates will call it a throw down. 
One chord of sympathy well stirred beneath your vest, 
is worth a cord of wishes unexpressed. 
“The King can do no wrong!” That’s right, if he is 
where he belongs—kicked off his throne. 
Many a tired-out farmer’s wife would like a sweep 
horse power applicable to the parlor carpet. 
The American mule now has a chance to gain a mili¬ 
tary record in South Africa. They do not volunteer! 
The Pennsylvania Station finds that Spring-wheat bran 
is about one per cent higher in protein than Winter- 
wheat bran. 
If you would be long in the friendship and loves that 
make a man glad that he lives, avoid being careless in 
praise or in blame and be short in your long adjectives. 
Some "Observers complain that the galls do not appear 
on the roots of cow peas and clover. The roots of the 
average politician’s tongue are not troubled that way. 
