564 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 13 
The Rural New-Yorker. 
THE BUSINESS FARMERS' PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
Hubert S. Carman, Editor-In-Chief. 
Herbert W. Collingwood, Managing Editor. 
£T*. H T. T RfST“' }AsBOOi«. UM. 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
PRICE, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 
8s. 6d., or 8 Yt marks, or 10V4 franc3. 
ADVERTISING RATES. 
Thirty cents per agate line (14 lines to the inch). Yearly orders 
of 10 or more lines, and 1,000-line orders, 25 cents per line. 
Reading Notices, ending with “ Adv.,” 75 cents per 
count line. Absolutely One Price Only. 
Ad vertisements inserted only for responsible and honora ble houses 
We must have copy one week before the date of issue. 
with a binder goes around cutting grain by the acre ; 
this is a great convenience to the man with a small 
crop. 
O 
There are good military authorities who think our 
soldiers made a mistake in gathering and arming the 
Philippine insurgents. These men feel their power 
and importance, and are now likely to give our country 
more trouble than the Spaniards. We must wait for 
history to justify or condemn our treatment of these 
insurgents. Farmers sometimes start a so-called 
“ novelty ” on their farms. They cultivate it and pet 
it only to find at last that it is a perfect pest—over¬ 
running the farm and adding to the trouble and ex¬ 
pense of cultivation. “Johnson grass”, which was 
sent about the country several years ago, proved to be 
in this class. It gave good crops, but ran all over the 
farms, in some cases taking possession of the fields. 
Be sure that the name and address of sender, with name of 
Post-office and State, and what the remittance is for, appear in 
every letter. Money orders and bank drafts on New York are the 
safest means of transmitting money. 
Address all business communications and make all orders pay¬ 
able to THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
Corner Chambers and Pearl Streets, New York. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1898. 
\ Don’t 
That is our advice to the dairyman who 
is tempted to use Preservaline in his 
milk just now. The weather is hot and 
sticky, and the milk sours even with the best of care. 
Along comes the tempter and paints the great virtues 
of his chemicals. Don’t listen to him ! Kick him out ! 
Knowledge that you are using such stuff will ruin 
your reputation forever with all first-class customers. 
You should not run after others. 
© 
The R. N.-Y. will be well represented at the New 
York State Fair. We shall have a large tent for 
headquarters, where all our friends will be welcome. 
Bring your lunch baskets or other packages, and 
leave them with us while you see the sights. Bring 
along specimens of what your farm will produce. We 
shall be glad to greet new friends and old, and 
thus see what our readers look like. 
© 
“ Soap agents” are at work in Vermont. Here is a 
warning from that State : 
People through this section should look out for a soap agent 
who pretends to represent a firm in New York. He informs us 
that if we will buy a box of his soap, we can have a china set of 
dishes of 240 pieces, or a fine parlor carpet, and a four-horse team 
will be along in one week’s time to deliver the goods. But it 
never comes. 
Of course, it never comes. All the soap in America 
could never wash the agent's tongue clean ! 
© 
Less than 10 years ago, The R. N.-Y. tried to learn of 
farmers who had succeeded in harvesting corn by ma¬ 
chinery. A few reported the use of sleds with slanting 
knives at the side which sliced the corn off, but at 
that time, a machine that would cut corn as a har¬ 
vester cuts wheat was only a dream. Now these ma¬ 
chines are in successful operation on thousands of 
farms. Manufacturers can hardly make them fast 
enough. This wonderful revolution in corn harvest¬ 
ing is a forcible illustration of the truth that the 
theory of to-day is likely to be the fact of to-morrow. 
© 
Reports would indicate that the crop of old wheat 
in the country is pretty well used up. Millers need 
some old wheat to mix with the new to make it mill 
properly. It is reported here that some of the flours 
received “ work soft,” as the trade puts it, because of 
the lack of old wheat to mix with the new from which 
the flour was made. New wheat needs time to sweat. 
With, apparently, a light crop this year, and no re¬ 
serve to speak of, the outlook for at least fair prices, 
seems good. Texas wheat is said to have been 
shipped to California, as the crop in the latter State 
is very short. 
© 
Changes in methods of harvesting wheat have had 
much to do with its easier and cheaper production. 
A man doesn’t need to be very old to remember when 
a self-rake reaper was a novelty, and many a man not 
yet in middle life has taken his turn at raking off the 
gavels by hand on the old-time reapers. It isn’t nec¬ 
essary to remind those having this experience that it 
was hard work. The self-rake reaper obviated this, 
but the binding was still hard work. Now, wherever 
grain is grown to any extent, the binder does all this, 
and the grain is dropped in bunches of one dozen 
bundles all ready to set up. What a change ! The 
binder has been so changed and improved that it is 
now used on hills so steep that it was formerly 
thought impracticable to use a reaper thereon. In 
many of the small-farm regions of the East, a man 
© 
In the account of the Soldiers’ Home, at Bath, page 
567, and in the recent account of the Craig Colony at 
Sonyea, mention is made of the disposal of the sewage 
by leading it into beds on which are growing crops. 
The same methods are practiced by many towns. The 
vigorous growth of vegetation renders the sewage 
largely innocuous. In several papers lately we have 
seen vigorous appeals to the authorities by sapient 
penny-a-liners, for the cutting down of rank weeds in 
vacant lots in town, because they were a menace to 
public health. Such weeds may be unsightly, but 
they are far from being a menace to health, but 
rather the opposite. Still, ’twould be better if there 
were some useful crop to cover the ground, instead of 
weeds. This is an excellent way to dispose of the 
farm sewage and wastes. 
© 
A new criminal industry thriving in Chicago is the 
theft of shade trees. It is customary for real-estate 
firms developing suburban tracts to plant shade trees 
when laying out the streets. These are stolen in 
wholesale quantities. It is learned that some man, 
representing himself as agent for a nursery, makes 
the rounds of the suburbs, and offers to supply trees 
at low rates. Contracts thus made are filled with 
stolen trees. Suburban tree-planters are accustomed 
to having their evergreen trees stolen for Christmas 
greens, and we knew one case where a Chicago man 
who had carefully sodded his front yard arose the 
next morning to find that his entire lawn had been 
skinned off and carried away; but the shade-tree rob¬ 
ber is a new feature. It is another argument against 
buying any form of nursery stock from irresponsible 
agents. 
© 
We have heard lately of a Chicago amateur ento¬ 
mologist who, having captured a large beetle of un¬ 
usual appearance, impaled it with his diamond scarf- 
pin, which he stuck into a window casing, while he 
hunted up his appliances for preserving the insect. 
The beetle, however, without waiting to be done to 
death with scientific formality, spread his wings and 
hied away, taking the young man’s diamond pin with 
him. In spite of the hue-and-cry sent out for the re¬ 
turn of a large black beetle wearing a diamond scarf- 
pin, this bejeweled member of the Coleoptera is still 
missing. This incident appears to be supplied with a 
variety of morals-; one of them is the futility of 
diamonds as an aid to the study of entomology, while 
another is a warning against the slatternly practice 
of sticking pins into a window casing, and thereby 
defacing the varnish. Any neat housekeeper will aver 
that the loss of his trinket served the young man right. 
© 
But a few weeks ago, occurred the death of the 
greatest English statesman of modern times, if not of 
all times, William Ewart Gladstone. On the night of 
July 30, passed away the most powerful statesman 
Germany has ever known, without whom, in all 
probability, the Germany of to-day would never have 
existed, Prince Otto Bismarck. The careers of these 
two men, so alike in many respects, so different in 
others, and closing so nearly together, are well worth 
the study of all. Above all things, Bismarck was a 
German, and the work of his life was the building up 
of the great German Empire. His method of accom¬ 
plishing his ends was by force, and he stopped at 
nothing to reach the end desired. He was more a 
politician than a statesman, and if his policy of yester¬ 
day did not serve his purpose of to-day, he didn’t hesi¬ 
tate a moment to abandon it, and adopt one diametri¬ 
cally opposite. He was not a scholar, failed to dis¬ 
tinguish himself in any way during his university 
course, and had slight knowledge of history and 
political economy. He was intensely ambitious, as 
well for his country as himself, but was emphatically 
a man of war. Gladstone was a scholar, a lifelong 
student, a man as celebrated in literature as in states¬ 
manship, of which he was past master. His conquests 
were intellectual ones, and he was emphatically a man 
of peace, and a man of the common people. He con¬ 
stantly sought to extend the right of suffrage and to 
abolish the special privileges of the classes. He was 
a Liberal in its best and broadest sense. As one writer 
puts it, Gladstone believed himself a representative, 
Bismarck believed himself a ruler. Each was a great 
man in his way, and did great things for his country, 
but what a difference in the methods. The difference 
in the expressions of the public press on the deaths of 
these two men is well worth consideration. When 
Gladstone died, the whole world seemed to be in 
mourning; the feeling was that humanity and civil¬ 
ization had lost one of their foremost champions, and 
the common people one of their ablest defenders. No 
such universal grief is manifest over the demise of 
the man of blood and iron. He had his admirers, he 
was feared and hated, but he was never loved as was 
England’s illustrious commoner. “ Peace hath its 
victories no less renowned than war.” 
Q 
Last Spring, an Ohio reader asked some questions 
about a scheme for locating a creamery in his neigh¬ 
borhood. From his description, the scheme had all 
the earmarks of a swindle, though we did not know 
the parties personally. Now we receive the following 
letter : 
Thank you for your information in regard to the creamery. I 
was a little suspicious, and did not invest; as it has turned out, I 
am very glad I did not. I know of a goodly number that wish they 
had not, for it is a scheme. The man that took the promoter of 
it around received $10 per share, and as there were 44 shares at 
$100 per share, he received $440—very good pay for two or three 
weeks’ work. Warn your readers against the creamery shark. 
Some “ prominent citizen ” usually acts as devil-father 
for the creamery shark ! While these creameries are 
often disappointing at first, it is sometimes possible 
to save them if the patrons will get together and put 
up the needed money—and milk. 
© 
BREVITIES. 
“THE WOMEN’S HORSE.” 
Ain’t got no speed; he’s fat enough to kill — 
Jest sorter jogs along a steady course, 
An’ yet there ain’t no hundred dollar bill 
That ever’ll buy old Gray—the women’s horse. 
I don’t expect he really earns his feed, 
Jest cultivates a little an’ that’s all; 
Yet he’s exactly what the women need, 
To hitch up now an’ then an’ make a call. 
You know how women drive—jerk on the bits, 
Push on the lines, an’ cluck an’ holler “ whoa ” ! 
Enough to drive a nervous horse to fits, 
But some old pelter like old Gray will go 
Like clockwork—why, he’ll turn right out an’ pas3 
Another wagon—patient as a saint. 
Ef they broke down—he’d go to eatin’ grass, 
An’ when they whip him, he makes no complaint. 
I feel as safe as can be when old Gray 
Takes out them women folks—he’s old, I know, 
An’ now an’ then I hear the women say 
They wished they had a horse that ain’t so slow, 
An’ yet I’ll bet they’ll miss him when, some day 
He strikes the last hard milestone of his course. 
No! No! There ain’t no money buys old Gray. 
I couldn’t sell him—he’s the women’s horse. 
An “ odorless ” onion is the latest. 
Look out for the guessing scientist. 
A beau knot often leads to a family tie. 
A good apple source — potash and bone. 
This is no time for hot words. Ice them. 
Seasonable “ rubber goods a dry towel. 
Very little California fruit is sold in Delaware. 
After all, cold cash is mighty warming at times. 
The other side of the hired man question—page 559. 
The evidence is certainly in favor of corn harvesters. 
What are dog days ? Days that make you feel like a dog. 
The legumes are the legs of chemicals and clover farming. 
The reputation of the Tetofsky apple rises higher by its sauce. 
Yes, sir, the thrashing machine can carry smut from one farm 
to another. 
“ No,” says Mrs. Jersey Cow, “ You don’t catch me suffering at 
the milkpate.” 
One way to reform the back yard is to make it into a side yard 
—which is a step to the front. 
No young man will save a dollar whose will can be dissolved in 
soda water or roasted with peanuts. 
While the German Germans are thinking of fighting Uncle 
Sam, the American Germans talk of presenting your Uncle with 
a warship! 
Cover it over! Cover it over! Give it an overcoat—sow Crim¬ 
son clover. Don’t leave the farm through the Winter all bare, 
sow something on it—it’s time to get there! 
That’s a good point Mr. Jamison makes on j>age 559 in saying 
that, where one has land not naturally suited to wheat culture, 
his duty is to change it by artificial means. 
In a recent advertisement for a place in a creamery, a western 
man says that he uses “ neither liquor, tobacco, opium nor pro¬ 
fanity ! ” There’s an evil quartette for you. 
Mr. Dwyer’s account of the strawberry bed that was covered 
with ice last Winter in order to retard the growth of the fruit, 
opens a great field for suggestion and experiment. There may 
be something in this where ice is cheap enough. 
Where is Honolulu? In Hawaii, most of us would answer. 
But it isn’t; it i9 on the island of Oahu. Hilo is the main port of 
the island of Hawaii. When we look at that map of the Hawaiian 
Islands on page 537, we begin to realize how much we don’t know 
about our new possessions. 
