1898 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
74i 
Among the Marketmen. 
WHAT I 8EE AND HEAR. 
Bogus Commission Merchants. —We are begin¬ 
ning to receive the usual Fall crop of inquiries about 
commission merchants, about many of whom we never 
heard before, and many of whom we cannot find. They 
always start out with renewed activity at this season 
of the year, and usually find a fresh lot of victims 
every time. Again we would caution our readers 
against shipping anything to any of these firms which 
make such extravagant promises, or which are not 
well-known to people here. Bank references and re¬ 
ferences to express companies, which they generally 
give freely, amount to very little. Don’t trust them ! 
X t t 
Cheap Grapes. —It would seem as though almost 
any one could afford to eat grapes this year. Beauti¬ 
fully large, ripe, luscious Concord grapes have been 
selling for 15 cents per nine-pound basket, and some 
of the wagon-boys have sold them for as low as 13 
cents a basket. Immense quantities of these are con¬ 
sumed, the fine appearance and the handy packages 
helping their sale. The Concord is the leading variety 
sold in this market and, probably, more of them are 
sold here than of all other varieties combined. Many 
new varieties have come into notice of late years, 
that were guaranteed to eclipse everything else, still 
the Concord grape to-day is the popular variety. 
t t X 
Tricky Bgg Shippers.—A lot of eggs was re¬ 
ceived in this market the other day, which fell short 
about six dozen in each case. The deficiency had heen 
made up by packing the bottom of the case full of 
straw. Of course, the straw was put in to form a soft 
bed for the eggs, to prevent their breaking, as it is 
well known that transportation companies are none 
too careful in the way they handle egg cases. I have 
been told by egg handlers here that it is a common 
thing to receive eggs in the patent cases, in which 
perhaps a whole layer would be left out of the center 
of the case. One man told me that he never thought 
of sending cases of eggs to customers without repack¬ 
ing them, in order that he might be sure that they 
were full. Shippers are not always to blame for this 
shortage, because instances have been known where 
the cases have been opened by some one in transit and 
a number of eggs removed. But why a shipper should 
undertake to beat the receiver in that way, is be¬ 
yond comprehension, for such tricks are certain to be 
found out. 
t X X 
The Latest Beaches. —The peach season in the 
East is practically over. I saw in one commission 
house, a very fine lot of Sal way peaches received from 
the Seneca Bake district. They were in round baskets 
holding about a peqk each, and were packed, two 
baskets together, in a light, slatted crate. The tops 
of the baskets were covered with pink mosquito net¬ 
ting, so that the fruit showed off beautifully. The 
commission merchant was holding them for 82 per 
crate, which would make about 84 per bushel for the 
fruit. This is a much higher price than was received 
for the same variety of peaches from Georgia several 
months ago, although the latter were considerably 
larger and more highly colored. As to the compara¬ 
tive quality of the peaches from the two localities, I 
am unable to say. Those from New York State are 
not very well colored, and retailers tell me that they 
do not sell very well on that account. A fine-looking 
fruit sells better, and that is one reason why the Cali¬ 
fornia peaches sell so well, although many of the lat¬ 
ter are of very poor quality. 
X X X 
Cheap Grape Marketing'. —A grape grower liv¬ 
ing up the Hudson River had a lot of grapes gathered 
and marketed very cheaply. lie had a large vineyard 
which produced this year a fine lot of fruit of excel¬ 
lent quality. Some one has been systematically rob¬ 
bing his vineyard on a large scale. The thieves, evi¬ 
dently, brought a lot of baskets with them, which 
they filled, but as they failed to bring any covers, 
they added insult to injury by stealing the covers 
which the farmer had provided for his own baskets. 
After this had been going on for some time, the farmer 
was very much surprised to receive a check from a 
New York commission house, for several hundred dol¬ 
lars. He had shipped no grapes there, and was at a 
loss to know why they sent him the check. He made 
inquiry, and was told that, for some time, they had been 
receiving shipments of grapes, covers of the baskets 
bearing his name. As they had received no other no¬ 
tice about the grapes, they supposed that he was the 
consignor. Up to the present time, the thieves who 
did all the work have not made any demands, either 
for the check or for pay for their labor, and it looks as 
though the farmer is a little ahead on the game. F. h. v. 
A YANKEE IN OHIO. 
HOW THE STATE ROOKS TO EASTERN EYES. 
Its Advantages and Disadvantages. 
Part II. 
[editorial correspondence.] 
Consolidated Schools. —I came to Ohio deter¬ 
mined not to try to describe any particular farmer or 
farm, but to record the things that seemed odd or 
strange to one used to the narrower and closer farm¬ 
ing of the East. In Aurora township, I noticed sev¬ 
eral abandoned schoolhouses. Instead of keeping up 
the old district system, the town has thrown all but 
two small districts together, and located one good 
building at the center of the town. The township is 
divided into three zones. Within a radius of mile, 
parents are expected to send their children free. Out¬ 
side of that, the parents are paid 50 cents per month 
for each child that is carried. In one far-away dis¬ 
trict, the payment is 83 per month for each child ! 
The plan is said to work well. Three good teachers 
now do the work formerly done by seven, and a much 
more thorough course is given. The saving to the town 
is 8700 per year. People generally spoke well of the 
plan, but I should think it would be hard on the little 
children in Winter. 
Westernized Yankees. —People on the Western 
Reserve are very proud of saying that their ancestors 
mostly came from New England. Geauga County, for 
example, is said to be a perfect nest of Ohio Yankees 
where the old language, habits and shrewdness are 
even more perfect than in New England. Geauga 
County is 100 years old, and there isn’t a saloon in it. 
Nobody knows how many millions dug out of its soil 
are now in the Cleveland savings banks—or have gone 
to build the great office buildings in that city. That is 
the old Yankee trick of sending money away from 
home for investment ! These westernized Yankees 
dropped their diet of baked beans and fishballs some¬ 
where in the past 50 years, and their children begin to 
show the effects of a fatter and richer diet. They do 
not feed their children as they advise others to feed 
their Jersey calves ! The men who settled the West¬ 
ern Reserve had been bred and dieted into lean, hard 
meat, and they could not take on fat. It was a good 
thing they couldn’t or, in this rich and fruitful land, 
they would have become fat and lazier than the In¬ 
dians. I have been curious to see what this wonder- 
fully rich soil has taken out of the old Yankee, and 
what has been put in its place. 
Great Natural Atlvantages. —A Jersey farmer 
accustomed to the heavy use of fertilizer, would be 
astonished at the way these Ohio farmers make clover 
work for them. I will confess that I had read the 
clover tales of T. B. Terry and others without losing 
my belief in “ Chemicals ”—the cashier of our eastern 
farming. 
“ Now then,” said F. A. Derthick, ex-State Dairy 
Commissioner, “ I want to show you what we can do 
out here with clover.” 
So he shouldered a potato hook, and led the way to 
a field on a hillside back of the barn. The potatoes 
were planted in hills, and had been kept remarkably 
clean, for Mr. Derthick hates a weed as he hates oleo. 
They were R. N.-Y. No. 2, and there is no use denying 
the fact that they came rolling out of the ground just as 
they did in that old contest plot of Mr. Carman years 
ago. 
“ Not a pinch of manure or fertilizer on them,” said 
Mr. Derthick ; “ nothing but clover ! ” 
They have a way out here of cutting the clover 
several times during the season, and letting it fall 
down and rot on the ground. Then in the Spring, 
the whole thing—rotted mulch and living plant—is 
plowed under and the potatoes pl&nted right down 
into it. There is no question about it—they get more 
potatoes than we often do with half a ton of fertilizer. 
This is but one ilhistration of the wonderful possibili¬ 
ties of the best of this western soil when well cared 
for. Do not get the idea that any soil in Ohio will 
produce such clover or such potatoes. This field rep¬ 
resented the best skill and care of a thoughtful and 
scientific farmer. It just shows, however, how clover 
can discharge chemicals when things really come its 
way. Can we get such results with clover alone on 
our New Jersey farms ? I doubt it. Why not ? I am 
going to try to find out. There is a shady side to this 
potato story, however. These beautiful No. 2 pota¬ 
toes were selling at 25 and 30 cents a bushel ! We can 
afford to use fertilizer and sell at the prices in our 
eastern markets ! While I was away the boys sold 
second-size potatoes for 50 cents a bushel! 
Not Like a Yankee. —There were thousands of 
acres of potatoes in upper Portage and adjoining 
counties. To my sur, rise, they were mostly planted 
in hills and, probably, 90 per cent were planted and 
dug by hand. Your old-time Yankee loved a machine, 
and he could make it work. You wouldn’t catch a 
thoroughbred New Englander handling a potato hoe 
in a 10-acre field with November close at hand and 
frost ready to freeze the ground solid. Such a man 
would make the horses dig those potatoes. I noticed, 
too, that corn fields had generally been cut by hand, 
though corn harvesters have done excellent work this 
season. We Jerseymen think we would jump for 
those machines if we could produce corn and potatoes 
so cheaply. These Ohio Yankees musn’t let prosperity 
make them so easy-going that they will neglect to 
use machinery. I saw lots of beef cows supposed to 
be making milk for the cheese factories. It will never 
do to send these men who have begun to put on the 
fat and ease of prosperity, to develop Cuba and the 
Philippines. It will be safer to send to New England 
for more lean and hard hustlers who could not grow 
fat and lazy, even in the natural wealth of the tropics. 
The hills of New England may have been created to 
provide just such men. 
Abandonment. —The Ohio Yankee has kept his 
grandfather’s old trick of running away from unprofit¬ 
able things, and he has carried it so far that he has 
run away from some of his churches. 
“ There is where the gospel is dispensed with ! ” said 
John Gould, as we passed an abandoned church. To 
me, it was a pathetic sight. The very steeple leaned 
in a despairing way. Boards were nailed over some of 
the windows—the door was broken in and the corn 
had been planted up to the very threshold. It seemed 
unspeakably sad to think that what that church rep¬ 
resented in old days had been suffered to fall and give 
way. I hope to have a picture of that battered old 
church soon, so that it may be printed in The R. N.-Y. 
Perhaps it will induce other communities to make a 
braver struggle to save their church. A few miles 
away on the same road was another abandoned church, 
although this one was in fair repair and simply closed. 
It was a Methodist church at that ! Again and again 
we passed through decaying and nearly deserted vil¬ 
lages. They were the old-time town centers, and in 
former days, supported shops, small factories and 
stores. Now they are dead. Their trade or part of it 
has gone to the railroad towns. Most of it has gone 
to the great cities. Farmers now buy clothes, gro¬ 
ceries, and no one knows what not, of the great city 
supply houses. As John Gould said, 
“ If they could send a horse by mail, they would 
send him to Cl ~ be shod ! ” 
Even the c -oney-lender has disap¬ 
peared, and with him. 
Farmers not* 
paid for miP 
have half a 
posit. Much of the v,_ 
banks in Cleveland and other tov,^ 
a class, borrow less than formerly. The ut u . 
little town seems not to have been much of an injury 
to the average farmer, except that he has lost the 
chance to barter and exchange small lots of produce 
for necessary small articles. The loss has been to the 
old-time shop-keeper, small artisan or dealer. As a 
class, farmers have felt the change less seriously than 
the small business men. In fact it would be quite 
difficult to find a section where farmers seem more 
generally prosperous. It would be hard to find an 
abandoned farm or field. Yet farms are often sold 
for a little money—chiefly where old men are—whose 
children have died or moved away. 
I am frank to say that I did not expect to see these 
conditions so pronounced in Ohio. We expect to find 
them in New England, but that country is 150 years 
older than this western child of hers. In New Eng¬ 
land, too, the old towns were often located at good 
water powers, and now a period of resurrection has 
come, and new business is going back to the old places 
to utilize the power for electricity. In Ohio, the 
change seems to be for good, for the country has, ap¬ 
parently, acquired the habit of pouring its wealth 
into Cleveland and other cities for investment. It will 
be unfortunate if the best of the farm boys follow the 
money to the city. Ohio may make statesmen in that 
way, but happy country homes arc better than states¬ 
men. h. w. c. 
BUSINESS BITS. 
The incubator season will soon be here. The Des Moines In¬ 
cubator Co., Des Moines, la., claim that more than 1,000,000 chicks 
were hatched in their incubators last season. They will mail a 
large descriptive catalogue for six cents. 
For poultrymen so situated that they can procure green bones 
cheaply, a green-bone mill is a valuable implement. The F. W. 
Mann Co., Milford, Mass., will send you illustrated catalogue 
telling all about one of the best mills made. 
The manufacturers of the Goodhue windmill claim that it is the 
most powerful and durable made—self-oiling, best governed. 
They have, also, a full line of pumps, cutters, grinders, shellers, 
etc. Catalogue containing valuable information will be sent free. 
For household conveniences, The Enterprise Mfg. Co. of Pa., 
Philadelphia, are emphatically headquarters. They are now 
offering meat and food choppers in 28 sizes and styles, and at 
prices from $1.50 up to $275. A machine of this kind is almost in¬ 
dispensable in a family, for cutting sausage meat, steak, mince 
meat, etc. Catalogue will be mailed free, or the Enterprising 
Housekeeper—200 recipes— for four cents in stamps. 
