1898 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
773 
AMONG THE MARKETMEN. 
WHAT I SEE AND HEAR. 
Rapid Grain Handling. —Fig. 351 shows grain 
elevators at work, loading a steamer against time. 
The vessel had been chartered some time ago to take 
a cargo of 50,000 bushels of wheat to England. The 
cargo was to be in the vessel before November 1. The 
steamer was delayed on her voyage to this port, and 
did not arrive at quarantine until October 30. She 
was at once hurried to Erie Basin, where a place had 
been prepared for her, and the work of loading began 
early on the morning of the 31st, and was completed 
before midnight. The lower, left-hand corner of the 
picture shows the spouts of the elevator on one side 
pouring the grain into the hold of the steamer. The 
upper part of the picture shows the vessel lying be¬ 
tween two elevators. The one on the right is the 
warehouse, from which streams of wheat were poured 
into the vessel, and the one on the left is a floating 
elevator. The R. N.-Y. illustrated these different 
elevators last Winter, and described their methods of 
operation. The floating elevators are steam vessels, 
fully equipped with a complete elevator system, weigh¬ 
ing hoppers, screens, cleaners and elevator legs. In 
the larger ones, the machinery is all in duplicate, so 
that a boat or lighter can be unloaded from each side 
at the same time. The elevator legs, as they are 
called, are simply endless chains equipped with buck¬ 
ets, the same as one sees in any country grist mill. 
These carry the grain into the elevator, from which it 
is carried by chutes into the weighing hoppers, and 
after it is cleaned, goes to the bottom of the ship ele¬ 
vator, as it is called, in the hold, whence it is elevated 
to the top of the tower, and from there carried by 
long pipes into the steamer. Some of these elevators 
have a capacity of 6,000 bushels per hour. They are 
quite expensive, costing sometimes $40,000 or upwards. 
t t t 
Thanksgiving 1 Poultry. — Thanksgiving occurs 
very early this year, November 24. There is always 
an extra demand for prime poultry. Choice turkeys 
and ducks are most in demand, with a little more than 
the ordinary demand for chickens, very little for 
geese, and no extra demand for fowls. There is sel¬ 
dom an oversupply of choice, well-fattened and well- 
dressed poultry, arriving in prime condition. For 
this market, poultry must be bled by sticking, and 
simply have the feathers removed. Each shipper 
should learn just the requirements of the market to 
which he intends shipping. The crop of turkeys this 
year is reported to be moderate. None but those in 
good condition should be shipped, and they should be 
carefully dressed to avoid bruising and breaking of 
the skin. Dry-picked poultry sells best. All poultry 
should be thoroughly cooled before packing, each 
kind packed by itself, neatly, and so as to show up 
well when the packages are opened. Don’t put poor 
specimens in with the good, under the impression that 
the good will sell the poor. Such practices result in 
lowering the prices of the whole lot. Anything poor 
and bony would better be fed for a longer time, and 
kept for a later market. Mark packages plainly as to 
what they contain, the name of the consignee and of 
the consignor, and notify the former by mail. Poultry 
for the Thanksgiving market should arrive here not 
later than Monday morning, November 21. There is 
almost no sale for poultry for several days after a 
holiday. Above all, be sure to ship to a reliable 
dealer, and not to one of those frauds, so plentiful 
always at this season, who promise a great deal more 
than any honest man can perform. f. h. v. 
A YANKEE IN OHIO. 
HOW THE STATE LOOKS TO EASTERN EYES. 
Its Advantages and Disadvantages. 
Part IV. 
[EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.J 
A Cheese Country. — I was told that more cheese 
is shipped from Aurora station than from any other 
point in this country. Frank Hurd and W. J. Eld- 
ridge are cheese magnates. Each owns something 
like 2,000 acres of land, which is broken up into ten¬ 
ant farms and used to produce milk for the cheese 
factories. Mr. Hurd is said to be able to regulate the 
price of milk and cheese in upper Ohio. These vast 
shipments of cheese are made from Aurora because 
of a peculiar and ingenious method of distribution 
on the train. Several car-loads of cheese will be 
started from Aurora at one time, and at once, men in 
the cars begin to sort out the cheese into lots to suit 
orders. They work just like men on the United States 
mail cars, so that at the railroad junction where sev¬ 
eral trains are waiting, the orders for cheese are all 
made up. The boxes are quickly transferred to the 
different trains, and off they go—south, east and west, 
all over Ohio and Indiana This system of shipping 
makes it possible to obtain the best freight rates, and 
cheese is hauled into Aurora from 20 miles around. 
CIleesemaki^g•,—Mr. Eldridge told me that, in 
buying and shipping cheese from hundreds of fac¬ 
tories, care must be taken to obtain a uniform arti¬ 
cle. Mr. E. said that they skim the milk in the vat 
so as to take out about one pound of butter to 130 
pounds of milk. This gives a milder flavored cheese, 
more satisfactory to their customers. He said the 
milk sent to the factory in Winter averaged higher in 
fat than that from the same herds in Summer. The 
explanation for • this was that, in a herd well cared 
for, the cows were, on the average, more comfortable 
in Winter than in Summer. There were fewer violent 
changes in a good barn than out in a pasture, and no 
flies or dogs. He claimed that the quality of the 
milk is determined by the condition of the cow rather 
than by her food. It was a good deal easier to burn 
up her butter fat by neglect and abuse, than to make 
more of it by changing her feed. Mr. Eldridge is not 
a silo man, but he said that there is every argument 
in favor of good Winter dairying. 
A Cheese Factory.—I take it for granted that 
the majority of readers never saw cheese made. One 
small factory near Aurora may be taken as a fair illus¬ 
tration. The place was as sweet and clean as water 
and steam could make it. Three great tin-lined tanks 
or vats stood side by side at one end of the building. 
Above them was a platform where milk was brought 
to be weighed, and then poured through a great tin 
spout or funnel into vats. One of these vats was 
about two-thirds full of a thick, dirty-looking fluid, 
and the cheesemaker was poking about in it with a 
wooden rake stirring up the masses of curd from the 
bottom. A floating glass thermometer gave him the 
temperature. The story of cheesemaking reads easily 
enough. The milk is raised to a certain temperature 
by letting in steam, and held there. Then a certain 
amount of rennet is put in. The curd is separated 
from the whey, stirred until it is just right, and then 
put into a special vat to drain and be salted. Then it 
is bandaged and pressed and cured. It all seems simple 
enough to one who will never do anything with this 
“hardened milk” but eat it, but there are compara¬ 
tively few of us who realize the care and skill re¬ 
quired to handle and control the delicate chemistry 
of this cheesemaking. It seemed to me that it pre¬ 
sented a more difficult problem than buttermaking. 
There was a Babcock test at this factory, but I was 
surprised to learn that milk was not bought on the 
basis of its butter fat. In some Wisconsin factories, a 
curd test for detecting bad milk has been adopted. I 
cannot understand why the Ohio Yankees still buy 
milk and not fat. A notice in front of the factory an¬ 
nounced that the price of milk would be eight cents 
for 10 pounds ! 
Money in Cheesemaking.— With milk at 80 
cents per 100 pounds, one would hardly expect to find 
a prosperous class of farmers, yet it is the patrons of 
just such factories who are filling up the vaults of the 
savings banks, and adding comforts and luxuries to 
their homes. I was told that the year’s milk from 
the average cow in this region will bring about $30. 
Most farmers calculate to sell enough wheat, potatoes, 
fruit or smaller crops to pay the running expenses of 
the farm. The corn will either fill the silo or buy 
bran for the dairy—sometimes nearly both. Thus 
the income from the cows is planned to be nearly all 
profit except a part of the cost of the grain. Every 
farm has its rich Blue-grass pasture which is never 
plowed up. One of the hardest things for a Jersey- 
man to understand is the reverence these western 
farmers have for Blue grass. When I said that I 
would like to plow up one of these rich pastures and 
plant sweet corn or Lima beans, they looked as 
shocked as though I had uttered some profane threat 
at their dearest friend. With this simple and sure 
plan of farming, a good farm on the Western Reserve 
ought to be a fair investment so long as one can 
keep up the clover crop. 
Cheese or Batter Dairying. —I am glad that I 
was able to compare regions in which butter and 
cheese are made. I had supposed that cheesemaking 
exhausted a section. It carries away far more plant 
food than butter, and little of the wastes is returned 
in the whey. When a farmer brings skim-milk back 
from the creamery, and feeds it at home, the farm 
loses but little in fertility. It all goes in cheese, how¬ 
ever, and that is why it seemed strange to me that, 
after all these years of cheesemaking, the farms are 
producing larger crops than ever of corn, wheat and 
hay. What does it ? CLOVER ! That is the wonder¬ 
ful little friend that goes up into the air and down 
into the soil to obtain new plant food to replace what 
the cheese carried away. It will be a hard outlook 
for the Western Reserve if Sir William Crookes is 
right in saying that, sooner or later, the land will be¬ 
come “clover sick”, and demand a long vacation. 
Then they will have to go to Lake Erie for fish scrap, 
and to Cleveland and other cities for their sewage. I 
think the cheese made from an acre of grass or corn 
carries away more nitrogen and phosphoric acid than 
the average crop of potatoes, yet we eastern farmers 
think that we must make up for the fertility in the 
potatoes by using at least half a ton of fertilizer. But 
little potash is carried away in cheese. While the 
clover holds out, phosphoric acid seems to be the chief 
need in this cheese section. Two crops that seem short 
in a cheese country are hogs and calves. That is be¬ 
cause they lack skim-milk, though the best hogs I saw 
in Ohio were not in dairy sections. In the cheese 
country, they never take you out into the barn and 
show you the bull. They usually keep him out of 
sight, while in a dairy section, they brag about him. 
I don’t see how a cheese dairyman can love his cow as 
the buttermaker does his, for she is bought and sold 
like a plow or a cultivator. She doesn't grow up on 
the place as the butter cow does, and thus come into a 
sort of partnership. The best of her blood and bone 
goes out of the country in cheese ; it doesn’t come 
back to the farm ! 
The Outlook. —“ This will always be a dairy coun¬ 
try”, said Mr. Hurd. “The land is well suited to 
dairying, and the farmers understand how to produce 
milk. We have a reputation for our cheese, too, and 
that counts for much.” There are many tenant farm¬ 
ers—too many, it struck me. The tenant farms are 
usually well kept up, for the owners insist that about 
so much clover must be used—just as English land¬ 
lords put in the lease, what rotation must be followed, 
and what manure and fertilizer shall be used. I have 
no figures to show how these tenant farmers are pros¬ 
pering. They seem to be making a fair living ; on 
the whole, better than the majority of the tenants in 
our part of New Jersey, though the systems are very 
different. Land could, evidently, be bought at a fair 
bargain, and as the present owners grow older, it 
seems to me that more and more of the farms will be 
rented. Some men evidently prefer to rent rather 
than to buy. I do not understand why there should 
be so much hesitation or objection to ownership of 
land. This section of Ohio is bound to continue rich 
and prosperous, but it remains to be seen what classes 
of society are to benefit mostly by the wealth—the 
son who stays on the farm, the son who goes to the 
city, the old man who rents out his land, or the tenant 
who puts his labor into it. More and richer land 
is coming under cultivation. An enormous swamp is 
being drained by cutting a ditch as large as a river 
through it. A great steam shovel or scraper is mounted 
on a scow which floats in the water of the ditch. 
Roots, stones and dirt are scraped and thrown out by 
this steam giant. A dozen men on this floating outfit 
do the work of 500 armed only with pick and shovel. 
This land which has thus far produced only malaria 
and mosquitoes will in time be fitted to produce more 
cheese. h. w. c. 
BUSINESS BITS. 
A large amount of interest is being taken in the different styles 
of wire fencing. The farmers now consider it to be a fact that 
this is the coming fence, on account of its durability. The Bowen 
Cable Stay Fence Co., of Norwalk, O., manufacture a wire fence 
machine, of which it claims 4,000 have been sold in the last three 
years. The company will send full particulars about it, if you 
send for them. 
The arguments in favor of dishorning have been fully discussed 
for years, so that most readers are familiar with them. One 
thing is settled, that dishorning is a benefit to the animal as well 
as the owner. It means safety for both. Just the best way to 
take off the horns is quite another subject. Webster <fe Dickinson, 
Christiana, Pa., have some plausible arguments in favor of their 
improved convex dishorner, which they will send if you ask them. 
The people on the farm, whether husband, wife or child, need 
a purse for carrying silver coin, more, perhaps, than any other 
class of people. In their vocations and surroundings, silver 
pieces are likely to get misplaced or lost. The Paragon Patent 
Folding coin purse is just the thing. It will make a nice Christ¬ 
mas present, too, one that costs little, yet is pretty and service¬ 
able. It is made by Jas. S. Topham, 1231 Penn. Ave., Washington, 
D. C. Prices are given in his advertisement. 
The Elgin National Watch Co., Elgin, Ill., established its watch 
factory there about 34 years ago. During that time, the company 
has turned out about 8,000,000 watches. The name now is a stand¬ 
ard for just what we want in a watch. The company has per¬ 
severed for so many years in turning out nothing but first-class 
watches, the name Elgin is finally accepted as the highest stand¬ 
ard. It must have cost the company some money to establish 
thia reputation, but it’s worth more than it cost. 
