848 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
December 17 
add it to these great clover fields. In truth, these 
farmers use on their wheat a fertilizer not much un¬ 
like the one I found Alabama planters using on their 
cotton ! The difference between the profit in the 
wheat and the loss in the cotton is due to the fact 
that the Ohio farmer calls clover his best friend, while 
the southern farmer hates it so that he will not let it 
enter his field. 
The fertilizing element most needed on these south¬ 
ern Ohio farms is phosphoric acid. I was surprised 
to find so little ground bone used in the West, where 
live stock is produced and slaughtered. Apparently 
farmers have so much faith in clover that they will 
not pay for the nitrogen in the bone. These corn and 
clover growers believe that they need to buy only 
phosphoric acid, if anything, and 'the blood, tankage 
and bone taken from their farms goes East to those 
who are willing to pay for nitrogen. There seems to 
be no question that, on most of these farms, the use 
of at least 200 pounds of superphosphate per acre on 
wheat is profitable. No one but a man whose heart 
had turned completely into a bag of fertilizer could 
stand in these rich clover fields, and advise the use of 
one of our eastern high-grade mixtures. At the same 
time, it would seem to me equally senseless to tell our 
eastern farmers that they do not need to use the fer¬ 
tilizer. 
Seeding' to Wheat. —I saw some slovenly-looking 
fields of wheat in this country, most of which I think 
was the result of badly fitted soil. A heavy clay, in 
wet weather, no matter how well drained, is quite 
likely to work up cloddy or to crust over. Where 
such soil is disked or cultivated over once and then 
seeded, the young wheat plants have a hard struggle 
for existence. When seeding in the corn field, Mr. 
Jamison told me that he worked the soil with disk 
and harrow at least seven times before seeding. If a 
crust were to form after the last working, he would 
disk again. In a well-cultivated corn field, the soil is 
usually mellow in the Fall, and this thorough shallow 
cultivation gives an ideal seed-bed for wheat. Drilling 
around the shocks had been done with great skill— 
and hardly a bare spot was to be seen in the field. 
These clover farmers recognize the mistake of leav¬ 
ing the corn fields bare during the Winter. The 
most soluble part of the nitrogen in the clover is left 
in the soil after the corn is cut. It is a question of 
letting that nitrogen wash out uselessly through the 
drain tiles, or giving the wheat plant a chance to 
utilize it. It seems to me that, on these tile-drained 
lands, if farmers were to change their rotation, and 
leave the corn fields bare during the Winter, it would 
be only a question of time before they w ould be obliged 
to buy, at least as much nitrogen as the wheat crop 
now saves in this way. The Western Reserve farmer 
follows corn with oats, which must be sown early in 
the Spring. 
“ How can you seed to oats”, he will ask, “ if you 
seed to wheat in the corn field ?” 
The answer would be that few farmers in Ross 
County either raise oats or feed them. Most of the 
horses get corn for breakfast, dinner and supper, and 
do their full duty on it! Their horses have so much 
natural spirit that they do not need to be “ stimulated ” 
with oats. _ H. w. c. 
THE HANDLING OF MILK BOTTLES. 
HOW TO KEEP THEM CLEAN. 
Mostly in the Washing. —Not long since, The R. 
N.-Y. discussed the plan of using individual metal 
labels for milk bottles, so that each customer might 
feel sure that bottles served to him were not used by 
any one else. I think this plan would not, in any 
great degree, decrease the chances of disease germs 
going from house to house. The milkman gathers 
up his empty bottles, and places them, usually, in 
cases, or if not in cases then in large boxes or the 
open body of his wagon, where they come in close con¬ 
tact, the dirty with the clean, and those from houses 
where there is sickness with those from houses where 
there is none. When the milkman gets home, the 
bottles are all placed in sinks for washing, and right 
here is the critical point so far as danger from the 
patron’s side is concerned. If the washing is in luke¬ 
warm water, and the scalding indifferent, then patrons 
better beware ; but if the washing is thoroughly done 
and the bottles steamed for 10 to 20 minutes, then all 
disease germs must surely have been destroyed. This 
question, then, resolves itself into one of washing, 
and so far as my observation goes, people who take 
milk of the larger dairy concerns have little to fear, 
even though contagious diseases are known to exist on 
their routes. 
How It Is Done. —Briefly, the proper washing of 
milk bottles, as it is done on the larger farms supply¬ 
ing milk in bottles to city trade, is as follows : The 
bottles are all placed in large sinks in which is warm 
water containing a washing powder of some kind. 
Steam is then turned into the water in the sink until 
it is as hot as the washer can bear on his hands while 
manipulating each bottle. After being washed, the 
bottle is placed in a rinsing bath of clean water to take 
out any of the washing-powder suds that may remain 
on it, and then all the bottles are placed in a steriliz¬ 
ing chest into which is turned live steam. This last 
operation brings the bottles to a temperature con¬ 
siderably above the boiling point, and should last at 
least 10 minutes—a half hour is better. The steriliz¬ 
ing chest need not necessarily be a pressure sterilizer. 
If the box is so tight that the steam cannot escape 
freely, it will enter the bottles and fill all parts of 
them as well as the chest. 
The greatest danger which confronts the city milk 
consumer is, to my mind, on the side of the dairyman. 
His feed, his cows, and his attendants, all should be 
objects of his greatest solicitude, and the resulting 
product, whether marketed in cans or bottles, should 
be most religiously watched from the time it is pro¬ 
duced till it is finally put down at the consumer’s door. 
New York. chas. h. royce. 
THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE SHARK. 
HOW he gets his meat. 
Throwing' Out Bait. —Inasmuch as The R. N.-Y. 
takes particular pride in exposing all kinds of frauds 
and “ sharks”, it may be of interest to some of your 
readers to know how the “ Bridge Shark” works his 
game in rural districts. It is generally assumed that 
the more competition, the cheaper will be the product 
offered for sale ; but in bridge contracting, the reverse 
appears to be the case. 
The first step towards securing a contract for a 
bridge from a township or county, by a bridge-con¬ 
tracting firm, is to ascertain whether such a town¬ 
ship or county is in want of one. For this purpose, 
bridge-contracting firms send blank postal cards, ask¬ 
ing for information, to the respective highway com¬ 
missioners, county engineers, or other persons that 
are liable to be the moving spirits in such matters. 
Such a postal card reads about as follows : 
. BRIDGE CO., . 
When you plan any bridge work, fill out this card and return to 
us. Plans and estimates furnished free on application. 
Date of letting....hour. 
Place of letting. 
Kind of bridge. 
Length of bridge. 
Width of roadway. 
Width of walk. 
Kind of foundation.height. 
Distance from bridge to railroad station_miles.station. 
Name.post office. 
Township.county. 
Each highway commissioner or county engineer is 
liberally supplied with such postal cards by various 
bridge-contracting firms, and when it has been de¬ 
cided by a board to build a bridge, these cards are 
filled out, as directed; as the opinion prevails with 
commissioners that competition is the life of trade, 
they will send out the call for bids to as many con¬ 
tractors as can be found in the business. 
Several days prior to the date of letting, one or 
more bridge-contracting agents will put in an appear¬ 
ance to look over the ground, and especially to 
pump the commissioner or other parties most inter¬ 
ested. The amount of “sugar” to be paid for secur¬ 
ing the contract being ascertained, the agents depart 
for other productive grounds. 
Fixing the Hooks. —On the date of letting, these 
agents reappear, together with a host of others (the 
number depends on the amount of business on tap in 
that vicinity at that particular time), who have been 
invited to bid, and also some who have not been in¬ 
vited. Some of these new arrivals may go out to look 
over the ground, but if the bridge is any great dis¬ 
tance from the meeting place, this further investiga¬ 
tion is generally dispensed with. This multitude of 
agents now take an inventory to determine whether 
all are on deck, and then call a star-chamber meeting. 
The transactions of this meeting may be summed up 
about as follows: 
“ How many are we ? ” 
“ Ten ! ” 
“ Expenses ? ” 
“ $25 each ; it’s a small job ! ” 
“ 10 x 25=$250 ” 
“ What is the shop estimate of cost ? ” 
“$610.” 
“$610+10%-f$250-KSugar)$50=$971.” 
“ Who is to have this job V ” 
“Smith, Ling, Brown, etc , have had such and such 
jobs. I want this one ! ” says Black. 
Chorus : “ Give it to Black ! ” 
Adjournment —“ Black sets ’em up ! ” 
The respective bids are now made up, with Black 
the lowest bidder, and at the appointed hour, all meet 
the commissioner and the board. Each agent (en¬ 
gineer ?) steps singly before the high tribunal, the 
board, and says his say about his great company and 
the advantages of his specific design. Black is the 
last one to take the stand ; his company is the best 
this side of heaven (if he is not a Chicago man); he is 
very particular in describing and illustrating the 
minute details of his design, and presto, being a n’ce 
fellow and having beep more particular in explaining 
everything to the honorable board, besides being the 
lowest bidder, he gets the job. 
Adjournment: All are happy ; Black sets ’em up 
again, board and all! What kind of a bridge the 
township will get is another question. 
Monroe County, Mich. edward c. tost. 
AMERICA AND THE SUGAR MARKET. 
Dr. H. W. Wiley, the chemist of the United States 
Agricultural Department, has recently returned from 
a visit to Europe, where he studied the question of 
sugar production. Various statements having been 
attributed to Dr. Wiley, The R. N.-Y. has obtained 
this note from him, which is important in its bearings 
upon the future of American sugar production : 
It is quite impossible to give exact figures for the 
consumption of sugar in the world, but 12,000,000 tons 
is an amount evidently too high. The consumption 
of sugar is, probably, somewhere between 7,000,000 and 
8 ,000,000 tons per year. 
It is, undoubtedly, true that the development which 
the sugar industry will undergo in the newly-acquired 
colonies of the United States, will greatly increase 
the output of sugar from sugar cane, and thus tend to 
restrict the market for beet-root sugar. European 
economists clearly foresee this result, and one of the 
causes of the antipathy which Europeans felt toward 
this country during the late Spanish war was, doubt¬ 
less, based on the effect which the event of the war 
would have upon the beet-root industry in Europe. 
During the progress of the Cuban rebellion and the 
Spanish war, the imports of beet-root sugar from 
Europe to this country amounted in one year to as 
much as 800,000 tons. When peace is fully restored, 
and the agricultural resources of our tropical posses¬ 
sions are developed, it is more than probable that the 
importation of beet sugar into this country from 
Europe will entirely cease. 
It is, probably, true also that the United States, 
with all her dependencies, will be able to fix the price 
of sugar for the whole world. We consume more 
sugar than any other nation. At the present time, 
our consumption amounts to 2,000,000 tons per annum, 
and it is rapidly increasing. The quantity of sugar 
which will be produced in the United States, includ¬ 
ing the Hawaiian Islands, Porto Rico, Cuba and the 
Philippines, will amount in a few years to 2,000,000, 
or, perhaps, 2,500,000 tons. h. w. wiley. 
Washington, D. C. 
HOGS IN APPLE ORCHARDS. 
How They Booted. —Last year, I wintered 30 
pigs, feeding them rye and rye straw unthrashed, and 
occasionally a little hominy. During the first part 
of April, I let them into one of my orchards, which 
contained about 10 acres, and gave them perfect lib¬ 
erty to root. By the middle of June, they had plowed 
the orchard ground completely, and hardly a spire of 
grass could be seen. As the land was quite rich, a 
new growth of grass soon came up, and with what 
small and inferior apples had fallen from the trees, 
they had plenty to eat. I did not feed these hogs 
anything but water from the time they were turned 
into the orchard until they were shut up to fatten, 
and I never saw such a contented and healthy lot of 
hogs before in my life. When I shut them up, they 
were not fat, yet they had good frames and growth, 
and it required but little corn to fatten them. 
I have now 180 pigs, some which I bought early in 
the Fall. Of these, I shall winter about 130, feeding 
them rye and straw, and a little ground corn once in 
a while. As I have two orchards, I shall, in the 
Spring, divide the pigs, putting 65 in each orchard, 
ringing those which I put in the orchard that was 
rooted up last Summer, and give the other 65 liberty 
to root. My plan is to let the pigs root up the orchards 
every other year, to keep sod from forming and the 
ground soft. As early as possible in the Spring, I 
shall plow and seed about five acres to clover, so that 
I can give the pigs additional pasture in July. I 
shall, also, plant a few acres of Early Cory sweet corn 
which I shall feed stalks and all, during September, 
thus having the hogs in fine shape to fatten early in 
the Fall. 
The Rooting Raid. —This Fall, we sold our ap¬ 
ples for $1,500 on the trees, there being 1,100 barrels of 
A No. 1 fruit. With the exception of 300 barrels, all 
the apples came from the orchard in which the hogs 
had pastured. When the Greenings were picked in 
the orchard where the hogs had been, the pickers got 
two bushels of culls to every 60 barrels of good ones, 
while in the other orchard, they sorted away 10 times 
that number. I believe that, if we had had hogs in 
