664 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 9 
The Rural New=Yorker. 
JlHE BUSINESS FARMERS' PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
Elbert S. Carman. Editor-In-Chief. 
Herbert W. Collingwood, Managing Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
PRICE, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR, 
To fcrelgn countries In the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 
8s. 0d., or 8*4 marks, or 1054 francs. 
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 
couut line. Absolutely One Price Only. 
Advertisements inserted only for responsible and honorable houses 
We must have copy one week before the date of issue. 
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 oi ders 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, OCTOBER 9 , 1897. 
The good points of the White Wyandotte are men¬ 
tioned on page 659. The B. P. Rock has been one of 
the most widely distributed on the farms, of any of 
the business breeds. Did you ever stop to think what 
a difference there would have been had this breed not 
been produced ? It seemed to fill an existing need 
among market poultrymen. There is no doubt that 
the infusion of vigorous P. Rock blood into the flocks 
of the country has done much to improve them. The 
White Wyandotte seems to possess some points of 
superiority over the P. Rock, and we look for a warm 
welcome for this breed. 
© 
New England comes to the front again. We now 
learn of a Vermont farmer with 13 living children— 
11 of them girls. This man is a fruit farmer and, as 
one friend puts it, “ He raises three crops at the same 
time, viz : grass, apples, and boys and girls ! ” A man 
with 11 good daughters may well be said to be in 
the “peach” business. Tastes may differ, but we 
regard 10 healthy daughters as just about an ideal 
family. Some day, the West will erect a monument 
to the New England school ma’am. She came from 
the Yankee farm home—a human bacterium of good 
morals and order. We are glad to know that the 
New England girl crop is prospering. 
0 
While the poultry industry is such an important 
one, and interest in pure breeds is constantly growing, 
the facilities for exhibiting at many of our fairs are 
sadly inadequate. In some, the coops are of anti¬ 
quated pattern, and so crowded and piled up so high 
that the fowls are extremely uncomfortable, and vis¬ 
itors haven’t half a chance to study the different 
breeds. In some cases where buildings are provided, 
they are so small that many coops are shown under 
tents, and in some cases, even piled up on the ground 
outside. This is a great mistake. It is small en¬ 
couragement to exhibitors to bring valuable birds to 
be thus exposed. If some of the space given over to 
fakirs were devoted to this purpose, it would be more 
in keeping with the avowed purposes of these fairs. 
© 
The State of Illinois has been foremost, during the 
past year, in the construction of rural telephones, 
and farmers are realizing the value of this great con¬ 
venience. The system is constructed on a cheap and 
substantial plan, each farmer contributing poles, and 
also aiding in the setting and hauling, while an ex¬ 
perienced man puts the machines in place. It is said 
that one system in the State embraces nearly 100 in¬ 
struments with two central stations. The value of 
the system is at once apparent; the farmers can 
order anything they need without leaving home, and 
the merchants arrange for delivery of goods at regular 
periods, mail being delivered at the same time. With 
telephone service, good roads, and regular delivery of 
mail and supplies, there is no need to complain of the 
isolation of country life. 
© 
What would be thought of a man who dug up a 
wagon-load of earth from his potato rows and hauled 
to market 10 bushels of earth with every bushel of 
potatoes ? What about the gardener who would cut 
down a stalk of sweet corn and haul it all to market, 
when he might have snapped off the ear and carried 
that alone? Such men do not show good sense, yet 
how much worse are they than the man who sends 
whole milk to the creamery ? The market man does 
not want the earth—he wants potatoes. The grocer 
has no use for the stalk, and the creamery man often 
does not know what to do with the skim-milk. The 
man who gets most out of it is the milk hauler who is 
paid for hauling useless water to the creamery. In 
some parts of the country, these milk haulers seem 
to control the situation, and both farmer and cream¬ 
ery men pay tribute to them. It is no more scientific 
to separate the cream at - home and send it alone to 
the creamery, than it is to separate the potatoes from 
the dirt. It seems strange that dairy farmers do not 
understand what they lose through a failure to keep 
the skim-milk at home, and send only the cream away 
from the farm I 
© 
The improvement now noticed in cemetery gar¬ 
dening was commented upon in The R. N.-Y. several 
months ago. The alteration from the old mound sys¬ 
tem to a flat surface for graves, not only improves 
the general appearance of the cemetery, but enables 
the lots to be kept in better condition. It is impos¬ 
sible to keep a mound properly covered, either with 
grass or flowers, while the level grave may be kept 
either as a velvety sward or a flower bed. The next 
improvement, to which we are coming by degrees, is 
the prohibition of all showy or ostentatious monu¬ 
ments. Some of the most beautiful modern ceme¬ 
teries prohibit anything more showy than a small 
stone marker, on the ground that such are out of har¬ 
mony with the general landscape plan. 
© 
The “ browning ” of grape leaves under glass, an 
obscure disease concerning which little has been 
known, is now described as due to a slime fungus, 
closely related to that which produces club-root in 
cabbages. This slime-fungus is not confined to the 
vine, but occurs upon plants belonging to many differ¬ 
ent natural orders, including various fruit trees. The 
same fungus has been found in both the tubers and 
leaves of potatoes; the “plasmodes,” or masses of 
protoplasm of which the fungus consists, may survive 
the winter in the tubers, to spread later in the vine. 
A moist atmosphere is a necessity to its spread. The 
manner in which this fungus may spread upon plants 
of widely differing character emphasizes the fact that 
any diseased plant should be destroyed by fire instead 
of being allowed to decay in field, garden, or manure 
pile, if we would arrest the progress of the disease. 
© 
We have shown photographs of men and women, 
cows, horses, and other farm necessities and conven¬ 
iences. Now we give a photograph of part of a letter 
just received from a friend in New Hampshire : 
yMyxAA'L 
'fi' } 
(J 
/'UaaA 
n -fib. 
-f- 
There seems no good reason why a man’s opinions 
should not be photographed as well as his face. The 
R. N.-Y. does not pretend to rank as a racer. We 
want to be more like the general-purpose horse. That 
useful animal will pull hard all day at the plow, and 
kick up his heels at night. He will cultivate corn and 
not step on a hill, and then take his place in front of 
the carriage and haul the farmer and his family at a 
lively pace. 
© 
We regret to see some of the agricultural papers 
printing the large advertisement of a man in Penn¬ 
sylvania who offers to teach a new system of enlarg¬ 
ing photographs. This advertisement is accompanied 
by an editorial note, evidently written by the ad¬ 
vertiser, indorsing this man and recommending his 
methods. In brief, this man claims to have orders for 
thousands of portraits from New York magazines, 
whose subscribers have sent photographs for enlarge¬ 
ment. He wants to hire 600 people in the country to 
do this work for him at their homes, at a salary of $8 
per week or more ! He has a system so simple that a 
child can understand it! The folly of such talk is 
painful to those who know anything about artistic 
work. The cities are crowded with young artists who 
are barely able to make a living. Why does not this 
man go to them for his alleged work ? He knows 
that back on the farms there are thousands of sick, 
crippled or feeble men and women eager for a chance 
to earn a little money at light and pleasant work. 
Such people are ready to grasp at a straw, and they 
believe his nonsensical statement that he can teach 
them how to draw acceptable portraits. This game 
is as old as the hills. Usually the advertiser has a 
so-called “outfit” for sale, and his victims are ex¬ 
pected to send money in exchange for this outfit and 
a lot of cheap materials. The work of a few people 
may be accepted for use as advertising, but most of 
those who enlarge the portraits will receive nothing 
for their labor, chiefly because they are not artists, 
and cannot make a picture any more than they can 
make a watch. There is often a grave question as to 
what constitutes a publisher’s duty in the matter of 
advertising. In a case of this sort, the methods and 
the outcome are so well known that there is no excuse 
for any paper that pretends to a reputation of watch¬ 
ing the interests of its readers. 
© 
In Greater New York, there are said to be about 
500,000 horses kept for business or pleasure. These 
horses consume an average of 10 pounds of hay and 
12 pounds of grain per day. This means 812,500 tons 
of hay aDdover 1,000,000 tons of grain in the course of 
a year. There are only 11 States in the country that, 
singly, produce hay enough to feed these New York 
horses. The States of Rhode Island, Delaware, 
Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Missis¬ 
sippi and Georgia all combined could hardly supply 
hay enough in their total crops to last these horses 
for 11 months. As for the grain, it is enough to say 
that the entire oat crop of New England would feed 
these horses only about 13 months. When we con¬ 
sider the tons of iron required for their shoes, the 
leather and thread for harness, the blankets and 
other horse fixtures, we can understand what a busi¬ 
ness is kept alive by the horses of New York. 
© 
BREVITIES. 
Who’s at the door howling loud In the night ? 
Chilling the heart with its sound of affright ? 
The wolf! The wolf! The wolf! 
Full well he knows when the mortgage is due, 
Knows all the burdens that rest upon you, 
Knows how the doubt struggles hard with the prayers 
Over the crib of the baby upstairs. 
Hungry and sullen, he howls for his prey, 
Gnawing your hope and your courage away! 
Tne wolf! The wolf! The wolf! 
Hark! Through the howl of the wolf runs a thrill! 
What is this cackle so hearty and shrill ? 
The hen! The hen! The hen! 
Who is this weak one, so feeble and small, 
Facing the wolf with her brave battle call ? 
Rolling the mortgage away on her eggs ? 
Hatching new hope from despair’s darkest dregs ? 
Weaker and weaker, the wolf sends his howl, 
Beaten and shamed by the brave little fowl. 
The hen! The hen! The hen! 
What to do for dog daze ? Kill the dog. 
Failure is often sired by a “ side issue.” 
Take a stitch in your sigh—and keep it down ! 
The stormy father should not expect a sunny son. 
It’s one thing to be tied fast and another to move fast. 
Have charity for those who have neither hope nor faith. 
Set your child right by teaching him to use his left arm. 
Are you boarding Jack Frost? He is mighty fond of chicken 
comb. 
Who can fairly judge a neighbor with the sting of some old 
grudge ? 
Weigh the cow’s milk and figure the cost of a pound of hard 
pounding. 
De sire the undesired calves in your herd by shooting the 
scrub sire. 
Take a snap shot at some of the scrubs that have “ soft snaps” 
on your farm. 
A man with a soft job may not need grit, but a fowl with soft 
food must have it. 
The chances are that you cannot be ornamental if you try 
therefore, be useful. 
There have been a good many second-crop strawberries in the 
local market this fall. 
It is cause for rejoicing and not for grief when the scrub turns 
up as fried chicken and beef. 
The Creamery Shark is in New York State again. File his teeth 
by keeping The R. N.-Y. on file. 
Another failure in the potato crop in Ireland. Another chance 
to give from our store of corn meal. 
The Spaniards in Cuba have sent for 1,000 fat American cattle. 
American beef to make Spanish brawn. 
The asparagus rust is a dangerous thing. The worst about it 
is that we do not yet know how to fight it. Hurry up, ye scientific 
men ! 
The Marshall strawberry demands that you marshall the best 
soil, culture and fertilizer at your command, if you expect to 
succeed with it. 
German brewers growl because beer grains are adulterated 
with American corn. They don’t want liquid on which a man 
can get “ corned.” 
The fall crop of “ snide ” advertising seems larger than ever 
this year. It indicates that city folks believe the farmer has 
more money than usual to spend. 
“ I would not enter on my list of friends, though graced with 
polished manners and fine sense,” yet lacking common sense, a 
farming man who would not kill potato bugs at sight. 
One advantage of the steam engine in the dairy is that steam 
is always on tap. No one knows how useful this is for cleaning 
so well as those who realize what it means to be steamless. The 
steamless dairyman is hampered. 
Some farmers have a real grievance against the bicycle. The 
hired man rides during the greater part of the night, and spends 
the next day resting for another night’s ride. No man can rest 
and do good work at the same time. 
