792 
November 33 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850 . 
Herbeut w. Cobbing wood, Editor. 
Ur. Wabtek Van Fblet, / 
H. E. Van De.man. >Associates. 
-Mrs. E. T. Uoybe, ( 
John J. Oibbon, Business Manager. 
ST7BSCBIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, 
equal to 8s. 6d., or SMs marks, or francs. 
“A SaUARE DEAL.” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper is 
backed by a responsible person. But to make doubly 
sure we will make good any loss to paid subscribers 
sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising 
in our columns, and any such swindler will be publicly 
exposed. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we 
do not guarantee to adjust trifling differences between 
subscribers and honest responsible advertisers. Neither 
will we be responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts 
sanctioned by the courts. Notice of the complaint must 
be sent us within one month of the time of the trans¬ 
action, and you must have mentioned The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
Name and address of sender, and what the remittance 
is for, should appear in every letter. 
Remittances may be made in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
409 Pearl Street, New York. 
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1901. 
At the request of a reader we are collecting fig¬ 
ures to show the cost of growing an acre of corn in 
the corn-growing States of the Middle West. Mr. 
Shamel gives a synopsis of many figures on page 
786, and we shall have reports from many individual 
farmers. Eastern farmers must remember that on 
these great, level western fields powerful machinery 
can be used, which greatly reduces the cost for a 
single acre. 
* 
Prof. C. L. Marlatt, Assistant Entomologist of the 
Department of Agriculture has found, in northern 
China, the original home of the San Jos6 scale! He 
has also founo an insect—a species of ladybug—which 
in that latitude keeps the scale in check. Specimens 
of this parasite are on their way to this country. The 
importance of this discovery can hardly be estimated. 
If the parasite will live in this climate and continue 
its work, we shall be able to destroy the scale as com¬ 
pletely as is done in California. 
* 
We regret to say that some of our readers seem to 
be running away with the cow-pea question. We 
have tried hard to make the following points clear: 
1. It is a hot-weather plant, and will never come 
up if put in the soil before corn-planting time. 
2. It will die at the first frost and will not make a 
green cover for Winter. 
3. It is not, in our opinion, a first-class forage crop 
for the North. 
4. We suggest Its use only on poor, worn-out fields 
which will not give good crops without heavy dress¬ 
ings of manure or fertilizers. 
6. We would not plant it on any soil good enough 
to produce a fair corn crop, and we would plow vines 
all under. 
There is plenty of room for the cow pea on our 
poor, neglected fields, but please do not disregard the 
above statements, and then say that The R. N.-Y. 
fooled the people about cow peas! 
* 
“For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, 
the Heathen Chinee is peculiar,” wrote a humorous 
western poet some years ago. Had the poet been a 
resident of New Jersey at the present time he might 
have substituted “oleo seller” for the tricky Celes¬ 
tial without doing violence to the facts. The oleo 
business is peculiar all along the line. It was con¬ 
ceived in fraud and iniquity and is carried on with 
great ingenuity fo) ihe purpose, not of supplying a 
cheap, useful food product, but of foisting off in¬ 
ferior substitutes at the price and in the place of 
real butter. One of the newer dodges is for the 
alleged butter dealer to take out an oleo license, 
which does not cost much in New Jersey, and offer 
the article when called for, while decrying its value. 
If oleo is demanded, a pale waxy grease, scarcely fit 
for lubricating purposes, is furnished at a moderate 
price, and when butter is wanted, and paid for at 
prime butter prices, a fairly palatable and highly 
colored brand of oleo is supplied. Thus the buyer 
is wronged either way, and the dealer’s profits much 
increased. The risk of an occasional fine is taken as 
part of the game. The public is quite effectually 
hoodwinked by the affectation of fairness, and the 
consumption of and taste for good butter much 
lessened. The passage and enforcement of a law 
similar to the Grout bill would go far to break up 
these detestable frauds, as colored oleo would be an 
expensive and dangerous thing to handle. 
Not long ago we heard a business man remark in 
a sneering way: “I have found that the farmers who 
go to farmers’ institutes are usually the ones who 
do not buy goods or pay their debts.” He was trying 
to show that the experiment stations and the insti¬ 
tutes had been of no particular benefit to farmers. 
Investigation showed that he was selling an article 
for which he claimed great results. The chemists 
had analyzed his stuff, and found that a mixture of 
common articles which farmers understand can 
be made at half the price of the manufactured goods, 
and prove even more effective. The institute speak¬ 
ers had given these facts to the farmers, and it was 
true that they did not buy the goods, and hence 
did not pay for them! We think that the farmers 
of this country can stand a great deal of just such 
instruction as that. The more these myths and big 
stories are pricked by the sharp point of science, 
the better for all except the rogues who have, in 
years past, stuffed their pockets with double profits. 
* 
The picture on our first page is taken from Wheat 
Growing, an excellent pamphlet issued by the United 
States Department of Agriculture. Four years ago 
there was a “wheat blockade” in the famous Palouse 
country of Washington. Thousands of bushels of 
sacked wheat were piled up at the railroad stations, 
waiting for trains to haul the loads away. This 
Palouse country is blessed not only with a soil that 
seems inexhaustible, but with harvest weather that 
seldom shows rain. Thrashed grain may lie upon the 
ground in sacks with perfect safety, and farmers haul 
it at their convenience. There is no watching the 
sky to dodge in ahead of a shower. These vast piles 
of cheap wheat might discourage some eastern grain 
growers, whose fields are small and whose soil is 
poor. They must remember the millions of mouths 
that are to be fed on each side of the ocean and that 
the way to compete with extensive culture on new 
land is to practise intensive culture on old soil. 
* 
The account of good local profits from potatoes on 
page 787 is as correct as careful investigation can 
make it, and may be accepted as rather an under 
statement of the facts. The yields are not at all 
phenomenal, but in connection with the prevailing 
good prices for potatoes make a comfortable showing 
for the growers. The combination of a local good 
crop in the face of partial failure over large areas, 
and a brisk demand at high prices, may not again 
occur, and some of the growers are apprehensive 
that over planting may follow an account of their 
good fortune. The salient fact, however, remains 
that the successful growers have mastered the art of 
potato culture by persistent and intelligent efforts 
through a long series of seasons, good, bad and 
indifferent. The three requisites of good seed, ample 
fertilization and thorough, unsparing cultivation, can 
do much to offset an unfavorable growing season. 
If next year’s operations fail to return more than a 
working profit, we venture to say that these expe¬ 
rienced potato men will be less disappointed than 
the beginners who may be tempted to make a hurried 
investment in a poorly prepared potato patch. 
* 
The R. N.-Y. has favored some features of the 
centralized school system. Under this plan the dis¬ 
trict schools are abandoned and pupils are carried 
back and forth in a public conveyance to the village 
school. We saw this plan in operation at one local¬ 
ity in Ohio, where everybody seemed to be well sat¬ 
isfied. The following letter from a reader in Jeffer¬ 
son County, N. Y., certainly gives another side to the 
matter: 
We have a district school here closed by a one majority 
vote without furnishing conveyance, and this compels five 
children of poor parents to stay at home. The well-to-do 
farmers are sending their children to a village school with 
the public money these children have a right to, or at least 
their share. The school closed is 3% miles from the village 
school. The centralized school law is all right as Intended, 
but unless forced to furnish conveyance it gives the parties 
having a little spite, or those looking for a cent at any 
one’s expense, a decided advantage. It depreciates the value 
of farm property, both selling and renting. It gives those 
close by the village school a privilege at the expense of those 
farther out who can’t go. It takes the poor man’s only 
privilege of educating his children. It causes irregular at¬ 
tendance. Even with conveyance, who wants their little 
eight-year-old girls to be toted off four or five miles, night 
and morning, with some stranger, with mud up to the axle 
or snow up to horses’ backs, as It Is here in northern New 
York, when the school house is within half a mile? The 
vote that closed the school had no Interest other than saving 
the little tax. 
The facts as above stated show a case of injustice. 
No man or set of men should have the right to take 
the district school away from poor children without 
putting them within reach of another school. We 
do not understand all the circumstances connected 
with this case, but it seems reasonable to suppose 
that there are townships where this centralized 
school system cannot be enforced without annoyance 
or injustice to some one. Will those who live where 
it is being tried tell us how it works? 
* 
Last Spring we received a call from P. O. Wan- 
nieck, an Austrian who has large fruit orchards in 
his own country. Mr. Wannieck came here to study 
the American system of orcharding. Strange as it 
may seem, he says, after visiting most of our apple¬ 
growing sections, that he expects to ship fruit to 
America! He says: 
One reason why American apples are not more popular 
on the Continent is that your exporters send us compara¬ 
tively few varieties aside from the Ben Davis, which has 
no virtues but its beautiful colors and shipping qualities. 
Our trade, particularly in the German States, does not 
care for the big red apple, and buys in preference the one 
that is green, but of fine flavor and texture. We can pro¬ 
duce fruit cheaper than you can in this country, because 
labor costs us but a third as much, and the problem of 
exporting profitably resolves itself into a question of trans¬ 
portation. 
There you have the work of Ben Davis again. 
According to the last reports from the English 
apple markets, Missouri Ben Davis sold at ?5.35 to 
$5.84 per barrel, Albemarle Pippin brought $6.33, 
King $7.78, and California Pippins $2.92 per box of 
one bushel! It will be nice business if the American 
Apple Consumers’ League succeed in doubling the 
demand for fine eating apples in our eastern cities 
only to have the Californians and Europeans step in 
and capture the trade! 
* 
Rhode Island is a little State with only 5,498 
farms—two less than 10 years ago. The soil for the 
most part is not rich, and has been under cultiva¬ 
tion for more than two centuries. There are only 113 
more farms in the State than there were in 1850, 
while in that time 169,133 acres have gone out of cul¬ 
tivation. The average size of the farm is now 83 
acres, against 103 in 1850. Yet, with this decreased 
acreage under the plow, the total farm wealth of the 
State has increased $7,888,549, while the value of 
one year’s farm products has doubled. This means 
that certain unproductive lands have been thrown 
out of cultivation, so that the farm work might be 
concentrated on fewer acres. Naturally the produc¬ 
tion of grain and the fattening of live stock have 
decreased, and fruit, vegetables and poultry have 
taken their place. 'I'he average income from an 
acre of potatoes was $75.72, while an acre of grain 
averaged only $17.97. Western competition has in¬ 
jured the Rhode Island farmer’s business in beef 
and pork, and the oleo manufacturers have nearly 
destroyed the dairy business, but the hen helps out. 
The year’s output of poultry and eggs was valued at 
$1,055,635, which would have bought all the horses 
and all the sheep in the State. It would also have 
bought all the milch cows and all the swine. Thus it 
appears that after 250 years of cultivation the farms 
of Rhode Island produce a greater value than ever. 
The land that goes out of cultivation should never 
have been cleared in the first place, and new crops 
and new stock have more than doubled the average 
income from an acre of cultivated land. 
• 
BREVITIES. 
You never will carry a brimming pail 
From a cow that droops with a “hollow tall.” 
For whoever heard of a tail all hollow 
In a cow that has all she needs to swallow 
Of a ration balanced to meet her need 
Of roughage and plenty of clean, sweet feed? 
It’s the cow that droops by the windy stack. 
Describing a circle with her poor back. 
With nothing to drink but a chunk of ice. 
And nothing to eat but a fi’ozen slice 
Of wheat straw sandwich—that sad and forlorn. 
Comes down with a case of the hollow horn. 
It’s hollow stomach that brings her to grief. 
So make her contented or make her beef. 
Print facts rather than fakes. 
The best blow for self-criticism Is a hit on the 1. 
The Mother apple ought to make superior vinegar. 
“Yes,” said the man as he made his “kick,” “I deny that 
in toe toe!” 
See what Mr. Keesling says about California apples—no 
red ones wanted! 
Now that feeds are so high It’s a good time to get rid of 
the low-grade cows. 
Wanted —Sound reasons why there should not be an issue 
of fractional currency. 
Before you lay down the law about important matters be 
sure you know what you are talking about. 
Abe we right in saying that a fair-sized hen should have 
the equivalent of five ounces of dry grain each day? 
The cause of “hollow heart” in potatoes is obscure, but 
the “holler” heart In man is caused by moral cowardice. 
Some people falter at their stent, and thus they never 
rise past “gent” ; while others by self-culture can earn the 
grand name of gentleman. 
We commend Mr. Van Alstyne’s article on the first page 
as pretty close to a model for readable, boiled-down fact and 
suggestion. It is the cream of the “Model Dairy” experience 
—well churned and stamped ! 
