io4 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
FEB i5 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
(34 Park Row, New York), 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban 
Homes. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 18B0. 
Readers will kindly bear in 
mind that the R. N.-Y. clubs with 
all respectable periodicals and 
will guarantee to them the low¬ 
est possible combination rates. 
We cannot afford the space 
which a standing list in detail 
would require. The following 
may serve as illustrations : 
R. N.-Y. and the New York Weekly 
World, $ 2 . 25 . 
R. N.-Y. and the Chicago Inter Ocean, 
$2.50. 
R. N.-Y. and the Chicago Weekly 
Times, $2.25. 
R. N.-Y. and the Detroit Free Press, 
$2.50. 
R. N.-Y. and Harper's Magazine, $5. 
R. N.-Y. and The Century, $5.50. 
R. N.-Y. and American Garden, $3. 
R. N.-Y. and Christian Union, $4.50. 
It will be seen by this impres¬ 
sion of the R. N.-Y. that the 
first prize in the Women's Na¬ 
tional Potato Contest was not 
justly awarded owing to an over¬ 
sight. or to the carelessness it 
may be, of the judges. The first 
prize goes to Mrs. Selin da E. 
Jones of New York, and rather 
than that any cause for dissatis¬ 
faction should arise, the prizes 
will be distributed as announced 
and an additional $100 will be 
awarded to the first prize-taker. 
The variety planted was the 
White Elephant and the method 
was again that of the R. N.-Y. 
trench system. 
Mr. Alfred Rose of Penn Yan, N. 
Y., not contented with his effort to 
prove that the R. N.-Y. No. 2 Potato 
was in reality one of his own seedlings 
—a claim not withdrawn until he was 
threatened with a lawsuit—is now 
credited by one of our contemporaries 
as being the real, genuine originator 
of what for 10 years past has been 
known as the R, N.-Y. Trench Sys¬ 
tem. He originated this system “ 60 
years ago.” it appears ! 
The R. N.-Y. finds that a good 
many of its readers are women who 
are directly interested in farm mat¬ 
ters. Not a few of them are actual 
farmers, doing a good deal of the real 
work and managing all the details. 
Death or sickness has left them in 
positions which render it necessary 
for them to till the soil. They have 
taken up the work of the farm brave¬ 
ly and patiently, and are carrying it 
on with ability and profit. The R. 
N.-Y. expects, before long, to give an 
account of some of these women-farm- 
ers, why they farm, how they work 
and how succeed. It will prove in¬ 
teresting, we know, and will it not 
make some of the great, strong men 
who are grumbling so against farm¬ 
ing ashamed of themselves? 
About a year ago the Binding Twine 
Trust went into operation under the 
“protection” of a duty of 35 per cent, 
on foreign twine. It at once raised 
the price of twine so that a grade 
which could be bought for nine cents 
per pound in 1888 was put up to 22 
cents or more at the beginning of 1889. 
Later in the season prices were re¬ 
duced a trifle ; but by its operations 
it is estimated that the Trust extorted 
about $4,000,000 from the farmers of 
the country beyond the legitimate 
profits of the trade as indicated by the 
figures in previous years. The first 
news of the “ combine’s” action came 
last year from Minnesota ; this year 
it comes from Iowa. It appears 
that the Elizabethport Steam Cord¬ 
age Company and the National Cord¬ 
age Company now control the twine 
market, and have advanced the prices 
of. all kinds of twine. Rpre jnanilla is 
jisled.at 18K cents pep poufid, Pisa] at 
16 and sisal crow at 14 cents, and 
there is very little probability of any 
material decrease from these figures 
during the year. We are told that 
the farmers of Iowa intend to boycott 
binding twine altogether, and put up 
their grain loose, or bind it with 
straw. A reaper with a straw-bind¬ 
ing attachment has proved only part¬ 
ly satisfactory in some.experiments. 
Of late years, nay months, there 
has occurred a wonderful change in 
the export grain trade of this country. 
A short time back, New York almost 
monopolized it, and Philadelphia came 
second; now Baltimore takes the lead, 
especially in the export of corn. 
While the elevators of the Empire 
Metropolis are doing a slow business 
and those of the Quaker City are near¬ 
ly empty and almost idle, those of the 
Monument City are overflowing 
though pouring forth a constant 
stream of grain. What is the cause 
of this change ? Well, the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad Company has been 
the chief agent in effecting it. It 
has given exceptionally low rates 
of freight, has made advances 
on consignments of grain over its line, 
and in many cases gone into the mar¬ 
ket “out West” and bought large 
amounts of corn at competing points 
on its own account in order to secure 
the traffic. Then, again, the elevator 
charges in Baltimore have been con¬ 
siderably lower than those in either 
of its rivals, and an expert in the 
business says that a difference of an 
eighth of a cent per bushel in elevator 
charges is enough to divert the grain 
trade from one port to another. 
Philadelphia has recognized this, and 
a reduction of three-quarters of a cent 
per bushel in her grain elevator 
charges has just been announced. 
When will New York follow this ex¬ 
cellent example ? Every reduction in 
charges for handling agricultural 
produce between the producer and the 
consumer should benefit the farmer. 
The reports with regard to destitu¬ 
tion in South Dakota are extremely 
conflicting. In the St. Paul. St. Louis 
and Chicago papers grievous accounts 
have appeared of the extreme distress 
in 18 or 19 counties, and special cor¬ 
respondents of the Chicago papers 
have given many heart-rending de¬ 
tails. Governor Mellette, of the new 
State, is said to have officially certi¬ 
fied to the existence of great destitu¬ 
tion in the section mentioned, and is 
now appealing to Minneapolis and 
Chicago grain men to contribute 
towards a fund of $50,000 for the 
purpose of supplementing the work 
of the railroad companies in supply¬ 
ing the impoverished farmers with 
seeds for spring planting. On the 
other hand, a joint resolution has 
been introduced in the South Da¬ 
kota legislature denouncing reports 
of unusual destitution in any part 
of the State, and affirming the 
ability and readiness of the local au¬ 
thorities to relieve any local distress. 
Indeed, so indignant were the law¬ 
makers at the exaggerations in the 
Chicago papers that they have in¬ 
structed their representatives in Con¬ 
gress to vote and work against the 
proposition to make the Windy City 
the site of the World’s Fair in 1892. 
Letters from several correspondents 
in the counties mentioned in our 
editorial of January 31, leave no doubt 
that the accounts given in some of 
the papers and emphatically vouched 
for, were of a sensational nature. 
There is no doubt, however, that some 
serious distress does exist among new 
settlers here and there in some parts 
of the State ; but the extent of this 
has, no doubt, been grossly exagger¬ 
ated through Western papers and 
frequent telegrams sent to all parts of 
the country. 
“AN EXTRA IDEA.” 
T HE R. N.-Y. wishes to call atten¬ 
tion to the following letter 
written by a farmer in Southern New 
Jersey. 
“Some weeks ago I received that 
Bulletin, No. 13, from Cornell Uni¬ 
versity, and it, and your comments 
since on it, have awakened an extra 
idea in my mind that we truckers, 
(sweet potato growers especially) are 
losing; some of the valuable ingred¬ 
ients in our pmnure through our time- 
honored methods pf treatment of the 
' ‘ t r r • i * i > • ‘ 
same. My plan, and it is also the 
common plan in this section, is to 
feed our cows long corn-stalks in the 
open barn-yard, and to throw on top 
of these our stable manure, and this 
would remain (keeping it well littered) 
until about November 1, succeeding. 
Then it would be carted out in com¬ 
posts, and at any time from then 
until April 1, we would cart an equal, 
or larger, amount of purchased city 
manure, and they would be mixed, if 
the ground was not frozen, and 
covered lightly with one or two 
inches of soil. If the ground was frozen, 
and our home manure also we would 
wait till it thawed to mix and cover. 
Now my eyes have been opened and I 
can see a large loss. Would the R. 
N.-Y. invite the views of practical 
men with regard to the best methods 
for those who are situated as I am, 
and v ho wish to use all their manure 
on a spring crop, and must have it in 
fine condition to use in the hill?” 
The R. N.-Y. will venture to predict 
that this “extra idea” will represent 
extra money to this young farmer. 
The letter is printed here for two rea¬ 
sons : 1. To show the value of a sug¬ 
gestion. Set young men ot thinking, in¬ 
terest them in investigation, get them 
in the habit of comparing notes and 
you have them. This one bulletin 
will start hundreds of farmers on just 
such a search for information as this 
young man mentions. 2. To inaugu¬ 
rate the discussion of a matter that is 
of far more importance to the Ameri¬ 
can farmer than any other that we 
know of. 
BEET-SUGAR PRODUCTION IN 
NEBRASKA. 
I T appears that an experiment in the 
manufacture of beet-root sugar is 
to be made on a grand scale in Ne¬ 
braska. The town of Grand Island, 
in Hall County, in the south-central 
part of the State, has made an ample 
grant of land and liberal concessions 
with regard to taxation to a company 
which is to invest $500,000—mostly 
Eastern capital—in buildings and the 
most approved machinery suitable for 
the work. As a further encourage¬ 
ment, it appears that the legislature 
has offered a bounty of one cent per 
pound upon all sugar manufactured 
in the State. The great increase pro¬ 
jected and now being made by Claus 
Spreckels in the number of his beet- 
sugar factories in California, shows 
that that shrewd, cautious expert in 
the business feels confident of success 
on the Pacific Coast, otherwise he 
would never think of investing $5,- 
000,000 in factories there, in addition 
to the $500,000 he has already invested 
at Watsonville. France was the first 
country to engage in the manufacture 
of beet sugar on a large scale, and 
although Germany has of late years 
outstripped her in the production of 
the artide, still in our sister Republic 
the industry is still one of the most 
important, and the highest skill as 
well as the best appliances are em¬ 
ployed in it. 
A French expert is to have charge 
of the works at Grand Island, and 
after a thorough investigation, he says 
that the soil of Nebraska is far more 
favorable to the production of sugar 
beets than is that of France or Ger¬ 
many. The European soils, he states, 
contain but three-tenths of one per 
cent, of phosphoric acid—a highly im¬ 
portant agent in the growth of sugar 
beets—while that of Nebraska contains 
three per cent., and he estimates the 
saccharine contents of Nebraska beets 
at 12 to 16 per cent, while the French 
contain barely 10 per cent. The farm¬ 
ers of Kansas and Iowa, in which the 
beet-sugar industry has already been 
tried on a small scale, will look with 
no small interest towards the results to 
be achieved in a larger way in Nebras¬ 
ka and, indeed, these results are likely 
to be of interest and importance to 
farmers of many other sections of the 
country also. According to Spreckels 
and other good judges, there is no rea¬ 
son why this country should not, ere 
long, become an exporter instead of, as 
at present, an importer of raw and 
manufactured sugar. The $100,000,000 
now sent abroad every year for the 
product would then be distributed, in 
great part, among the farmers of those 
sections best adapted to the produc¬ 
tion of sugar-beets and the over-pro¬ 
duction in other lines of agricultural 
industries cpuld be profitably dimin¬ 
ished, 
THE END OF THE GREAT 
“AMERICAN MEAT 
COMPANY.” 
W HAT big hopes and fears were 
started about a year ago by 
the announcement of the formation of 
the gigantic syndicate called the 
“ American Meat Company,” which 
was to rival the dressed meat men of 
Chicago and Kansas City in the pur¬ 
chase of cattle and the marketing of 
meat. The stockmen of the plains 
and prairies whose business had been 
rendered unprofitable by the “Big 
Four’s” monopoly, hoped for “great 
things ” from the powerful rivalry of 
the new organization which was to 
have a capital of $25,000,000 against 
the $50,000,000 already in use by the 
“ Big Four.” The meat consumers of 
the East also hoped for a reduction in 
the price of beef proportionate to the 
decrease in the price of cattle ; while 
Eastern cattle owners dreaded a still 
further reduction in the price of their 
stock, due to the rivalry between the 
two big Western organizations. Then, 
a few weeks later, came the announce¬ 
ment that the “Meat Company” had 
greatly strengthened its chances of 
success by a union with the American 
Cattle Trust. Then, in the middle of 
April, we were told that the great meat 
syndicate had collapsed. Armour, 
the big Chicago chief of the “Big 
Four,” had forced President Flagler 
and Vice-president Moss to resign. 
They were also, respectively, Presi¬ 
dent and Treasurer of the Cotton- 
Seed Trust nearly half whose 
produce was taken by Armour to 
adulterate his lard, and it was 
said that he had threatened to start a 
rival organization unless the leaders 
of the Trust withdrew from the man¬ 
agement of the “Meat Company.” 
They did so, and it was thought that 
the enterprise had received its death¬ 
blow. Shortly afterwards, however, 
the announcement was loudly made 
that the company had been re-organ¬ 
ized on a firmer basis than ever, 
under the presidency of ex-United 
States Senator Warner Miller, of New 
York, and the public were urgently 
invited to take shares in the bonanza. 
The public didn’t accept the invita¬ 
tion and now the news is allowed to 
dribble out that the “Great-Amer¬ 
ican-Meat-Company ” enterprise has 
finally collapsed. The original pro¬ 
moters of the scheme sold their stock, 
lands and “plants” to it at figures 
egregiously above their actual or even 
speculative values, and the public 
very sensibly refused to invest its 
money in an organization whose cap¬ 
italization started with so much 
“ water.” 
BREVITIES. 
Catalogue notices of unusual interest 
will be found on page 111. 
And now cometh the man who raiseth 
Lima beans without poles. 
Any of our readers who have ever lived 
in octagon—eight-sided—houses, will oblige 
us by sending in their names. 
HAVE any ot our dairymen experimented 
with rice-bran or rice-meal yet? Somebody 
is missing a good chance to procure cheap 
cattle food. 
How about that man, on page 102, who is 
going to one of the abandoned farms ? 
The R. N.-Y. wishes him success and be¬ 
lieves he will win it. 
“Grow the pig and then sell it”—not 
“Grow the pig and then fat it,” is the 
thing to do according to the results of ex¬ 
periments at the Vermont Station. 
The R. N.-Y. described the system of 
selling fruits at auction about six months 
ago. Last week the first of our esteemed 
contemporaries began to talk about it. 
The R. N.-Y. has at last induced one of 
our leading implement manufacturers to 
make a potato sorter and place it on the 
market. No implement nas been more 
generally demanded. 
The R. N.-Y. proposes to sow about 
three bushels of tobacco dust on its garden 
potato-plot, this spring. Why ? Just to 
see what effect it will have on flea-beetles, 
potato-beetles, the potato-blight, fungus, 
etc. 
Cotton seed meal is regarded by many 
Southern farmers as their cheapest and 
best source of nitrogen in fertilizers. As 
it is a feed stuff it is excluded from the 
provisions of the fertilizer law. It fre¬ 
quently contains a quantity of hulls which 
considerably reduce its value as a fertilizer. 
Not long ago we were told of a plan to raise 
cotton for seed alone. It was stated that 
bushels of seed could be grown per aero 
which, being without lint, could be ground 
into meal or sold entire to feed like gram 
What has become of the plap ? 
