120 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
FEB 22 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
(34 Park Row, New York), 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban 
Homes. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1890. 
A barrel of “hard” cider in 
your cellar, an unprincipled hired 
man who likes to take a drink, a 
boy that you love : what a beau¬ 
tiful combination with which to 
manufacture a broken heart! 
With this issue the E. N.-Y. 
begins the publication of a new 
department—that of “ Business.” 
Under this heading it is proposed 
to place all the reliable informa¬ 
tion obtainable regarding mat¬ 
ters that have to do with farm 
trade, present and probable 
future conditions of the markets, 
wants and demands of consum¬ 
ers, estimates as to the condition 
and quantity of various staple 
agricultural products, the best 
methods of buying and selling 
produce, how to secure the low¬ 
est cash prices for what we buy 
and the highest cash prices for 
what we sell. All these and oth¬ 
er important matters will be con¬ 
sidered under “ Business.” The 
R. N.-Y is peculiarly well fitted 
for successfully conducting such 
a department. Prices all over 
the country are more or less de¬ 
termined by the prices in New 
York and other large Eastern 
cities. Again, the R. N.-Y. has 
intelligent readers in all the 
States and Territories. Compari¬ 
sons of the business methods 
employed by men in different 
parts of the country cannot fail 
to be valuable and instructive. 
As usual, the R. N.-Y. makes no 
glowing promises. At the same 
time, we ask you to keep an eye 
on the “Business” Department. 
Carman. —On the 10th inst, at her 
■winter residence in Brooklyn, in the 
eighty-second year of her age, Ann 
Denton, wife of Thomas D. Carman, 
mother of Adaline M. Snedeker and 
Elbert S. Carman, and daughter of 
the late Judge Oliver Denton, of Rock- 
away, Long Island, N. Y. 
For its next picture of successful 
farmers, the R. N.-Y. hopes to present 
photographs of some young men in 
Ohio who are determined to win suc¬ 
cess in agriculture. Some young men 
complain that the time has gone by 
when great success in agriculture is 
Dossible. There are no good chances 
! eft ! they say. Wait until we show 
■ hem what these young Ohio farmers 
are doing. 
Any of our readers who have har¬ 
rowed wheat or rye, in the spring, 
are invited to answer the following 
questions : 
1. Shall we harrow once or twice ? 
2. Shall we use a harrow with a 
straight tooth or one with a slanting 
tooth, with sharp teeth or with dull ? 
3. Does the harrowing increase the 
yield to any extent ? 
% 
Many farmers are sure that maple 
trees are tapped too much. Three or 
four holes are bored when one would 
answer. Old trees, from two to four 
feet in diameter, may be able to stand 
such abuse, but young trees will sure¬ 
ly fail if it is kept up. It is often'nec¬ 
essary to begin tapping young trees 
when only six or eight inches in di¬ 
ameter. They need the best of care and 
cannot possibly endure the rough 
treatment frequently given them. We 
shall have more to say about this next 
week. 
It will be seen that buyers of fertil¬ 
izers must trust to L the. honesty^of 
manufacturers to a considerable ex¬ 
tent. It is so in every business; a 
reputation for honesty and fair deal¬ 
ing is the best stock in trade one can 
possibly have. It will be noticed that 
there is no very general desire for the 
proposed new law. Until the chemists 
can give us satisfactory answers, it is 
folly to ask them useless questions. 
That is about the whole of it. What 
Prof. Whitcher says about other 
goods is sensible. 
Just about this time of the year the 
road question becomes a very live 
issue. This is the way an Ohio sub¬ 
scriber talks about it. There is not a 
township in this country that does 
not need just such business. 
“ Our farmers’ club has appointed 
a committee to try to secure some 
special road laws for our township. 
We have made several attempts to 
get the w hole county out of the ruts 
and failed, so now we are trying to 
awaken one township. I don’t know 
how the matter will turn out. but the 
men at the ropes are giving ‘ a long 
pull, a strong pull, and a pull all to¬ 
gether ’ with the best element of the 
community backing them.” 
- 
A very sensational story comes 
from North Dakota to the effect that 
efforts have been made to deliver the 
State to the Louisiana Lottery. The 
days of this iniquitous concern are 
said to be numbered in Louisiana, and 
its backers are looking about for a 
new dwelling-place. Naturally they 
selected one of the new States where 
more or less experimental legislation 
must almost inevitably be found be¬ 
fore the peculiar and widely differing 
elements of society can be satisfied. 
The scheme for legalizing the lottery 
was most cunningly devised and most 
carefully worked. But it has failed. 
There will be noNorth Dakota Lottery. 
All honor to the farmers of that 
State! 
Adam Smith informs us that a cen¬ 
tury ago rye formed the general food 
of one-seventh of the entire English 
population. In 1760 the acreage of 
rye was considerably more than that 
devoted to barley or oats. At that time, 
too, rye was eaten more generally in 
this country than at the present day. 
Since then both countries have come 
to consider the rye plant as of more 
value for its straw or fodder than for 
its grain. This is a wise decision. 
The gram food for ourselves and for 
our animals can be more economical¬ 
ly produced by other plants. Rve 
ossesses values peculiar to itself, 
ut these values depend mainly upon 
the proper utilization of the stems and 
leaves. 
The icemen in this city have about 
given up hope of securing a supply of 
ice on the Hudson River. They are 
flocking to Lake Champlain and other 
northern points. Ice will be high this 
year. Dairymen who supply New 
York with milk will suffer greatly if 
the winter passes without sufficient 
cold weather to make thick ice. In 
their trade ice is a positive necessity. 
The mild winter has started the mak¬ 
ers of ice machines into activity. As 
yet they have not produced a cheap, 
ortable machine so much desired by 
outhern dairymen. In Australia the 
experiment stations have made quite 
elaborate investigations as to the econ¬ 
omy of cooling milk by means of 
mixtures of ammonia salts, somewhat 
after the process employed in ice fac¬ 
tories. These salts give the proper 
degree of cold, but the cost is said to 
be too great. 
The following communication is re¬ 
ceived from the office of the Experi¬ 
ment Stations of the Agricultural De¬ 
partment. 
“A limited number of the leading 
agricultural periodicals of the country 
are received at this office in exchange 
for our publications and used for refer¬ 
ence. We should much like to add 
the Rural New-Yorker to our file, 
as some of its articles are of decided 
value to us. We have placed it upon 
our address list and hope you will 
favor us by an exchange.” 
It is an unconscious tribute to the 
good sense of the agricultural press 
that the number of such exchanges is 
“ limited.” In the R. N.-Y.’s opinion, 
the U. S. ^Government is^justjis well 
able to pay for its papers as it is to 
pay for the clocks used in the various 
offices. The regular price of the R. 
N.-Y. is $2.00 per year ; in clubs of five 
or over, $1.50. 
There are a great many farmers at 
the East who, after struggling with 
the problem of what to do with grade 
bull calves, will conclude that the 
Connecticut man who wrote the fol¬ 
lowing note, was sensible : 
‘ ‘ I recently had a newly dropped 
calf that I did not want as much as I 
wanted the milk needed for feeding it 
and nobody else seemed to want it 
either; all I was offered was five 
cents for its skin delivered two miles 
away. I killed him and cooked him 
for two fattening pigs and mixed the 
meat and broth with the cooked pota¬ 
toes, corn and apples well salted, and 
it was fun to see how the pigs liked 
‘ bob veal.’ The pork was very fine.” 
How much better than that can you 
do with the average grade bull calf ? 
The R. N.-Y. fed such a calf last year 
and sold it, when four weeks old, for 
$7.50. When we came to figure the 
thing up we found that we had fed that 
calf milk worth $8.40 at the retail 
price quoted in our neighborhood. 
How many of you have similar busi¬ 
ness transactions to confess? 
WesTERN potato growers are some¬ 
what astonished that Eastern farmers 
do not make more frequent use of a 
clover sod for the potato crop. With 
growers like Mr. Terry, clover is con¬ 
sidered absolutely essential to a profit¬ 
able crop of potatoes. Why should not 
the Eastern farmer use his potato fer¬ 
tilizer on a clover sod? One answer 
to this is that many of our farmers 
follow a rotation in which potatoes 
must follow corn, for two reasons: 
the stable manure must be used on 
the corn crop and the wheat and 
grass must receive the benefit of the 
fertilizer left by the potatoes. The 
advocates of green manuring for pota¬ 
toes cover this point by saying that 
the com ground can be worked with 
the Cutaway during the fall and sown 
to rye, which is to be plowed under 
the following spring, the full amount 
of potato fertilizer being used with it. 
Is this green manure good for the po¬ 
tatoes? A number of Eastern fanners 
say it is. They are following this 
system with success. The R. N.-Y. 
will begin to tell about their exper¬ 
ience next week. Those who care to 
try the plan in a small way can easily 
do so. 
Senator Pierce of North Dakota 
has introduced a bill in the Senate to 
create an agricultural commission to 
investigate the causes of the present 
agricultural depression. The Presi¬ 
dent is to appoint seven commission¬ 
ers, four of whom are to be practical 
farmers. Special objects for their in¬ 
vestigation are to include the laws re¬ 
lating to the inspection of grain, the 
regulations governing storage ware¬ 
houses and the possibility of inter¬ 
state inspection of cereals. Another 
point that will be investigated is the 
relation of transportation rates to the 
prices of products. In short, this in¬ 
vestigation aims to find out who gets 
the difference between the producer’s 
price and the consumer’s price. Of 
course, the influence of our tariff on 
the necessaries of life will be consid¬ 
ered. Now, if this is to be an honest 
commission, seeking for the truth 
alone, we want it. If the proposal 
to appoint it is only a sharp trick 
to secure capital for one or the other 
of the political parties it should never 
be started. No industry can be so 
helped by wise and honest investiga¬ 
tion on the lines indicated in this bill 
as American agriculture. None will 
be so injured by a false report. 
The farmers who have made monev 
by using chemical fertilizers, all aa- 
vocate heavy dressings. Before a 
man can bring himself to the practice 
of using $35 or $40 worth of fertilizer 
to the acre he must satisfy himself 
that the amount of fertility left in the 
soil by the crop is as safe, when in 
the form of chemical fertilizers, as it 
is in any other form of manure. 
Many farmers will not believe this. 
Their policy is to apply just what the 
crop can use and no more. Their 
theory is that if more were applied, 
the crop would not be any larger, 
while the surplus would be washed 
cut of the soil and thus lost. The R. 
N.-Y. believes that this theory is not 
sound. A study of the chemical 
action of phosphoric acid and potash 
in soils should show one that it is im¬ 
possible for all this ‘ ‘surplus fertilizer” 
to wash out. As its readers know, the 
R. N.-Y. used 2,600 pounds of high- 
grade fertilizer on a single acre of 
land. In the crop of 11,807X pounds 
of potatoes less than 75 pounds of pot¬ 
ash, 25 pounds of phosphoric acid and 
40 pounds of nitrogen were taken 
from the soil. What about the re¬ 
mainder of these substances ? Will 
they be lost or shall we find them 
again in subsequent crops ? The R. 
N.-Y. expects to see them in future 
grass crops : perhaps not this year, 
but sooner or later that fertilizer will 
show itself. Are we not right ? A dress¬ 
ing of some kind of soluble nitrogen 
should render the phosphate and pot¬ 
ash available to subsequent crops. 
BREVITIES. 
“To LIVE in clover” is what the good 
farmer is of all men entitled to do. 
The marksmen in your neighborhood 
had better organize a sparrow hunt. 
Is IT possible to make what is now con¬ 
sidered first-class maple sugar or sirup in 
the old-style kettle ? 
Do you believe there is a single farm 
east of the Mississippi River that does not 
need manure of some sort ? 
Let some of our dairymen tell us what is 
wrong about that system of keeping milk 
in a well, described on page 118. 
Try the Green Mountain Potato. It is 
late but a heavy yielder, and in many lo¬ 
calities the quality is reported as excellent. 
The R. N.-Y. is informed that the Uni¬ 
versal weeder can be advantageously used 
on the growing grain in spring. We mean 
to try it this year. 
A rousing article on road-making is to 
begin next week. It contains so many 
ti’uths that you will be almost ashamed to 
ride over the roads in your township. 
Yes, you can grow Lima Beans year after 
year, like onions, on the same ground. 
The R. N.-Y. had raised, until last year, 
immense crops of potatoes on the same 
plots for 13 years. 
The English people are not eaters of 
Indian corn. For cattle feeding they like 
linseed “ cake.” They can make up rations 
that will dispense with the use of much 
corn-meal. The market for Indian corn 
lies to the north of us—in Canada. 
“ It must be evident to the readers that 
I have made farming pay, for otherwise I 
could not have bought and paid for all 
these tools, paying for the farm at the 
same time, all before I have reached 30 
years of age.” So says Mr. Warn on page 
114. 
“I think every one who has read the 
Rural New-Yorker must be satisfied that 
he has had his money’s worth. I think during 
the past year there has been an improve¬ 
ment even on itself for any year since I be¬ 
gan to read it.” E. P. 
Greene Co.,N. Y. 
The R. N.-Y. has just bought a barrel of 
tobacco dust 1210 pounds) at 2)4 cents per 
pound or $5.25 for the barrel. It is pro¬ 
posed, as has been stated, to sow this 
abundantly on its potato-trial plots, to as¬ 
certain what effect it may have on the in¬ 
sects and fungi that have there accumu¬ 
lated. 
So it seems, see page 117, that those farm¬ 
ers in Wisconsin can grow potatoes for 
six cents per bushel. Now suppose Connec¬ 
ticut or New Jersey farmers could do that ! 
Suppose again those Wisconsin folks 
could drive a load of potatoes right into a 
city like New York,as some of their Eastern 
brothers can ! 
“AND so there was an oversight with re 
gard to the prizes in the potato contest ? 
You mistake, sir : the result is right in 
line with the Rural’s usual conduct—in 
giving double (for I’ve watched it closely 
for over four years)—but if it really was an 
oversight, it has not been the first one by a 
long shot; for we get the beuefit of such an 
‘ oversight ’—or double the value promised 
—every week. W. 
Birmingham, Conn.” 
Are beans “ vegetables ” or “ seeds ? ” 
That question has come up several times 
before the United States Courts, the last 
time the other day before Judge Lacombe 
of the United Circuit Court of New York. 
If beans are “ vegetables,” then an import 
duty of 10 per cent, of their price must be 
paid on all foreign beans; whereas, if 
beans are “seeds,” they are on the “free 
list.” In this, as in all previous cases, the 
court decided that beans are “ vegetables ” 
and therefore liable to taxation. Did the 
Court “ know beans ? ” 
An Illinois farmer’s boy writes the follow¬ 
ing as his opinion on a matter that has en¬ 
gaged the attention of some of our bright¬ 
est minds: 
“Under the caption of ‘ Saunterings,’ in 
the Rural of January 11, two paragraphs 
tell us that a great cause why many 
farmers’ boys abandon the farm, lies in the 
neglect with which their real abilities are 
treated there. I fully agree with this. 
Moreover, many a farmer hires a boy and 
{ >ays him $20 per month with board, while 
iis own son of the same age works along¬ 
side of the hired hand for only his board 
and clothes.” 
The R. N.-Y. feels that this boy knows 
what he is talking about. 
