i89o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
133 
1880, for the downward tendency has been 
greater since ’80 in reality than from ’70 
to ’80. This is not true of other labor. Again, 
the farms of the country in 1880 were val¬ 
ued at less than in 1870, notwithstanding 
the heavy increase in their number. Still 
again, while the country increased in 
wealth, from ’70 to ’80, from $16,000,000,000 to 
$56,000,000,000—using round numbers—over 
four-fifths of this increase was in cities, 
notwithstanding nearly one-half of the 
population is in the country. Wealth per 
capita on the farm has decreased in fact. 
No poetic considerations of farm life can 
gloss this sad fact over to those suffering 
from this tendency and prevent them from 
feeling the pinch of the fact or from look¬ 
ing longingly over into the plentifully sup¬ 
plied camps of the other industrialists. 
Two great reasons underlie the change in 
the status of our farming. The broader 
reason that explains the depressed condi. 
tion of agriculture in all old sections of the 
world is a simple one—clear and unmistak¬ 
able. It is the development of the arts in¬ 
volved in transportation, and especially of 
the application of steam to transportation. 
Hon. David A. Wells brings out the facts 
that bear on the question, whether he ob¬ 
serves the deep significance of them or 
not. 
Wheat is now carried for half a cent a 
ton a mile on land. In crossing the ocean 
only from half a cent to three cents a 
bushel is paid. The Suez Canal cut the 
distance in time between India and Eng¬ 
land from eight months to one month and 
put 50,000,000 bushels of wheat on the En¬ 
glish market. There are materials for 
great amplification on this subject. It is 
enough to say, in a nutshell, that the de¬ 
velopment of steam and the arts bearing 
on transportation has sent the steamship 
to every quarter of the globe, and the iron 
horse to the heart of great continents for 
farm produce, where 50 years ago grain 
could be transported only a few miles on 
land without having its value eaten up in 
cost of carriage. The world is to day one 
market, and our farmers are working in a 
commercial sense right alongside of the 
four-cent labor of India, of the miserable 
Russian peasant who lives a dog’s life, and 
by the side of the fresh fields of Australia 
and South America, where life is much 
simpler than here. Under these disadvan¬ 
tages our farmers are trying to maintain a 
far more cultured and superior life on the 
farm than any of their competitors. They 
must and will succeed, for they are living 
none too well. 
The other drawback is also a great one 
and is found in the domain of national 
policy. I shall not enter this field now, be¬ 
cause this communication is too long to 
allow me to define myself and so be pro¬ 
tected from misapprehension. One thing 
is evident—that we have settled farms 
faster than we have built shops, produced 
faster than we have consumed, and there¬ 
by, so far as the home markets are con¬ 
cerned, we have had a surplus of farm pro¬ 
ducts as a nation. This surplus has been 
produced in a market where artificial 
prices exist. I am glad to say that the ex¬ 
cess of home production over home con¬ 
sumption of farm products is now being 
very rapidly nai rowed, with a prospect that 
if diversification of farming is encouraged, 
it will soon practically disappear, when a 
new order of events will be ushered in. 
I have no doubt as to the future of our 
farming and of New Hampshire farms, al¬ 
though great and sudden changes are not 
to be looked for. Favorable forces are 
already at work. These it is not the office 
of this letter to present. Save for the early 
and local causes mentioned. New Hamp¬ 
shire does not stand alone in her seeming 
farm distress. On an average, her crops, 
if not the best in the Nation, are in the very 
front ranks in yield. I am writing neither 
to praise her nor to apologize for her, but 
to explain that which the Nation has had 
under discussion and not under full under¬ 
standing. While her name is up, the in¬ 
teresting and gainful fact must ever rise in 
the memory of every one of her sons and 
the lovers of her hills—namely, that the 
birth rate on her farms exceeds the death 
rate. This affords a study for the sociol¬ 
ogist. Pardon the additional and irrele¬ 
vant fact that her hills are life-giving. 
The records of Gilmanton, a town familiar 
to me for several years, showed the death 
of but one person a year under 21 years of 
age, while one-third of the death rate was 
of persons over 80 years of age. Here is a 
compensation if the reader holds with me 
that life on the farm is worth living and is 
the best life to live for him who is familiar 
with the natural forces involved in farm¬ 
ing and makes companionship with that 
Nature which ministers to his wants and 
nourishes best him who best understands 
her moods. 
Logan City, Utah. 
frtvm Copies. 
SEED TESTING. 
ITS VALUE AND PLACE IN RATIONAL 
AGRICULTURE. 
GERALD MCCARTHY, BOTANIST N. C. EX. ST A. 
Importation of weeds; seed-control sta- 
tlons in Europe; form of seed guaran¬ 
tee ; need of protection against adulter¬ 
ation and commercial greed; faulty 
tests at our experiment stations; “ shop- 
seeds;” frauds and “mistakes ” of re¬ 
tailers; the way the worst seeds come 
from small retailers; actual and conse¬ 
quential losses; return oj the Prodigal; 
the “ rule-of-thumb ” system out of date; 
importance of sound grass seeds; per¬ 
centage of vitality in good specimens; 
need of seed-control stations here; duty 
of our experiment stations. 
Most of the weed pests that vex the soul 
and deplete the purse of the American 
farmer are European plants, which have, 
for the most part, been introduced in pack¬ 
ages of imported seed. Among such impor¬ 
tations may be mentioned the Narrow¬ 
leaved Plantain, the Daisy, the Dog Fennel, 
Sheep’s Sorel, Patience Dock, Chess and 
many others. Within the last 10 years the 
quality of the seeds offered in the Euro¬ 
pean markets has greatly improved, and 
now in that region there is no difficulty in 
procuring seed guaranteed to be both free 
from noxious weed seeds and of a specified 
percentage of vitality. This improve¬ 
ment has been brought about by the sys¬ 
tem of seed testing and control inaugur¬ 
ated in Germany in 1870. Switzerland, 
Italy and France have seed-control stations, 
and in England the Botanist of the Royal 
Agricultural Society tests seeds for mem¬ 
bers. England has also a stringent law 
against the sale of adulterated and “ doc- 
tDred” seeds. The best known of Euro¬ 
pean seed-control stations is the National 
Swiss Station at Zurich. So great is the 
reputation of this station and such is the 
protection its work affords to reputable 
seedsmen, that many seedsmen in England, 
Germany and other countries send their 
seeds to Zurich to be tested, and on the 
station test such seedsmen guarantee their 
seeds to be of a specified degree of purity 
and vitality. The following form of guar¬ 
antee is given by a large English seed asso¬ 
ciation and is in effect similar to that given 
by all guarantee houses. 
“ 1. Our seeds are guaranteed pure and 
clean and of the percentage of vitality 
named in our catalogue. 
2. This guarantee is subject to the an¬ 
alysis of the Botanist of the Royal Agri¬ 
cultural Society. If the results of the 
analysis do not confirm the guarantee, the 
association will take back the seeds and 
refund the money paid for them and pay 
the cost of carriage both ways. 
3. Seeds once sown, the responsibility of 
the association ceases. The result depends 
upon so many things besides the quality of 
the seeds, that the growth cannot be guar¬ 
anteed.” 
Under the above system of guarantee 
the careful farmer need, never befoul his 
land with weed seeds. The supposedly 
“ smart ” and very much advanced Ameri¬ 
can farmer has not yet secured the advan¬ 
tages of the guarantee system. The neces¬ 
sity of such a system is quite as urgent 
in this country as in Europe. American 
tradesmen are not specially noted for con¬ 
scientiousness, or for ignorance of “ tricks 
that are vain.” The age we live in is pe¬ 
culiarly the age of adulteration and com¬ 
mercial greed. Scarcely any article of con¬ 
sumption capable of adulteration is sold 
pure in markets unsubjected to control. 
We should judge, then, that in the case of 
seeds such impositions upon the consumer 
as the case permits would be practiced by 
retailers, and such investigations as have 
been made seem to confirm this opinion. 
Several of the American experiment sta¬ 
tions have published tests of seeds, and 
these publications have added to our know¬ 
ledge of the different kinds; but as many 
of these investigations were conducted 
with and upon samples obtained directly 
from wholesale seedsmen, such tests are 
obviously no criterion of the quality of 
the seeds sold to consumers by local re¬ 
tailers. As regards grass and clover seeds, 
which are the kinds the farmer is most in¬ 
terested in, the greater part of the stocks 
annually sold by small retailers, is gathered 
up in small lets by the retailers them¬ 
selves, or by the commission-houses who 
deal in groceries and general supplies. 
Bulletins 78 and 78a, recently published 
by the North Carolina Experiment Station, 
give the results of numerous tests of seeds 
bought in different towns in North Caro¬ 
lina. The vegetable seeds were mostly in 
sealed packets and were, as a rule, reason¬ 
ably free from impurities. The vitality 
was, however, in many instances much 
lower than it should have been, and in 
two series of samples, both purchased from 
the same retailer, the seeds proved nearly 
worthless. The retailer being confronted 
with the result of the analysis, resorted to 
bluster, but finally acknowledged that 
they were old seeds. He claimed that they 
had been sold to us by mistake, but made 
no offer to return the money paid for them. 
It is evident then that “ mistakes ” of this 
kind are likely to occur more or less fre¬ 
quently where there is no control over the 
quality of the seeds sold in the market. 
Of the grass and clover seeds tested, 
while many samples were very good, the 
larger number were otherwise. The clover 
seed was, as a rule, weedy, being infested 
by plantain, rag-weed, cockle, hog-weed and 
other noxious seeds. Several samples con¬ 
tained seeds of the dodder parasite, and 
others had been deliberately adulterated 
with crushed quartz rock. A sample of 
Lucerne,a seed that sells in this market for 
$20 a bushel, was found to contain only 25 
per cent of vital seeds, whereas fresh seed 
should sprout 70 to 80 per cent. 
While it is doubtless true that the 
warm and humid climate of the South is 
especially destructive to the germs of stored 
seeds, it is rather likely that investi¬ 
gation will show much the same results 
everywhere, where seeds are sold by small 
retailers. These men, as a rule, know and 
care nothing of the vitality of seed and 
the means of preserving it. In the first 
place, they buy their stocks from the com¬ 
mission men or wholesale dealers who offer 
them cheapest, and then they are regarded 
as good until disposed of, whether that be 
within one year or 10. 
The loss to the consumer is not merely 
the price paid for worthless seeds. The 
value of land, manure, labor, and especial¬ 
ly opportunity must be considered. If 
inert seeds are planted, by the time the 
planter discovers the fact the season for 
planting has passed. If he be as unsophis¬ 
ticated as most farmers, he will probably 
conclude that his soil is unfitted for such 
kinds of seeds, and in this way he often 
suffers great loss. 
For more than a century, the American 
farmer has seemed to be the “spoiled child” 
of fortune. Unencumbered by crushing 
taxes and obsolete restrictions upon his 
liberty, such as handicap the European 
farmer, with a virgin soil and a propitious 
climate and a seemingly unlimited market, 
he has wasted, with prodigal hand, the 
gifts of Nature. But apparently, in the 
older sections at least, the inevitable end 
has come, and the prodigal has pretty 
generally resolved to return to Father 
Prudence and Mother Economy. The tend¬ 
ency of the times is towards intensive and 
scientific farming, and the reduction of the 
agricultural art to a degree of rationality 
approximating to that long enjoyed by the 
manufacturing arts. Under the old rule- 
of-thumb system, the farmer used as little 
manure as possible, and grew his own seeds 
or borrowed them from a more provident 
neighbor. If, at harvest time, he found, 
as he often did,Chess instead of wheat, and 
burdocks and plantain instead of clover, 
he gravely concluded that owing to the 
inscrutable decrees of Providence, or to 
some lack or excess of “humors” in the 
weather, his wheat had “turned to Chess,” 
and the clover to burdock. The good old 
man ! 
The modern farmer who uses a ton or 
more of expensive chemicals to the acre, 
and plants with an eye to a particular mar¬ 
ket, must, if he does not want to harvest 
the Sheriff, take care that the seeds he 
sows are vital and of the kind claimed ; he 
must know t hat his seed wheat is free from 
cockle, his rye from ergot and his clover 
from dodder, rag-weed and plantain. 
While the quality of the seeds sown is of 
consequence in any and every case, in the 
matter of laying down permanent grass land 
it is of capital importance. Grass seeds, as a 
rule, have very fugacious vitality and, as a 
rule, the smaller the seed the sooner it loses 
its power of germinating. Every intelligent 
farmer knows that a profitable pasture 
must contain a large number of different 
species of grasses ripening at different pe¬ 
riods so as to give a succession of fresh 
grass throughout the season. On meadows 
it is important to have “bottom” grasses 
and “top” grasses in a definite proportion. 
There are many well known formulas for 
mixing grasses for meadows and pastures, 
but unless the mixer knows the percentage 
of vital seeds in the different species mixed, 
such formulas have no rationality and are 
of very little value. Kentucky Blue Grass 
is one of the most extensively sown grasses 
in America. Concerning this grass, the 
empirical opinion is that it requires three 
years to secure a foothold upon the land. 
The why and wherefore of this no one has 
thought it worth while to investigate. 
Obviously if a part of the seed sown comes 
up the first year, there is no reason why all of 
it should not, if it be all of the same quality. 
Investigation and tests of samples of this 
seed show why it does not come up better. 
The best quality or “Prime” seed sold in 
the market rarely sprouts over 25 per cent, 
and the common grades do not usually 
sprout more than five per cent. In regard 
to the other “Meadow” grasses—Fowl 
Meadow, Wood Meadow, etc., the vitality 
is still lower. A good sample of Red-top 
will sprout 80 per cent., Timothy 90 per 
cent., Orchard Grass 70 to 80 per cent, and 
Sweet Yernal 40 per cent. It is not safe to 
sow any of the above-named grasses accord¬ 
ing to the given formulas when more than 
18 months from harvest. Grass seeds of 
the same age grown in different localities, 
have very different agricultural values, de¬ 
pending upon the difference in climate and 
soil. Yet with dealers seeds are seeds, and 
unless adulteration or mustiness is ap¬ 
parent to the unaided eye and nose, all sam¬ 
ples are considered of equal value. 
To remedy the abuses in the seed trade, 
which have been shown to exist in some 
localities and which are probably more or 
less common everywhere, it is necessary 
that American seedsmen should be com¬ 
pelled to adopt the guarantee system which 
has proved so eminently satisfactory in 
Europe. The adoption of this system may 
work a revolution in the seed trade. It 
may lead to the eventual abolition of the 
small retailer, but the interest of the con¬ 
sumer is paramount and the trade must 
conform to its requirements. It is declared 
by some that seed control is not experi¬ 
mental work within the meaning of the act 
establishing the experiment stations. This 
Is by no means certain; but in any case 
there can be no doubt as to the duty of the 
different stations to inform their constitu¬ 
ency of the quality of the seeds sold in the 
local markets and the profit of using only 
high-grade sorts. When farmers are edu¬ 
cated up to this point, they may be willing 
to provide special seed-control stations, 
thus relieving the station fund of the ex¬ 
pense. In the meantime, farmers who are 
alive to the value of good and pure seeds 
may reasonably expect the experiment sta¬ 
tion established in their State to furnish 
analyses and compute the relative values 
of seed samples submitted. 
NOTES. 
FERTILIZERS.—Certainly home-mixed fer¬ 
tilizers may be more economical than those 
offered in the market, and there is no rea¬ 
son why their cost might not be still fur¬ 
ther lessened to farmers by their clubbing 
together and purchasing the materials 
in larger quantities; but it is equally 
certain that money invested in fertili¬ 
zers or fertilizing materials is fre¬ 
quently thrown away through ignorance 
of the wants of the soil to which 
the fertilizer is to be applied. A soil 
in which any of the plant-forming ele¬ 
ments is abundant and in an available form 
requires no such element in a fertilizer. It 
is only those elements which are deficient 
in the soil that must be supplied, and until 
farmers have learned some easy and practi¬ 
cal method of determining the character of 
their soils, the profit from fertilizers, home- 
mixed or otherwise, will prove an uncer¬ 
tain quantity. T. T. 
RURAL SPECIAL REPORTS. 
Kansas. 
Leanna, Allen County, February 11.— 
The winter so far has been mild. Feed is 
abundant, and stock are generally doing 
well. Prices of farm produce, cattle and 
horses are low, while sheep and hogs are 
fairly profitable. Wheat, 45 to 60 cents a 
bushel; oats. 10 cents; corn, 12% cents; 
butter, 12% cents per pound ; eggs, 10 cents 
