674 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
OCT. 4 
‘Rough on Rogues .” 
LOOKOUT 
ALMANAC 
LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. 
OCTOBER. 
6 . 
Look out for pleasant and agree¬ 
able strangers you meet at the 
fairs. It is wonderful how many 
persons have been swindled at the fairs this 
year. We never knew anything like it be¬ 
fore. Here is a letter from a subscriber in 
WestVirginia, that is a fair sample: “ Not¬ 
withstanding the warnings sent out almost 
daily by the press, instances are constantly 
occurring in which many well-to-do persons 
are swindled by unscrupulous fellows. One 
man, Mr. David Willett, of this county, was 
beaten out of $300 at the Shenandoah Val¬ 
ley Fair at Winchester, Va., a few days 
ago by some sharpers who pretended to sell 
him some mules. They did not own any 
mules; but by a shrewd trick got posses¬ 
sion of Mr. W.’s $300 and decamped. Mr. 
Willett is a hard-working, honest farmer, 
and very correct in all his dealings.” 
* 
* # 
Tuesday Look °ut f° r frauds that accom- 
3 pany the circus. One such fel- 
/• low is described as a “seedy” 
individual, with a brown Derby hat and 
black clothes—about 30 years old. He offers 
to sell a ring given him by his mother 
years ago. He tells such a pathetic story 
that he frequently sells the ring for a good 
price. His rings are worth about five cents 
each. 
Another fraud was recently exposed at 
Norwalk, Connecticut. He hired a fine 
carriage and drove into a public place and 
offered watches for sale. He pretended to 
put a $10 bill inside the watch case and 
then offered the whole thing for $10. The 
people “ saw him put the bills there ” and 
many sales were made. Of course the fel¬ 
low, by some sleight of hand, kept the bills 
instead of putting them into the cases, ex¬ 
cept in a fe;v instances, when he purposely 
sold the real money in order to stimulate 
the cupidity of the crowd. He made lots 
of money and escaped after swindling as 
many people as he could. 
• * • 
Wednesday look ou ^ agaju f° r “ boomed ” 
q * towns and cities in the West 
and South. The Colorado In¬ 
dustrial and Development Association has 
just disbanded. Many of our readers re¬ 
ceived letters from so-called town commit¬ 
tees offering them deeds for township lots, 
free of charge. Let all such schemes alone. 
As we have remarked before now —invest 
your money at home. Home is the best 
place to develop. 
* 
♦ * 
TlllirSdaV Look out f° r a scoundrel who is 
J “working” a new game along 
9’ the Hudson River. He pretends 
to represent an Albany firm. The swindler 
has yellow tickets which he sells at 25 cents 
each, claiming that every ticket a person 
buys entitles him to a prize, when presented 
to the firm. He says the object of selling 
the tickets is to advertise the firm. A 
young lady bought a ticket and the fakir 
told her, after looking on a list, that her 
ticket entitled her to a $5 rug, when pre¬ 
sented to the firm. The young lady then 
bought another ticket. There is no such 
firm in Albany as the one that was given 
by the swindler. 
* 
• * 
FPldaV Look out f° r f* 16 Matrimonial 
^ Mutual Endowment Association, 
10* of Altoona, Pa. One Keenan, the 
manager, has just been arrested, but he 
will doubtless come up again later on. 
This “association” printed a paper called 
the Globe, which tried to “promote matri¬ 
mony ” among its subscribers. For a fee 
of $3 and the payment of 50 cents a month, 
the association advertised to pay to holders 
of certificates $500 when they married, or, 
if they did not marry within five years, 
they were to receive the $500 and be dis¬ 
charged from further liability. Keenan 
printed the names of several prominent 
citizens as officers of his association, but 
they deny that they ever had anything to 
do with it. It is a favorite scheme nowa¬ 
days to print well known names on these 
bogus circulars. This is a dishonest busi¬ 
ness and ought to be punishable by law. 
Saturday A wea ^^y Quaker, living near 
^ Steubenville.Ohio, has just been 
swindled out of $5 000. Two 
nice gentlemen came and asked bun to 
keep for them $18,000 worth of bonds which 
they had in a sachel. His “reputation 
for honesty was so great” that they 
wanted to leave the bonds with him until 
they looked about for a farm. Later, they 
came back and wanted to borrow $5,000 in 
cash, agreeing to leave the bonds with him 
as security. He drew the money from the 
bank and delivered it to them and they 
decamped with it. As they did not return, 
our respected friend became alarmed and 
went to the sachel, to find that it con¬ 
tained only a piece of wood and some old 
papers! 
Poultry Yard. 
A WINTER HEN HOUSE. 
Almost any kind of a house will do for 
hens in warm weather, if they run at 
large, and the house is kept clean and free 
from lice. But in the winter at the North, 
hens must have a warm house to yield eggs, 
especially the Leghorns and similar breeds. 
Many farmers who have no comfortable 
place for fowls in winter can have some¬ 
thing like that shown in Figure 293, and, 
by a trifling outlay, secure eggs during the 
winter. The sides, where there is no hay, 
are lined up with boards, and the space is 
filled with sawdust. One advantage of 
such a house or room is that, on warm 
days, hens can be allowed to run and 
H*]': 
JW 
JEW" 
| 
h £ 
i □ 
Hm 
Cvound 1 
JiT i-Of f r S'lKN 
J La h i 
Straw 
Ha/ 
1 
i- 
H^r 
St'able. 
Teed Koor 
H^y 
Cross Section . 
Winter Hen House. Fig. 293. 
scratch on the feed floor. I often see direc¬ 
tions for building a shed attached to a hen¬ 
house under which the hens may go in 
mild weather, but in the North the snow 
would blow into such a shed, unless it was 
closed with some kind of doors. Hens de¬ 
light to scratch in the chaff and hayseeds 
which collect on the barn floor. They eat 
many seeds which might otherwise get in¬ 
to the manure and make trouble for the 
farmer. One great advantage in keeping 
hens is that, if rightly managed, there will 
seldom be a time when a flock will not be 
making some addition to the farmer’s in¬ 
come. Last year I sold from October 1, 
1888 to October 1, 1889. $93 worth of eggs 
and chickens from 56 hens, besides using 
all we needed in the family, and having 
over 100 fowls on hand on October 1, 1889. 
J. W. H. 
JUSTICE FOR THE “BARN-YARD 
FOWL.” 
Sixty-eight carefully selected hens of 
pure breed and standard varieties, housed 
and fed according to the most approved 
system, with a view to the highest results, 
laid, in the course of 12 months, 3,199 eggs, 
an average of 47 each, or less than one per 
week. Twenty-eight hens, set upon 281 
eggs, laid by carefully selected hens of pure 
breed and standard varieties, mated for 
breeding only, hatched out 146 chicks, 
being a fraction within 52 per cent. 
These figures are deduced from tables in 
the Second Annual Report (1889) of the 
Poultry Department of the Ottawa (Can¬ 
ada) Experiment Farm, the source of 
those “Startling Figures on Chicks,” given 
by Mr. Jacobs to Tiie Rural readers some 
weeks ago; and they go to show, I think, 
that something more (or less) than modem 
improvements in buildings and nest boxes, 
perfect drainage and ventilation, carefully 
selected and cooked foods, tonics and 
stimulants, is required for the success¬ 
ful and profitable management of poultry. 
They are to the writer’s mind, figures of a 
much more “ startling ” nature than those 
originally given under that heading—of 
much greater importance to breeders of 
poultry for profit, and more worth their 
serious consideration ; for if they only ap¬ 
proximately indicate the best results to be 
obtained from pure breeds, reared with all 
the advantages of practically unlimited 
resources disbursed under efficient man¬ 
agement, then the much ridiculed and 
despised, but robust “ barn-yard fowl,” 
has claims upon your consideration it were 
well to recognize, for she has a record for 
prolificness and fecundity far ahead of 
that of her highly favored rivals. No self- 
respecting barn-yard fowl, wishingto “ pay 
her way,” would desire to live if she could 
not lay more than 50 eggs per annum ; nor 
would a hatch of only 50 per cent, satisfy 
any faithful sitter ambitious of maternity. 
Such returns may be satisfactory to the 
breeders of fancy stock, but it is evidently 
not from such sources that our ever in¬ 
creasing consumption, and always deficient 
supply of eggs will be made to balance. 
Rochester. N. Y. c. n. w. 
Farm Politics. 
DEFENDING MR. CANNON. 
The Rural’s views on the tariff and on 
Prohibition, as well as on general agricul¬ 
tural matters are so closely my own that I 
intended to write simply a commendatory 
letter, until your two editorials appeared 
in the issue of September 6, one concerning 
the Conger Lard Bill and the other com¬ 
menting upon'the disturbance in Congress, 
which took place in connection with the 
consideration of that bill. It may be un¬ 
grateful for me to select the one objection¬ 
able article to write about, and to omit 
mention of the many commendable feat¬ 
ures of The Rural, but it seems to 
me that the paper has done an injus¬ 
tice to which attention should only be 
directed to have it corrected. In the 
course of the editorial in question you say, 
“It is high time for the ‘farmers in poli¬ 
tics’ to make themselves heard. * * * 
Since the above was written news comes 
that the person chiefly responsible for the 
disgraceful scenes referred to, has been 
nominated by acclamation. This in an agri¬ 
cultural district of a great agricultural 
State 1 We are ashamed of those electors 
and we hope their sense of shame will be so 
aroused before election day that this Rep¬ 
resentative will never again be placed in 
a position he has disgraced.” 
As a breeder of live stock, as one inter¬ 
ested in agriculture in the district referred 
to, and as one of the electors by whose 
votes the renomination by acclamation 
was made possible, your remarks come 
quite close home to me, and this fact surely 
will entitle me to a reply. The facts are 
that Mr. Cannon, the Congressman re¬ 
ferred to, has represented this district 18 
years. At the very time this trouble in 
Congress happened, he was leading the 
forces which were attempting to pass the 
Conger Lard Bill—the very bill you com¬ 
mended—which aims to prevent the foisting 
of a spurious product on the people. In 
your own language he was working for a 
bill which provided that “ if sold at all, 
such mixtures must be sold under their 
true name. * * * Cotton seed oil may be, 
and doubtless is, a cheap and healthful food, 
but it is not ‘lard.’ ” Should we turn 
against Mr. Cannon on account of his ad¬ 
vocacy of this bill P While doing every¬ 
thing in his power to bring it to a success¬ 
ful vote, he was harassed and hampered and 
all legislation brought to a standstill by 
the “fillibustering” tactics of one of the 
Chicago Congressmen—a member of his 
own political party and one from whom he 
had the right to expect political help in¬ 
stead of hindrance. Aggravated beyond 
endurance by this conduct, and smarting 
under a tongue-lashing just administered 
by one of his political opponents, Mr. 
Cannon made the remark which was 
claimed to have a double meaning, and it 
was promptly charged by his opponents 
that Mr. Cannon intended it should have 
such meaning, though, to my mind, the 
second interpretation is wholly without 
application in that connection. Mr. Can¬ 
non himself, insisted that he meant just 
what he said, and that he had in mind the 
old fable from iEsop about the traveler 
who warmed his fingers and cooled his 
pottage with the same breath—Mr. Can¬ 
non’s assailant having recently talked 
against and voted for certaiu measures 
pending in Congress. 
The modern rule of law is that every man 
is presumed guilty until he can prove his 
innocence—is presumed a rascal until he 
proves himself a gentleman—and I submit 
that even under this trying rule the 18 
years of Mr. Canuon’s public life.jiave been 
such as to warrant our acceptance of his 
statement in the present matter, rather 
than to lead us to accept a forced, un¬ 
natural, unmeaning and vulgar construc¬ 
tion placed upon his utterance by his oppo¬ 
nents. Of Mr. Cannon’s subsequent remark 
he can simply plead guilty and throw him¬ 
self upon the mercies of the court, and 
when the extenuating circumstances are 
considered—that he was fighting for a bill 
in the interests of farm products, was 
being bitterly opposed by a political ally, 
had just been viciously attacked by an op¬ 
ponent, and had been, as he claimed, 
wrongfully accused of vulgarity—it is not 
to be wondered at that he should tell his 
accuser, in plain English, that he was a 
liar, and the fact that Mr. Cannon quali¬ 
fied the word with a “ big, big D,” should 
not, in my opinion, outweigh his long pub¬ 
lic service, free as it is from any hints, 
even, of corruption or taint. 
It is to be regretted that Congressmen 
ever forget their prominent position, but 
the millennium is as far from the halls of 
legislation as it is from any other portion 
of this sinful world, and Congressmen are 
but men after all. With as keen a sense of 
shame as any one could ask, the electors 
who renominated Mr. Cannon by acclama¬ 
tion, believe that under the most unfavor¬ 
able construction of the recent occurrence, 
it should not be allowed to outweigh the 
years of his faithful work ; not only that, 
but they believe still farther that from the 
long'and intimate knowledge of their rep¬ 
resentative his word is more than suffi¬ 
cient to counterbalance the charges of his 
opponents, and hence the renomination by 
acclamation. As for myself, I am not a 
politician, not even a farmer in politics— 
simply a breeder of the “ black but comely 
doddies ”—but from a careful consideration 
of all the facts, it seems to me that the 
action of the electors was right and that 
your editorial in the light of subsequent 
events was to some extent unjust toward 
tneone designated by you as chiefly respon¬ 
sible for the disgraceful scene. Should it 
rather not be the Chicago Congressman- - 
the one fighting for the privilege of selling 
a spurious article for a genuine one—who 
was chiefly responsible ? That is the way 
it seems to us here. JOHN s. GOODWIN. 
Remarks. —It is a fact that Mr. Can¬ 
non has ably advocated many bills urged 
and supported by farmers. It is also true 
that he was defending the Conger Lard 
Bill when the trouble referred to occurred. 
For such service he deserves the praise of 
, all who so strongly urged these measures. 
But the very fact of his long service in 
Congress ought to teach him better man¬ 
ners; he should be statesman enough and 
gentleman enough to rise above the lan¬ 
guage and arguments used by the loafer and 
the bully. There are plenty of other in 
stances where he has exhibited his vulgarity 
lUijSccllimeousi gUvn-tising. 
Please mention The R. N.-Y. to our adver¬ 
tisers. 
You Can Obtain 
HASH 
Almost anywhere, but if you want Simon-pure 
ORIGINAL 
Matter by such celebrated writers as T. B. 
Terry, John Gould, Henry Stewart, B. F. John¬ 
son, Galen Wilson, T. Greiner, John M. Stahl 
and a score or more of the best common-sense 
writers in the country, you must subscribe for 
The Practical Farmer, 
Pronounced the Best 16-Page Agricultural 
Weekly in America. It will be sent to you 
from now until Jan’y 1, ’91, for Seven 2-Cent 
Stamps, or till Jan’y 1,’92, for only One Dollar. 
US-Sample Copies Free to All ‘ 
Address THE FARMER CO., 
P. O. Box 1317. Philadelphia, Pa. 
The soft, velvety coloring effect so desirable for 
house exteriors can only be produced and perma¬ 
nently held by the use of 
CABOT’S CREOSOTE SHINGLE STAINS. 
For Sample* on Wood, with Circulars and tun 
Information, apply to 
SAMUEL CABOT, 
70 Ktlbv Street, Bouton, Mam. 
Mention Rusal Nkw Yokkku. 
