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821 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Business. 
THOROUGHNESS IN BUSINESS. 
T. B. TERRY. 
If not too late I would like to tell the young men who 
read The Rural what I would do if young again. My ob¬ 
ject is just to emphasize one point to which the import¬ 
ance it deserves has hardly been given. I would be thor¬ 
ough in whatever I undertook. If there is a demand for 
anything in these times it is for thorough workmen who 
can be depended on to do everything just right. No mat¬ 
ter whether I was intending to be a farmer, or a mechanic, 
or a lawyer, or anything else, I would never half do or 
carelessly do anything. Success is almost certain to the 
young man who starts out on this line and lives up to his 
resolves even in the smallest matters. The fact that one 
can be depended on will soon be known, and whatever your 
calling your services will be in demand by the best custom¬ 
ers, who are able and willing to pay you well. The world 
is full of common workmen in all lines, full of those that 
are careless, or at least not thorough and to be depended on 
every time. 
Let me give some illustrations. Seven years ago we 
built a new house. Three coats of paint were put on it by 
good honest men. In two or three years the paint began 
to peel off from the knots on the west and south sides. 
After a while I got men to scrape and shellac the knots 
and paint the house over. Again the paint started. Last 
spring I paid some experts from the city a large price to 
come and fix those few little knots, and paint the house so 
that the paint would stand. They did a good job and I 
think the paint will stick now ; but they put on two coats 
of dark varnish and now it shows through the light paint. 
I must get it painted again before it will be all right. All 
this trouble arose because some one was a little careless in 
the first place. When I built my tool house and barn I de¬ 
termined to know that the same mistake was not made 
again, and I shellaced every knot myself. There were 10 
times as many as on the house, of course; but not a single 
one has failed to hold the paint. My time was worth at 
my business twice what painters charge; but where was 
there one whom I could trust ? 
There are farmers around here who would be glad to do 
more tile draining, if they could employ some one to go 
ahead who could be depended on. One neighbor had 
draining done and afterwards plowed up some of the tiles 
which were put in when he wasn’t around. Another hired 
a lot of drains put in by the 100 tiles, paying for all the 
tiles buried. Well, they were buried, of course, for that 
was necessary to get the money ; but in two or three years 
it turned out that they might as well have been all buried 
in one hole. Now, men who do such work will always be 
“ hewers of wood and drawers of water.” Had they done 
a perfect job their reputation would soon have gone out 
and they could have had their hands full of paying 
business. 
I was talking to a friend the other day about fixing up 
his grounds. He has good new buildings, but the sur¬ 
roundings need a good deal of work done on them in the 
way of grading and planting trees and shrubs. The owner 
says: ‘‘I know what the place needs; but I am full of 
business now and cannot do any more. I would most 
gladly pay some one liberally to fix it up for me, if I knew 
any one I could depend on; but I have been swindled 
enough. Can you t.-ll me of some one who you know can 
be depended on to do everything right ?” I could not. 
I have a lawyer friend. If any will, deed or contract that 
he wrote is called in question, you will hear every one 
say: “If F wrote it, it will stand.” He is a successful, 
wealthy man, not because he is a lawyer, but because of 
careful thoroughness about every little detail of what he 
does. This has made the man and it will make you, what¬ 
ever calling you may follow. 
Perhaps you think thoroughness not so important on the 
farm. Ah ! but it is. It pays every day in the year. By 
the way, I had a letter last week from a city man who 
owns and runs a farm, asking if I could recommend to 
him some young man whom he could depend upon to do 
everything just right if he wasn’t around more than 
once a week. Oh, that I could: that I knew of a 
hundred such ; that I had one for my own use ! 
Let me give you some illustrations from my own farm of 
how thoroughness pays. I sent to a nursery firm in New 
Jersey some Hebron Potatoes for seed, last year. Potatoes 
were higher there than here then, so they could well afford 
to buy them. This fall they wrote and wanted 30 bushels 
more. I replied that my Hebrons were small this year, on 
account of drought,and that the price here was high. I would 
send them for $3.10 per two bushel sack They wrote back: 
“We can get all we want here at much lower figures ; but 
your stock last year was perfectly pure, and we are not 
sure of these here. Send us 30 bushels.” They were sent, 
and on arrival they duplicated the order. Thoroughness 
did it. The master’s eye is on them from the time the 
digger starts until the sack is sewed up and the tag on. I 
sent a farmer near Baton Rouge, La., 15 barrels of Hebrons 
to plant. He simply ordered them sent by freight, but I 
knew that roads were apt to put on regular local rates un¬ 
less the through rate is guaranteed. So I got a through 
rate on these put into the bill of-lading. Yesterday I heard 
from them : “ Your getting freight guaranteed was a favor 
I neglected to ask. As usual, our road put on extra charges 
and they would have been paid but for your thoughtful¬ 
ness.” (Thoroughness!) 
To day I have a letter from a farmer in Sidney, O.. offer¬ 
ing to advance me money now, so as to be sure of securing 
some of my seed wheat next season. Why ? You may 
answer. This is no advertisement, friends, for the greatest 
worry of my life is too many orders. I returned SOS orders 
containing money for potatoes for seed last fall. I could 
not fill orders for 1,000 bushels of wheat (from one town 
where I have sent wheat for years) this last season. I have 
returned nearly 100 orders for potatoes this fall already. 
Readers will kindly excuse this telling of my own affairs 
by way of illustration. I know that thoroughness pays. I 
know that it will pay you, my young friends. Strive to be 
thorough in every little thing you do. You know what 
Christ said about the faithful servant: “ Because thou 
hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over 
10 cities.” And then to him was also given the property 
of the unfaithful man. “For I say unto you, that unto 
every one which hath (is faithful and thorough) shall be 
given: and from him that hath not (is not faithful and 
thorough) even that he hath shall be taken away.” These 
words are just as true to-day as when Christ uttered them 
nearly 3,000 years ago. 
CHEAP PRICES FOR NIAGARA GRAPES. 
When the agents of the Niagara White Grape Company 
were straining every nerve to Induce farmers to plant large 
numbers of their vines at high prices on the “ vineyard 
plan,” a scheme was devised for marketing which should 
include all purchasers of vines from the company in a close 
corporation and deny to others its benefits. This scheme 
included an elaborate system of daily telegraphic reports 
from all the principal markets, a supervision of the pack¬ 
ing,shipping and marketing which would insure placing the 
fruit upon the proper markets at just the right time and 
would obviate the gluts so destructive to high prices and 
satisfactory sales. This plan was also to insure good 
prices to planters at least for a generation to come. There 
was no such thing as failure connected with it. Many 
thoughtful and conservative men were skeptical about the 
advantages claimed, as well as suspicious of the complica¬ 
ted contract a planter was required to sign. Cautious men 
discredited the extravagant claims made, and predicted 
a failure of the plans in actual practice. But many farm¬ 
ers ignorant of the first principles of grape culture, were 
lured by the bright pictures of prospective profits and the 
promises of personal supervision of their vineyards, to 
plant more than they had capital or time to care for, 
even had they the proper knowledge. We have reports 
from different parts of the country of farmers who have 
been ruined by their ventures in this direction, 
even before their vineyards reached the bearing age. As 
to the high prices realized, the writer bought in this city 
the present week a five-pound basket of Niagaras for 35 
cents. This was lower than these grapes were ever to sell 
for at wholesale. What does the grower get ? The grapes 
probably sold for about 30 cents at wholesale. The baskets 
cost five cents each. Deduct transportation, commission, 
packing, etc., and how do the fancy prices vanish ? And 
this before half the Niagara vineyards are in bearing. 
The grapes mentioned were grown at Port Byron, N. Y.: 
the basket was sealed by the slip which is the trade-mark 
of the association before referred to. The clusters were 
large and fine, but showed marks of a tyro’s hand in pack¬ 
ing. The quality was fair, inferior to that of good Con¬ 
cords, and where one basket of Niagaras are sold, a dozen 
of Concords can be sold at an equal price. But when the 
vines from which these grapes grew were planted, the 
price of an acre of Niagara vines would purchase enough 
Concord vines to plant 50 acres. The lesson we wish to 
enforce is that farmers should go slow on new and untested 
varieties, and should use caution and common sense in un¬ 
dertaking radical departures from their ordinary routine. 
We do not mean that they should always follow the old 
rut, but that they should choose carefully any new de¬ 
parture. Take no man’s “ say so ” for fact in any scheme 
in which he is pecuniarily interested. Experiment on a 
small scale. Go slow. Be sure. Go ahead. 
“Mary’s My Partner Now.”—We give below a re¬ 
duced copy of the first page of a little four-page pamphlet 
just at hand. We do not know anything about the plants 
sold by Hancock & Wife, but we like the firm’s name, and 
print it here as an appropriate postscript to last week’s 
poem : 
Frank B. Hancock. Alice S. Hancock. 
C R O W S W O O D. 
RETAIL CATALOGUE 
— OF — 
Strawberries, 
Raspberries, 
Blackberries. 
HANCOCK AND WIFE, 
Casky, Christian Co., Ky. 
To parties wanting plants In lots of .TOO or over, special 
low prices will be made. The within prices are for plants 
DELIVERED to your nearest office. All of our plains are 
carefully selected, packed and guaranteed true to name. 
Send cash or stamps with order. 
Business in Wood.— I noticed in a late Rural that a 
Dakota correspondent speaks of shipping wood from Min¬ 
nesota for fuel. Wood is being shipped from here (Hamil¬ 
ton County, Indiana,) to Chicago, and reshipped north. I 
have 40 acres of heavy beech, sugar maple and hickory, 
and want an outlet for the wood. The parties shipping 
here are irresponsible and poor pay; moreover, they 
don’t pay enough; but though I have written several 
letters I have failed to secure a satisfactory market in 
Chicago or elsewhere. Most of the fuel dealers in 
Chicago make coal and coke a specialty and use little 
wood. If The Rural knows of any one in the Northwest 
or elsewhere who could handle mine, his address would be 
an advantage to me. e. h. collins. 
R- N.-Y.—There are many farmers who have wood to 
sell and we learn that it is quite difficult to dispose of it at 
good prices in other than local markets. We shall be 
obliged if some of our friends in Dakota and elsewhere will 
tell us more about this. 
• 
A Bug Breeding Business. —This is what the California 
State Board of Agriculture proposes to carry on. The 
“ factories ” are shown at Fig. 303. They are simply glass 
houses built over large orange trees where the destructive 
cottony cushion scale (Icerya purchasi) can be thickly 
colonized, and at the approach of inclement weather 
a few of the Vedalia cardinalis or ladybird, an imported 
insect that preys upon the troublesome scale insect, will be 
placed in the houses too. It is hoped in this way to keep 
the valuable little foreigner through the winter that he 
Glass House for Breeding Bugs. Fig. 393. 
may be prepared to clear the orchards next year. The 
dimensions of each are 16 feet in diameter by 18 feet in ele¬ 
vation ; every part is well fitted and the ventilation pro¬ 
tected by very fine brass-wire mesh to guard against the 
entry of any ladybirds before the cold weather sets in, 
otherwise the scales would be destroyed by them early in 
the season ; and also to prevent the ladybirds from escap¬ 
ing during the time they are being colonized for distribu¬ 
tion In the spring. 
IMPLEMENT NOTES. 
Four-Wheeled Dump Carts. —I read with some interest 
The Rural’s accounts of the tow carts and its inquiry 
about a handy cart which can be easily unloaded. We use 
here a dump cart for handling manure, ashes, corn fodder, 
short lumber, wood and many other articles, which can be 
unloaded by dumping without damage. I have two. Each 
Four-Wheeled Dump Carts. Fig. 394. 
has a short tongue attached to the forward wheels by a 
shackle or universal joint, imitated nearly by interlocking 
the forefingers of the two hands. One arm of this shackle 
is inserted in the center of the forward axle and keyed, 
while the other runs up through the tongue of the cart and 
is also keyed there, so that the cart can be removed in a 
moment from the forward wheels. My practice is to let 
the help shovel the manure, while I drive the team. One 
cart is left at the pile while I go to the field, dump the 
load and return, when the empty cart is cast off, set with 
the tongue level and the other is attached. It saves me lots 
of hard labor. I have lately been hauling a mixture of 
sawdust, chips and bark from a large saw-mill, using the 
same arrangement. One man fills the carts, while I haul 
them about a quarter of a mile, and fill up my barn-yard, 
which after about ICO years’ use, is literally a hole in the 
ground. I nse this material also tor bedding, getting it 
for a song. Why could not such stuff be shipped profitably 
to Boston—ISO miles—or New York, when it can be pro- 
Four-Wheeled Dump Cart. Fig. 395. 
cured here for next to nothing ? It seems to me that it 
makes a bedding and absorbent far surperior to straw. 
The pictures, Figs 394 and 395, show the carts as I use them. 
The smaller, Fig. 394, is a one-horse cart, strong, and with 
sideboards suitable for two horses. It is 8% feet long and 
4% wide, with perpendicular sides. The other is 6>£ feet 
long, the same width, flaring a little. The smaller is at¬ 
tached rigidly to the axle-tree. The larger rests on irons 
with a joint. They are so balanced that they tip with but 
little pressure of the hand. Both have movable head and 
tail boards, the sideboards only being left when hauling 
timber, etc. The sideboards about double the capacity. 
Such carts are in universal use in this section. 
Kennebec County, Me. g. s. paine. 
Cotton Pickers.— Every year there is more or less talk 
about a successful machine for picking cotton. It gener¬ 
ally ends in talk. There is quite a little contest going on 
among the farm hands at the South as to which can pick 
the most cotton in a day. One Texas boy, 16 years old, 
picked 500 pounds in one day. A Georgia boy, 14 years old, 
picked 900 pounds in two days. This, it is claimed, beats 
any machine yet invented. 
