mo5. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
95 
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION. 
1 see you favor enlarging the powers of the Inter¬ 
state Commerce Commission. Why not abolish the 
Commission and let the railroads be taken and run 
directly by the Government? What would be the prac¬ 
tical difference between an honest commission with 
full powers to safeguard the interests of the people, 
and government ownership and control? Under such 
a commission what would there be “in it” to the rail¬ 
road companies anyhow? Why do by indirection what 
can so much more economically and successfully be 
done directly? Are railroads public highways or pri¬ 
vate property? That's the question. If they are pub¬ 
lic highways, it seems to me it is the duty of the 
Government to own and operate them. If they are 
private roads, private property, the Government has 
no right to interfere with their business, to fix rates 
and prices any more than it has to fix the prices of 
the merchant, the manufacturer or the subscription 
price of your paper. In such case the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission is an impertinence, an outrage on 
their rights. Private ownership and control of rail¬ 
roads is for private profit, and is diametrically opposed 
to public service and interest. These two forces are 
inherently and eternally antagonistic. It is idle to 
leave private interest in control and expect to regulate 
them so as to attain the best and cheapest public service. 
Low rates to the public and fat dividends to stock¬ 
holders; low operating expenses and high official sal¬ 
aries are incompatible. The Interstate Commerce Com¬ 
mission scheme, when it runs up against human nature, 
as embodied in the cunning and greed of these powerful 
corporations, is Idle and futile; its record is one of 
failure. Such schemes in all history have been failures. 
It seems to me it has nothing in theory, and certainly 
nothing in achievement to recommend it to the enlight¬ 
ened observation and common sense of practical men. 
Pennsylvania. richard w. stiffey. 
R. N.-Y.—We do not believe that the Interstate 
Commerce Commission has ever had a fair chance to 
show what it can do. Before abolishing it we would 
enlarge its powers and then give the Commission plan 
a fair trial. The one great objection to Government 
control of railroads and other public utilities is that the 
people are not yet quite ready for it. It will be better 
to have them come to it slowly as a matter of educa¬ 
tion. This will give a fairer chance to adjust business. 
The railroad companies seem to us private corpora¬ 
tions doing a public business on public highways. The 
statement made by Judge Knapp of the Interstate Com¬ 
mission seems to us clear enough along this line. 
Until modern discovery utilized steam as a motive p,ower, 
the ordinary public road was the sole means of communica¬ 
tion by land, the only pathway of internal commerce. Be¬ 
fore this new agency was brought into service, while the 
old highways were yet exclusively employed, the right to 
their common use was nowhere doubted or denied. The 
transfer of land commerce to highways of steel, with the 
substitution of steam and electricity for animal power, has 
not impaired the nature of this right or diminished in the 
least its inestimable value. On the contrary, there is no 
pursuit or employment which is not now more dependent 
than ever before upon the means provided for public trans¬ 
portation. The railroad is the principal highway. For 
long-distance movement it has wholly supplanted the public 
road, yet it performs on a much greater scale the same 
governmental function and meets the same increasing and in¬ 
dispensable need. The right to just and equal charges for 
railway service springs, therefore, from the nature and 
necessities of social order. The railroads are an agency 
of the State for discharging a public duty of the highest 
utility. The right to use their facilities, like the right to the 
common highway, is an inherent and inalienable right, the 
very essence of which is equality. 
AN EXPERIENCE WITH LIME ON ONIONS. 
I took up farming more as a pastime than anything 
else, believing that thorough business principles applied 
to it would give me paying returns, and I have not been 
disappointed yet. I looked over the field carefully for a 
year, to see what crop 1 could make a specialty, and set¬ 
tled down on onions. In the Spring of 1896 I went at 
it with the full intention of excelling in that line. I 
made it my business from one year’s end to another to 
study soils, fertilizers, seed, culture, in fact, everything 
that pertained to raising a maximum crop of onions. 
In the Fall of 1902 I had two acres of turf, which I had 
bought three years before, and which had been in grass 
since it came into my possession. No fertilizer had been 
put on it. I made up my mind to plow it up, and the 
next Spring put on onions. 1 set a man plowing it in 
November. As I was following along behind him I no¬ 
ticed a great many white specks in the soil, which ap¬ 
peared to me to be lime. I thought no more about it 
until 1 saw. the crop of onions on this piece the next 
Fall, which was more than double what I had on any 
other land. All had been treated alike as far as fer¬ 
tilizer and care were concerned. Here was certainly 
food for thought, and it must have been something put 
on the land before I bought it. I at once went to the 
man I bought it from and asked him what he had put 
on to the land before I bought it. His answer was 
lime, and here commences mv first experience with lime. 
I then investigated the lime question, and tb^ deeper I 
got into it the stronger my belief was that although 
lime was not in itself a fertilizer, it was just as essen¬ 
tial for plant food as nitrogen, phosphoric acid or potash. 
Next come up the questions: What kind of lime do 
I want? How much do I want per acre? How and 
when is it to be put on? To all these questions I could 
get no satis factory answers, as no farmer in my locality 
had had any experience with the use of lime. There¬ 
fore my first point as a solution to all of the above ques¬ 
tions was: “What am I going to use lime for?’’ I found 
if I used it at all it was because it furnished the im¬ 
portant constituent of plants, calcium, and because of 
its relative ease of decomposition, and its valuable action 
HOME IN TIIE NORTH CAROLINA BINES. FlG. 42. 
upon and reaction with other soil constituents. It aids 
in the decay of vegetable matter, and in the formation 
of nitrates. It exerts a favorable physical effect upon 
the soil; its presence helps to separate the adhesive 
particles of clay, and makes heavy soils loose and fria¬ 
ble, which permits the easy passage of water through 
them. Lime also increases the absorbing and retaining 
power of sandy soils, by causing the particles to adhere 
more closely to each other, thus absorbing less heat 
during the day and retaining more at night. Lime acts 
powerfully upon and hastens the decay of organic mat¬ 
ter from both vegetable and animal sources, by virtue of 
which the nitrogen becomes more quickly available to 
plants. Lime further aids in liberating potash from 
insoluble compounds in the soil, thus increasing the 
store of active plant food ingredients. Surely if the 
above reasons are true, no one can afford not to use 
lime, and this brings me up to the point: How much 
lime shall I use to the acre? In England they use 
as much as six tons to the acre, but I would not advise 
using more than one ton to the acre, once in three years, 
on our New England soil. There is a great difference 
in lime, and it can be bought at all prices from $1 up to 
$6.20 per ton. I bought the very best quicklime I could 
find, with a guaranteed analysis of 98 per cent pure lime. 
Much of the lime has a large per cent of magnesia^in it, 
SNOW WORK IN PENNSYLVANIA. Fig. 43. 
which is not desirable for agricultural purposes. I 
bought 35 tons in the Fall of 1903, carted it from rail¬ 
road right to the lots 1 wanted to put it on, dumped it 
in heaps and slaked with water. After land was plowed 
1 distributed evenly over the surface with a fertilizer 
spreader, and then harrowed it in with an Acme harrow. 
In the Spring of 1904 I sowed 15 acres of onions on 
limed land. Onions looked fine all through the season 
and a very much larger yield than I had ever raised on 
same land. I would advise putting lime on land only 
in the Fall, giving it a chance to get thoroughly incor¬ 
porated with the soil before seed is sown. 
Massachusetts. E - n. foote. 
FANCY BALDWIN APPLES IN FLORIDA . 
The following note recently came from a reader in 
Florida: 
I send you by same mail a sample of “XXX Extra 
Fancy Baldwin.” Fully half of the barrel is not much 
better and this happens nine times out of ID. The cost 
of them on an average comes to .$4.20 laid down here. 
That kind of packing knocks out the card-in-sleeve 
gambler, and besides an apple eating league we ought to 
have an honesty league and—but the sample speaks for 
itself. a. c. c. 
The apples are pictured on our first page. They 
look much better in a photograph than in the original. 
The homeliest man may have his photograph touched 
up so as to appear passable to some correspondent who 
has never seen him! These apples were small, wormy 
and well plastered with fungus. Billy Berkshire would 
turn them over several times before eating them. They 
were decidedly unfit for human consumption. To put 
such stuff as this into a barrel and mark it “extra fancy” 
is surely adding insult to injury. Our friend says this 
happens nine times out of 10, and the same story is 
told by other southern people-. The northern growers 
say it is the southern dealer who repacks, while the 
dealer says it is the northern grower who thinks he 
can work off his cull stock in this way. Whoever is the 
guilty one should be held up before the people as a 
rogue. He is evidently past the point where he can in¬ 
jure his own character, but he cuts honest fruit growers 
out of an excellent market. 
A DEMAND FOR CHEAP WIRE. 
I have dealt in wire fence for years, and I never heard 
a farmer ask for better galvanizing; very few ask for 
better wire than the common. When I did try to sell 
the better most farmers thought I was putting the dif¬ 
ference in my pocket. There are some things sure; the 
farmer will not get high-grade wire at the same price 
as cheap fence; the manufacturer will not make it until 
there is a considerable demand for it, and they made 
cheap wire in response to the universal demand among 
consumers for cheap goods. When they call for good 
articles at a fair price they will get them. People have 
found out that charcoal tinned sheets wear better than 
steel tinned sheets; they cost more in the beginning, but 
are much more economical in the end. “Pennywise and 
pound foolish” has ruined many a man. If a number 
of farmers really want some good fence why don’t they 
get together and go to a reliable manufacturer and find 
his price for wire with a definite quantity of spelter per 
rod, as determined necessary for durability by an expert 
or a chemist? Why cannot the Grange take hold of it? 
Let a Grange hire an expert to oversee and the exper¬ 
iment station furnish the chemist. In this way a start 
can be made. At any rate, the expert will know where 
the fault is; whether in the wire or spelter. If the man¬ 
ufacturers find there is a demand for good fence you 
may depend on their making it in quantities to suit, but 
not at price of cheap wire. f. H. 
Vermont. _ 
INFORMATION REGARDING EASTERN 
FARM LANDS. 
I have been greatly interested in the discussion of the 
eastern farm problems appearing in your recent issues. 
One of your correspondents, possibly more, inquired 
about the sources of information regarding New Eng¬ 
land and New York farming communities. I should 
like to call the attention of your readers to one source 
for such information. I refer to the published maps 
and reports of the Bureau of Soils, U. S. Department 
of Agriculture: Westfield area, Chautauqua Co., N. Y., 
1901; Big Flats area, Chemung Co., N. Y., 1902; Lyons 
area, Wayne Co., N. Y., 1902; Syracuse area, Onondaga 
Co., N. Y., 1903; Long Island, N. Y. (in part), 1903. 
To appear in the immediate future, Connecticut Valley 
(Connecticut and Massachusetts), 1903. The separates 
of these reports are distributed by the Representatives, 
or as long as the supply lasts by the Department of 
Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
In my own personal opinion, based on what I have 
seen as a Soil Survey field man in five years’ experience, 
the eastern and northeastern States offer many ex¬ 
cellent farming opportunities. These are not for ma¬ 
chine farming on the bonanza scale, nor for speculative 
one-crop booming, but for good, substantial, patient, 
general farming. A State which, like New York, pre¬ 
sents an area of 2,000 to 3,000 square miles of unre¬ 
claimed swamp, has not been exhausted so far as agri¬ 
cultural resources are concerned. So long as Orange 
Co., California, can sell celery in New York City, there 
will remain a chance for any man to engage in profitable 
farming on what are now unsightly, dangerous and bar¬ 
ren marshes. Personally, I have seen many abandoned 
houses, but few abandoned farms. In central New York 
the best man in the nighborhood gets the “abandoned” 
farm, usually at a low price. Somehow the soil and 
climate improve after he has fenced in the place. He 
can usually find labor enough, and frequently buys in 
still more land. J- A - bonsteel. 
Cornell University. 
