286 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 1, 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
Herbert w. Colling wood, Editor. 
Dr. Walter Van Fleet, I. , 
Mrs. K. T. Hoyle, (Associates. 
John J. Dillon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, 
equal to 8s. Gd., or 8'/a marks, or 10*4 francs. 
“A SQUARE DEAL.” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper Is 
backed by a responsible person. Hut to make doubly sure 
we will make good any loss to paid subscribers suslained 
by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising in our col¬ 
umns, and any such swindler will be publicly exposed. We 
protect subscribers against rogues, but we do not guarantee 
to adjust trilling differences between subscribers and honest, 
responsible advertisers. Neither will we be responsible for 
the debts of honest bankrupts sanctioned by the courts. 
Notice of the complaint must be sent to us within one 
month of the time of the transaction, and you must have 
mentioned The Rural New-Yorker when writing the adver¬ 
tiser. 
Name and address of sender, and what the remittance 
is for, should appear in every letter. 
Remittances may he made in money order, express order, 
personal check or bank draft. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
409 Pearl Street, New York. 
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1905. 
TEN WEEKS FOR 10 CENTS. 
In order to introduce The R. N.-Y. to progressive 
intelligent farmers who do not now take it, we send it 
10 weeks for 10 cents for strictly introductory purposes. 
We depend on our old friends to make this known to 
neighbors and friends. 
* 
The fuel question ought not to make hard feelings 
on that Illinois farm—see second page! No bucksaw 
work about that. We hope the girls on the finished 
woodpile are capable of directing the energy given out 
by that fuel into “fried pies” and other delicacies which 
hold families together. 
* 
Where one sells a ton of butter from the farm the 
amount of fertility that went with it could be bought 
for 25 cents, but where whole milk or skim-milk is sold 
every 100 pounds of milk leaves the farm 10 cents 
poorer. Of course, purchased grain, rich in protein 
and phosphates, such as bran, linseed and cotton-seed 
meal, tends to overcome this loss, but when one sells 
the whole or skim-milk strict care should be taken to 
save all the liquid and solid manure. There are too 
many farmers who pay no attention to the liquid man¬ 
ure, but five-eighths of the value is found in the liquid. 
Plan to have absorbents back of the cows, so there will 
be no waste. We want the farm to grow richer every 
year, and produce better crops. 
* 
And now—as to that letter to Hon. Thomas C. Piatt, 
Washington, D. C. Even if you have already written 
him the time has come for another letter. As will be 
seen elsewhere on this page, after April 1 a man in 
Albany, N. Y., can mail a package weighing 11 pounds 
to any point in England, or even to China, at 12 cents 
a pound. Let him try to mail a similar package from 
Albany to Syracuse, and he will be limited to four 
pounds and charged 10 cents a pound! We understand 
that in his younger days Senator Platt wrote and sang a 
campaign song conveying the sentiment that “There’s no 
place like America!” He was right—for in practically 
no other civilized country can a person mail goods to 
a foreigner cheaper than he can to one of his own 
countrymen! You should ask Senator Platt what he 
thinks of this state of affairs! Is this a government of 
the people for the people and by the people—or of the 
people for the express companies by their representa¬ 
tives ? 
* 
We have been asked what farmers generally think of 
the so-called beef trust investigation! Here is a fair 
sample of remarks, from Michigan: 
Will you please publish Commissioner Garfield’s white¬ 
wash receipt, as I have an old building that has been con¬ 
demned by the public as a nuisance, and I want to get it 
in shape by the time the building inspector comesl around. 
1 am told that it is like the Government receipt with a 
certain amount of gall added. 
There seems to be quite a general opinion that April 1 
would be an appropriate time for printing the report. 
We think this is hardly fair to Commissioner Garfield. 
This report covers only part of the investigation. We 
shall wait until he finishes before expressing a definite 
opinion. lie cannot get any farmer who sells live stock 
at the going prices and buys fertilizers at market rates 
to talk tilings over with a consumer who pays the pres¬ 
ent prices for meat and believe that the meat trust made 
only two per cent profit! The books may show that, 
but there are a dozen ways of eating up profits so that 
they will not show on the books! “Whitewash” has 
been called “the devil’s paint,” and is well named. The 
lime and sulphur wash is the thing to use! It doesn’t 
make things look quite so pretty, but how it does bite 
into the parasites! 
* 
President Roosevelt’s recent address to the Mother’s 
Congress represents the so-called “old-fashioned” view 
that will be endorsed by the majority. But it should be 
remembered, on the other hand, that the brutal waste 
of human life, due to greed or callousness, which every 
city shows, is quite as dangerous a form of “race 
suicide” as the selfishness the President deplores. In 
New York, in 1902, 13,000 tenement children died under 
one year of age, and there were 21,000 deaths among 
tenement children under five years of age. Of these, 
5,000 died from diphtheria and dysentery, a slaughter 
of the innocents that forms a monument to the twin 
monsters of impure milk and imperfect sanitation. 
Some smug Philistine may remark that this is Nature’s 
way of removing the weak and incompetent, an exam¬ 
ple of the survival of the fittest. Yet who shall dare to 
say that the newest baby, now lying, muffled in rags, in 
a tenement sweatshop, may not be a potential leader, 
whose preventable death delays the world’s advancement 
to another generation? 
We have never known the time when greater interest 
was taken in the use of lime than at present. Many 
questions about lime are asked by readers. We shall 
print next week the two tests suggested by Dr. Wheeler 
for deciding whether a soil is acid enough to need 
lime. A number of people speak of sowing lime this 
Spring on grass or young grain. They will not obtain 
anywhere near the benefit they would from sowing the 
lime after plowing and harrowing it well into the soil. 
This method is best, for in order to obtain the best 
effect upon an acid soil the lime must be thoroughly 
mixed all through it. Probably the best time to use 
lime is when seeding to grain or grass. Some plants 
are more benefited by lime than others. One of the 
most interesting cases of this is found when we sow 
Timothy and Red-top seed together. In an acid soil 
the Timothy will largely disappear, while the Red-top 
will thrive. If lime is used the Timothy will prevail. 
Many people still seem to -think that land plaster will 
take the place of lime. It will not; in fact, there are 
few if any good reasons why plaster should ever be 
used as a fertilizer! The increased use of lime calls 
for greater care in buying it. We are told of cases 
where the refuse lying around limekilns is scraped up 
and sold as “agricultural lime.” It should be bought 
under a guarantee, the same as wood ashes or chemi¬ 
cal fertilizers. 
* 
How’s this for reciprocity?” asks an Ohio reader, 
who sends .the following clipping from a local paper: 
C. 1’. Fatchin is doing a fine business at the City Roller 
Mills. Besides having a good trade in custom milling, he Is 
buying quantities of grain from the West, which be .grinds 
and ships in carloads to other towns along the B. & O. 
Railway. He lias built a large addition to bis mill, and 
put in a new 100 horse power high pressure boiler and a 
new engine. From the boiler steam is piped to run the 
engine in Parker & Alberts' saw mill, and in turn the saw¬ 
dust and fuel from the latter mill is blown in pipes back 
to Patchin’s mill to be consumed under the. {treat, boiler, 
which co-operative system proves to be a great economy in 
fuel and expense. 
If that man doesn’t eat the fishballs and “fried pies” 
which the Hope Farm man tells about, some of his 
ancestors surely did! We have been told of an irriga¬ 
tion scheme in a flat western country where water is 
pumped out of a lake and carried some miles away 
through pipes or boxes. At intervals water wheels are 
arranged so that the water passes them and works 
various dynamos. The electrical power thus generated 
is wired back to the lake and thus nearly provides 
for the pumping. Who has come nearer than this to 
the impossible task of lifting himself by his own boot 
straps? Yet, it is no more wonderful than what an 
Alfalfa farmer can do. He may feed Alfalfa to cattle, 
sell butter, raise young stock for sale, use the manure 
on a rotation and sell grain, Timothy hay and potatoes, 
and still improve the farm^ 
Last week a writer in the New York Sun com¬ 
plained that packages of books mailed to him in Eng¬ 
land and properly stamped, were delivered by an ex¬ 
press company at an extra charge of 50 cents. We 
wrote to the Postmaster General to learn how this 
came about, and received a circular giving the following 
information: 
There being no arrangement for the transmission of 
packages of merchandise by mail between the United States 
and Great Britain, the British Office has entered into an ar¬ 
rangement with the American Express Company, whereby 
packages containing merchandise mailed in Great Britain 
addressed for delivery in the United States are withdrawn 
from the mails in Great Britain and delivered to the Ameri¬ 
can Express Company, to be by that company brought to 
the United States for delivery to the addressees subject to 
the customs regulations of this country. As the packages in 
question do not arrive in this country in the mails, this 
Department has no jurisdiction whatever in connection 
with them. 
On the first of April, 1905, a parcels post service 
between this country and Great Britain will be started, 
and that ought to end the express company service. 
After that date packages weighing 11 pounds or less 
can be sent from this country to Great Britain at a 
rate of 12 cents a pound! In other words, such pack¬ 
ages can be sent to foreign countries at 12 cents a pound, 
while between one point in this country and another 
the rate will be 16 cents, and the weight limited to 
four pounds! Why give privileges to foreigners which 
are denied to Americans? 
* 
There seems to be some misunderstanding about the 
distribution of “cultures” by the United States Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture. We were under the impression 
that anyone could obtain the “cultures.” This letter 
is a fair sample of others: 
You told us in The R. N.-Y. that the patent for the nitro- 
cultures for Red clover, and Alfalfa, had been turned over 
to the Government for the benefit of the farmers. I wrote 
the Department at Washington for enough to treat one- 
half bushel Red clover and for two acres of Alfalfa. They 
answered there was no more available until after July 
(when there is not much use for it). There are plenty of 
advertisements of dealers who offer it. at .$2 per cake for 
an acre. 1 understand it costs about four cents to produce 
this amount. This must be the Dutchman's one per cent, 
profit. Will you please explain? o. d. t. 
We have no authority to “explain,” but here is our 
understanding of it. The patent for drying or hand¬ 
ling the “cultures” belongs to the Government. The 
object in holding the patent in this way was to 
prevent a monopoly. As it is, anyone who can give a 
satisfactory guarantee that he will propagate and sell 
the true bacteria can use the process. All the Govern¬ 
ment tried to do, and all that it really had any right to 
do, was to send small quantities of these cultures out for 
trial. Having demonstrated that there is value in the 
cultures, the Government is justified in leaving the 
commercial side of the business to private parties. Sup¬ 
pose that by means of many trials the Department of 
Agriculture found that a certain variety of corn or 
potatoes was of great value. It would be justified in 
sending small lots for trial, but when farmers wanted 
quantities for business—not for experimenting—they 
should go to the seedsmen. True, the Government does 
give away so-called “free seeds,” but the principle of 
this distribution is wrong and should be cut off rather 
than enlarged. We are told that the Department planned 
to give away a number of thousand packages for trial, 
and that they have all been spoken for. What is your 
authority for saying that these packages cost only four 
cents each? You might as well say that because the 
metal in a watch costs 50 cents, therefore a price of 
$25 is exorbitant. Probably the boxes, the cotton and 
the chemicals which come with the cultures might 
be bought for a few cents, but what you pay for is the 
skill and care required to breed and prepare the bacteria, 
and the cost of putting them on the market. The 
Government has no expense of this sort. It is not fair 
to expect outsiders to compete with the Government in 
prices. _ 
BREVITIES. 
Humor is to tlie heart what humus is to the soil. 
What breed of poultry gives best results on corn? 
Sheep feeding seems to have paid well in Western New 
York the past Winter. 
“Back to the land!” That’s right—back up against it 
and put iq) a stiff fight. 
YOU can't control the ventilation of a building unless 
you have it arranged to keep all the air out if necessary. 
Now we want to know what happened to Mr. Cook's cows 
as the result of that institute. Did they shrink in their 
milk? 
Has any reader ever tried spraying with Bordeaux to 
cure rust or blight on beans? Something must be done to 
stop that disease. 
‘-‘A pair of educated horses and plenty of tools" are all 
the farm help that can really be depended on, says a Maine 
correspondent. Horse education means human patience. 
Every year the “trained monkey” fake starts up. This 
year it Is reported that a California fruit grower has im¬ 
ported 500 monkeys to pick prunes! Last year these 
monkeys were to pick cotton in Mississippi. 
Dr. II. J. Wheeler, of Rhode Island, has shown that tHe 
use of lime on acid soils Increases the availability of nitro¬ 
gen. Dried blood was made doubly effective on such soils 
when lime was used and even leather became more availa¬ 
ble. 
A Chicago scientist says that within 3,000.000 years man 
will be crowded off the earth by the predominance of birds. 
Jersey fruit growers who worked for that anti-robin bill 
last year think that the professor is almost too conservative 
in his statements. 
The following was written by Thomas Hood, the Eng¬ 
lish poet and wit, to a Mr. Berry, on the latter sending him 
a bill that was not due: “What a mul Berry, to send me 
a bill Berry, before it was dew Berry: your father, the 
elder Berry, wouldn’t have been such a goose Berry ; your 
needn't look black Berry, I don’t care a straw Berry.” 
It Is stated that French chemistry lias produced a 
plausible imitation of the ordinary egg. The shell is made 
with a blowpipe by a combination of lime and bismuth, the 
white is a mixture of sulphur, carbon and beef fat, and 
the yolk beef blood and magnesia tinted with chrome yel¬ 
low. After all, that is not nearly as poor an imitation of 
a fresh egg as one meets with in some restaurants. 
