444 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 3, 
The Rural New-Yorker 
TIIE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homea, 
Established 1850. 
P 
Herbert W. Cobbingwood, Editor. 
Dr. Wabter Van Pbeet, I 
Mrs. K. T. Kovbe, ^ Associates. 
John J. Dibbon, Business Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, 
equal to 8s. 0d., or H'/a marks, or 10Mi francs. 
“A SQUARE DEAL.” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper Is 
backed by a responsible person. But to make doubly sure 
we will make good any loss to paid subscribers sustained 
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 be made in money order, express order, 
personal check or bank draft. 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
409 Pearl Street,- New York. 
SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 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. 
* 
A pamphlet issued by the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture mentions the great demand for buttermilk in 
southern cities. The South is not a dairy section, and 
in some places where very little butter is made the 
buttermilk trade is very heavy. It seems that this 
“buttermilk” is nothing but sour skim-milk, which is 
shaken up or churned for a few minutes. When cus¬ 
tomers demand evidence of butter a small quantity of 
cream is shaken in a glass jar, and the butter granules 
put with the skim-milk. This mixture finds a sale at 
three to five cents per quart. It is a good way' of dis¬ 
posing of skim-milk, and the mixture satisfies a legiti¬ 
mate demand, but it is not “buttermilk,” though no 
harm is done to other products by its sale. 
* 
Last week we referred to the unfortunates who, hav¬ 
ing lost some member or faculty, decline to give up, but 
go on doing their best. The picture on page 439 gives 
another side to this. One man stands upon the shoulder 
of another to show the height of the corn. The corn 
conceals the fact that “foundation” man has lost his 
right hand. The hand was lost in childhood, and yet 
this man did not despair, but worked on until he is now 
respected and responsible. Not only this, but he still 
has a shoulder for “the other fellow” if need be. We 
regret to say that the tendency of too many “strong 
ones” is to walk over the weak and helpless, never 
dreaming that their strong backs and shoulders were 
made to carry rather than to bear down When a man, 
like the one in the picture, has grown strong under 
affliction he is likely to have more charity. But what 
about you and the burdens you think are heavy? You 
may lighten them by helping some one else to rise. 
* 
Hon. Thomas C. Platt is receiving a good deal of 
mail these days. We feel sure of this, because people 
send us copies of the letters they write him. We have 
not room to print many of them, but here is one which 
may be called a fair sample: 
Hon. Thomas C. Platt: Dear Sir:—Your position regard¬ 
ing the parcels post question has been brought to nay notice. 
I understand you do not think the American people seem 
ready to demand this addition to the public service. I can 
assure you you are entirely mistaken. The people do want 
the parcels post, and it is a crying shame that they do not 
now enjoy tills highly useful service. The people of these 
United States will not stand idly by and see Europeans send¬ 
ing their packages from across the ocean clear across our 
continent, while they—the Americans—cannot have this 
privilege our Government gives to foreigners. I say again, 
it is a shame, and the people of this country will not stand 
it much longer. As the President of the United States Ex¬ 
press Company you will doubtless be injured some by the 
parcels post service, but as a politician and a leader in the 
Republican party you will suffer to a greater extent if you 
persist in ignoring the wishes of the people you are sup¬ 
posed to be serving. The people will hold the Republican 
party responsible for the lack of the parcels post addition to 
our postal service. Cordially yours, c. a. 
Now there is a man who points the way. He is a 
more useful citizen than the one who sits down and 
mopes because Senator Platt is a large man, while a 
postage stamp seems like a little thing. Suppose we 
had 20,000 good men in New York who would talk up 
to Senator Platt in just this way. Does anybody doubt 
what the result would be? We select Senator Platt 
as a special mark for the postage stamps because he 
is thought by many to be the most powerful opponent 
of the parcels post. Let us take hold of the hardest 
part of the job first. There is no public man in this 
country who can afford to ignore the postage stamp 
vote. Keep at him. therefore, fearlessly and respect¬ 
fully, but keep at him! 
* 
We have pointed out some strange features of the 
horse business. In spite of the increase of trolley cars, 
automobiles and other machines formerly drawn by 
horses good animals are worth more than ever and hard 
to find. In view of this, one would think that farmers 
would raise more horses. We should naturally ex¬ 
pect to find one or more colts on every good farm. Yet 
the great majority of eastern farmers buy their farm 
horses from the West or Canada. We find compara¬ 
tively few colts outside of the sections where horse 
raising is made a business. The explanation seems to 
be that most farmers regard a good colt as a risky piece 
of property. A barbed wire, a rolling stone, a hole 
in the pasture, may quickly cut the colt’s value in two. 
Then again many farmers feel that they lack the time 
required to drive and train a good colt. It needs con¬ 
stant and steady exercise, and this means time taken 
from regular farm work. These are some of the rea¬ 
sons why so many farmers prefer to let others oversee 
the first four years of a horse’s life. 
* 
The Cincinnati Times Star pictures the woes of a 
dealer in colored oleo. This man was found guilty of 
selling oleo for butter, the fines and costs amounting to 
$ 750 . He refused to pay and was put at labor in the 
prison workhouse. When he called for a better place 
to sleep he was told that “all prisoners fare alike!” 
Promptly on time he was called up with the other pris¬ 
oners and marched to his work. He found there was 
no shirking and that while selling oleo- for butter might 
be in some ways a “soft job,” working out his fine was 
a job that went without cushions. At last reports he 
had about made up his mind to pay the fine and stick to 
either honest butter or honest oleo! The moral in this 
little story is many sided. The most important side 
is the civilizing effect which a little wholesome labor 
has upon a well-to-do rogue. The reckless auto drivers 
belong to a class that should feel the uplifting influence 
of a good sweat. These gentry go rushing along our 
country roads, scaring horses and putting lives in peril. 
A small fine or a smaller bribe means nothing to them. 
What they need most is a good job at some useful work 
behind the bars with no rest and no prison favors. One 
good application of this treatment would go* far to make 
them useful members of society! 
* 
A benevolence in which country dwellers should be 
especially interested is the work of the National Plant, 
Fruit and Flower Guild, whose headquarters are in this 
city. The object of this association is to carry bright¬ 
ness into the lives of the poor in great cities, and to 
bring them in touch with nature. This organization 
distributes fruit, flowers and plants to hospitals and 
dwellers in the tenements ; it furnishes plants and 
seeds for vacant lot farming, for backyard gardens and 
for tenement window boxes. It also provides nature 
study material for the public schools. Anyone who 
doubts whether the poor city dweller really cares for 
flowers ought to walk by The R. N.-Y. office display¬ 
ing a bunch of lilac or daisies just as the children pour 
out of the public school around the corner. He must 
be a very hard-hearted mortal who can resist the ap¬ 
peals made for “only just one flower, please, mister,” as 
the youngsters flock around him unawed-by the big 
policeman who stands guard at the schoolhouse door. 
By addressing the Guild at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, 
one may obtain instructions as to the material desired, 
and also shipping tags, the express companies sending 
all such gifts free, except the nature-study material. 
Nor need this work be confined to persons living near 
New York. There are many other places where such 
work may be begun to the greater happiness of the poor, 
the sick and the unfortunate. 
* 
The following note is from a friend-in Colorado: 
A man is in this neighborhood selling State and county 
rights for a formula that will make three or four times as 
much butter from ordinary milk as you can without using 
his method. lie claims that he uses some vegetable that can 
he bought in any town at a small cost, and I saw him make 
five pounds of butter out of a quart of milk and some of this 
vegetable. Will you tell me if this is a fraud, or have you 
ever heard of such a thing? 
Heard of it? Why, something is wrong when a 
month goes by without a report from this friendly old 
fraud. Some years ago the daily papers printed let¬ 
ters about “Black Pepsin,” a small quantity of which 
would “double the amount of butter” one could make 
from a given quantity of milk. This stuff coagulated 
the milk solids, so that upon churning you produced 
a mixture of pot cheese and butter fat—a pasty sort of 
salve, which would not sell and which few would eat. 
The only person we ever knew to make such stuff the 
second time was a farmer in Oregon, who wanted to 
be economical, and fed this mess to his hired man. As 
for taking five pounds of butter out of a quart of 
milk—just consider for a moment how absurd that is. 
The quart of milk weighs about 33 ounces. A four- 
per-cent milk will thus give less than V/ 2 ounce of 
butter fat. Do not, under any circumstances, buy such 
stuff. You cannot make good butter by its use, but 
will only make trouble and loss for yourself! 
★ 
We once received a rush letter from a man who de¬ 
manded instant help. His strawberry plants were dying 
and he concluded that the damage was done by an in¬ 
sect which he found running away from one of the 
plants. He sent us a sample of the damaged plants and 
also several of the insects. We were to telegraph if 
need be and tell him how to kill the pest. We saw 
at a glance that the plants had been injured by the 
white grub. The insect was the common water bug, 
which could not possibly kill a strawberry plant! Our 
friend was, sure of his effect but made a bad guess at 
the cause: Another man found his young orchard badly 
affected with plant lice. He observed many ants run¬ 
ning about on the trees and immediately concluded 
that the ants were hunting and killing the lice. So he 
went about digging up ant hills and carrying the dirt 
to scatter in his orchard, so as to have plenty of the 
ants. He thus did just the thing he should not have 
done. Instead of trying to kill the lice the ants pro¬ 
tect them and make them work. Thus the more this 
man increased the supply of ants the more he helped 
the lice and hurt his trees. We mention these two 
cases to show how easy it is for the best of us to go 
wrong when we trust to our own imperfect knowledge 
to settle an important matter. A large proportion of 
the failures in life are due to the habit of making snap 
judgments and refusing to wait until the best opinion 
within reach can be consulted. 
* 
You may start from Maine and travel to Arizona, and 
then work up to Washington and travel to Florida. In 
all your journey you cannot find a place where people 
are not discussing the problem of how to retain the 
common rights of the common people. You will find 
some radical people who-talk what amounts to revolu¬ 
tion, while others seem hopeless and indifferent. The 
great majority, however, realize the situation, and are 
beginning to see their duty. The following note from 
South Dakota is a fair sample of what farmers say 
I like what you say on page 382 in regard to trusts, and 
believe with you that unless the trusts are less aggressive 
or go more on the Iive-and-let-live plan that Government 
ownership will he a stronger issue than tariff or free silver 
were. We want parcels post and postal savings banks, and 
if Congress does not come to the rescue soon we shall have 
to get a new Congress that will at least try to give the peo¬ 
ple what they should have. From this on I shall support 
the man who seems most likely to work in the interest of 
the people. 
What is commonly known as “talk” is not half as 
cheap as it used to be. The constant discussion of these 
public questions in magazines and papers has resulted 
in public education. At no time in the history of the 
country have the great majority of thinking Americans 
had a clearer idea of the great evils that confront so¬ 
ciety. We have great confidence in the ability of the 
plain working people to handle these matters justly. 
We shall find that the extension of agricultural educa¬ 
tion has helped to steady society as well as benefit agri¬ 
culture. 
BREVITIES. 
A dishorned goat is a renovated butter. 
With us the Alfalfa grows right away from the clover. 
Now, then, if you only had a good field of Crimson clover! 
It requires great faith to do a thorough job of spraying 
for the first time on a windy day. 
Immigrants are still pouring into New York and at the 
same time farms are being drained of laborers. 
Some people like to stand in the limelight. Let them 
remember this. The glare will expose your faults as well as 
your virtues. 
Ten to one you can sit down at any time and think of five 
cases where if you had taken your wife's advice you would 
now be better off. 
It is announced that in cheap candies oxide of iron, man¬ 
ganese and other minerals used in barn paint form a sub¬ 
stitute for chocolate. It doesn't seem a desirable interior 
decoration for young America. 
The Agricultural Department says that insect pests In the 
United States annually cost the farmers $700,000,000 a year, 
or more than the entire annual expenditures of the Govern¬ 
ment. Load up your spraying outfit, and see if you can’t 
knock a trifle off the bug appropriation this year. 
Since January 793 persons have been killed or injured by 
automobiles in and around New York. Of these 02 were 
killed and over 50 crippled for life. With nothing but a 
small fine in prospect, the owners of “devil wagons” seem 
to find these murderous assaults on pedestrians quite divert¬ 
ing. 
