764 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
October 21, 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER. 
A National Weekly journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Established 1850. 
f 
Hkkmkkt W. Colling wood, Editor. 
I)u. Walter van Fleet, ( . 
Mrs. K. T. Hoyle, (Associate 
John J. Dillon, Husiness Manager. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, 
equal to 8s. (id., or 8M> marks, or 10<4 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 most 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. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
409 Pear! Street, New York. 
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 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. 
* 
PRIZES FOR PHOTOGRAPHS. • 
Prizes of $5, $3 and $2 will he paid for the best 
photographs, suitable for printing in The R. N.-Y. 
illustrating the subject : 
“THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOA1E.” 
The picture may be a group of humans, a company of 
animals or a farm scene. The only condition is that it 
must in some way illustrate the home feeling. Here 
is a chance for an amateur photographer to show some 
original groupings and picture a subject as old as time 
and yet ever rev. An illustration of the home feeling 
is an expression of the most beautiful and powerful 
force in the world. The pictures must be in our hands 
by November 15. 
* 
We often receive letters unsigned, and many more 
with the name of the post office hut no State. People 
who are well known in their own locality do not realize 
that the circle grows larger as they get away from 
home, and that the Stale and county are often needed 
to identify them. Even the larger cities do not have a 
monopoly of name. There are in this country two post 
offices named New York (one in Texas) seven Phila- 
delphias, 13 Bostons, two Baltimores, three Chicagos, 31 
Clevelands, live Cincinnatis, 12 Louisvilles, nine Omahas, 
11 St. Pauls and so on. There are 274 post offices be¬ 
ginning with Green, 102 with Brown. 113 with Smith. 
236 with White and 140 with Black. Even Red starts 
ISO post offices, Blue 83 and Pink 17. A letter mailed 
to Atwater must take its choice of seven States, or to 
Athens 19 States, Greeley 10 or Greenville 31 ; Arling¬ 
ton 30 or Buffalo 19. So put on the State, for the 
postal guide is certainly monotonous reading 
* 
It is with genuine regret that we announce the death 
of Duane H. Nash, of Millington, N. J. Mr. Nash was 
killed on the railroad track near his home bn October 9. 
For many years Mr. Nash’s name was familiar to 
readers of agricultural papers as the manufacturer of 
the Acme harrow. This implement is in use all over 
the world, and wherever it went it carried a share of 
the character and honest dealing of the manufacturer. 
Other implements have come and gone, but the Acme 
harrow still remains the best tool of its class. We have 
heard Mr. Nash say that he spent over $300,000 in adver¬ 
tising this one tool, a record which has not been sur¬ 
passed in the implement business. Mr. Nash was 
greatly respected by all who knew him. He was a man 
of strong character, of clear and definite ideas—a good 
citizen and or.e who will lie greatly missed. 
* 
The San Jose scale is getting into politics. A Demo¬ 
cratic county convention in New Jersey passed a reso¬ 
lution calling upon the State to aid in exterminating the 
scale rather than spend money fighting mosquitoes. 
There is no hope for exterminating the scale. It is 
too small, breeds too freely and cannot be poisoned. 
On the other hand, mosquitoes can be quite easily killed 
or driven aw?y from a neighborhood. The scale is not 
a menace to health, while the mosquito is directly re¬ 
sponsible for the spread of malaria, yellow fever and 
some other diseases. T t is the husiness of the State or . 
nation to fight the mosquito pest as it would the dis¬ 
eases which those insects carry. It is also public husi¬ 
ness to prevent the spread of insects like the Gypsy 
moth, which threaten to cover the entire country. If 
the State undertook to fight the San Jose scale it would 
he necessary to enter the premises of half the fruit 
growers and force them to spray or destroy trees, or 
do the work against their protest. 
* 
People are sending us clippings from the daily papers 
in which the Ben Davis apple gets a share of what we 
knew was coming to it. Here is a sample from The 
New York Sun: 
In tlie horticultural kingdom it stands only for the bald¬ 
est commercialism. The sole claim that can be rightfully 
made for it is that it is a good seller. It flaunts its ruddy 
inferiority to attract the eye of the injudicious and the 
ignorant. Almost as well might basswood be used for pics 
as the Ben Davis apple. Not even among the pikers of Clay 
County nor among the cliff dwellers of the Ozarks can it 
hold its own for pastry with the spicy Jonathan or the racy 
Rhode Island Greening. 
Some years ago we told the growers of Ben Davis 
that it was only a question of time before consumers 
would learn to distinguish one apple from another. 
Once let a customer know Ben Davis by sight, and he 
will never touch it except as a last choice. The modern 
system of cold storage in towns and cities will enable 
consumers to buy better apples all the year round—and 
they will do so. It was unpopular to say these things 
some years ago, but history is slowly revealing their 
truth. People ask why we do not print the statements 
now being made in public about Ben Davis! We would 
rather be a pioneer than a camp follower. There are 
newer and more unpopular things to he discussed now. 
We try to make sure they are right before we start! 
* 
The California Supreme Court has decided an im¬ 
portant fruit case. A law was passed which ordered 
growers or packers to mark all packages of fruit with 
the name of the locality where it was grown. A dealer 
refused to mark such packages, and was arrested and 
fined under the law. He appealed, and the court has 
sustained him. He claimed that there was no power 
under the Constitution that could compel him to mark 
such packages. The State claimed that it had the right 
to prevent the spread of disease or insects; that certain 
sections of the State were infected, and that marking 
the packages would show whether the fruit came from 
clean or infected sections. The court held that if the 
State wanted to prevent the spread of insects or dis¬ 
ease it must prohibit the shipment of packages from cer¬ 
tain sections. The law appeared to favor certain ship¬ 
pers at the expense of others. It would he easy to 
arouse prejudice against certain sections, and then if 
packages from these sections were marked, fruit other¬ 
wise first-cla.-s would lose value. Again, suppose fruit 
is gathered from various localities, sorted into various 
grades and then repacked, how could it possibly he 
marked with the place of its growth? For these and 
other reasons the court declared the law unconstitu¬ 
tional. This seems to us a just decision, for the State 
has no right to give one locality or one set of men 
special market privileges. 
* 
Many of us have used basic slag or iron phosphate 
as a fertilizer. We have found it very useful, especial¬ 
ly on fruits and grass. It contains over 20 per cent 
of phosphoric acid, nearly 50 per cent of lime, and a 
quantity of iron. The lime is in the form needed to 
sweeten the soil, so that the slag does a double part. 
'I'he iron is very useful on some soils—giving color to 
fruit. Large quantities of this slag would he imported 
and used here to great advantage were it not for a 
tariff of $1 per ton. This tariff is entirely useless, and 
serves no purpose except to raise the price of phosphoric 
acid in fertilizers. In no other case is there any tariff 
on manurial substances. For example, in the first eight 
months of this year over 50,000 tons of muriate of pot¬ 
ash, 214,000 tons of nitrate of soda and nearly 
100.000 tons of other fertilizers were admitted free, be¬ 
cause they were used for fertilizing purposes. The 
basis slag is used as a fertilizer—has no other use in 
fact—yet importers must pay one dollar per ton tariff. 
Why was such a tariff levied while other fertilizers go 
free? It was improperly classed as iron ore, when it 
is not ore at all, but a by-product in the manufacture 
of steel. There is now some talk of revising the tariff. 
It will have to he revised soon, as it has been in the 
past. From an agricultural standpoint one of the first 
changes should be the removal of this useless tariff on 
basic slag. Wc have heard the argument that there 
is no need of importing phosphoric acid, since this 
country has great stores of rock phosphates. Prof. 
Hopkins of Illinois shows that the deposits of phos¬ 
phate thus far discovered will furnish something over 
150.000,000 tons. The annual consumption is about 
3,000,000 tons, so a little over 50 years will use up the 
present available supply. We are now exporting this 
phosphate to Europe. In the eight months from Janu¬ 
ary 1. 621,648 tons were sent away. In view of these 
facts what folly it is to keep up this useless tariff and 
prevent the entrance of this needed fertilizer. 
Some years ago a reader of The R. N.-Y. went about 
selling fence wire. His samples were bright and new, 
and looked well when they were put up. Business was 
good, and farmers willingly paid a price which justified 
them in expecting 15 years of good service. Pretty 
soon this wire began to rust. A good share of it now 
hangs in rotten strings, and wherever the agent goes 
lie is met with faultfinding. He tried another brand 
of wire, but that has gone in the same way. It is now 
almost impossible to sell a wire fence in that section. 
And yet, right by the side of these failures may he 
found fences of old-fashioned wire that have been 
doing duty for a dozen years. The new ones are use¬ 
less, but tiie old ones, though worn, will still turn stock. 
This experience can he duplicated in a thousand places, 
'l he manufacturers understand it because both farmers 
and agents take pains to tell them. Now all the 
manufacturer has to do to save his trade and increase 
it is to guarantee to furnish the same kind of wire he 
did a dozen years ago. Anyone who will do this simple 
thing will he loaded with orders at once. We believe 
that the agitation of this subject has already put a 
better grade of galvanizing on the market, hut better 
wire is also needed. We shall get it when the demand 
for it is strong enough. At the risk of being called 
monotonous we shall keep at it until the public can 
buy guaranteed wire! 
* 
Graft is a good, honest horticultural word which 
stands for a useful operation. Some one put marks 
around it so that ‘‘graft” stood for a certain kind of 
stealing. As it became known how much of this steal¬ 
ing there is in public life the marks were taken out, 
and a new definition of the word is ready for the dic¬ 
tionary. When we graft a tree we put a small piece of 
a new tree into the stock of the old, so that the new 
piece is nourished by the stock. The strength and 
power of the old tree goes into the new piece and 
makes it large and strong. We have seen such grafts 
shoot up and dwarf the limbs of the old tree! It was 
this thing about grafting that made the new definition 
appropriate. The financial “grafter” fastens himself in 
some position where lie can handle other people’s money. 
It is some political job where contracts are signed, or 
in some insurance or hanking business where small 
sums paid in by thousands of individuals make a vast 
total. These “grafters,” like the little stick in the fruit 
tree, are nourished by the stock. In every case this 
money which these “grafters” obtain comes at the last 
analysis out of the pockets of those who work and 
deny themselves. When an insurance “grafter” steals 
half a million dollars he takes fuel and clothing and 
sometimes food away from many poor people who 
scrimp and save that Father’s insurance policy may he 
paid. Extravagance and theft in high places always 
bear hardest upon the poor, and the saddest part of it 
is that this hardship comes in a way which is hard to 
connect with the real cause. During the past 10 years 
the “grafters” have had the finest pickings ever known 
in the history of this country. This is because the 
common people have turned money over to them which 
in many cases should have been kept at home. Many 
a farmer has gone without needed things indoors and 
out. in order that he might send his money away for 
investment. These little streams, trickling down from 
half a million farms, have helped fill up the vaults on 
which grafters have been fattening. The fearful story 
of cynical rascality which the papers are now reporting 
will among other things cause people to invest more of 
their money at home. The grafters thrive upon other 
people’s money. Why not give them a rest and make 
the house comfortable, or buy needed tools or conveni¬ 
ences with the nioney which we would otherwise “in¬ 
vest”? If there is any graft to be had let’s have it 
ourselves in comforts for the home. There are thou¬ 
sands of people who will take just that position. It 
will mean better business for honest manufacturers, 
poorer trade for grafters and greater self-respect for 
farmers! 
BREVITIES. 
Last call for sowing rye on that bare ground ! 
Now Hie nut crop! It helps b'olt the children to the home. 
Jack Frost hangs off from us this year—hut lie is com¬ 
ing. 
••Benzine buggy” is what they call an automobile in South 
Jei sey. 
When the pot called the kettle black it stated what we 
call “an unpleasant truth.” 
What do the corn husks and the squirrels say about the 
Winter? Our local weather prophet says it will he a hard one. 
We never before saw so much interest displayed by elderly 
farmers in Florida and California. Such people want Win¬ 
ter sunshine. 
The Province of Quebec imposed a tax on foreign drum¬ 
mers or traveling salesmen. Tiie objects were to provide 
revenue and help home trade. It did neither. Foreign 
business houses either hired resident salesmen or did husi¬ 
ness by letter. 
Some of the scientific men seem to grieve because farmers 
do not take their say-so without a grain of salt. The fact is 
that farmers are sizing up the situation accurately. They 
like suggestions, hut will depend upon practical experiment 
for final answer. 
