1909. 
'THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
371 
Hope Farm Notes 
Government Seeds. —I recently re¬ 
ceived by mail a package of free seeds 
from our Congressman. They were 
marked peas, Brussels sprouts, musk- 
melon, lettuce and radish, but I did 
not open them. I sent them right back 
to the Congressman with this letter: 
Hon. William Hughes. 
Dear Sir—I return unopened the pack¬ 
age of free seeds which were recently sent 
me on your order. 1 have no use for 
these seeds. I regard this distribution as 
a form of petty graft—a small sop or 
bribe offered to farmers. A distribution of 
rare or new varieties for testing purposes 
might have value if farmers would treat 
the seeds fairly and report. You cannot, 
however, give any good reason why these 
ordinary seeds .should be distributed, par¬ 
ticularly as I understand you claim to be 
opposed to special privileges and favorit¬ 
ism. You could not have been elected if 
you had not made this claim. As one of 
your constituents I shall be greatly pleased 
to have you work and vote against any 
further distribution of this sort. Do not 
send any more to me ! 
Now, one of my neighbors seems to 
think this is all wrong. He wants the 
seeds. As I understand him, this is 
his argument: “The farmers get little 
enough out of the Government anyway. 
If we can get some seeds we are that 
much ahead. Let’s get all we can. 
That’s the way the big corporations get 
ahead.” 
Now, I think this man is working on 
the wrong theory entirely. Special priv¬ 
ileges granted the railroads and large 
business interests has taken both power 
and property away from . us. It 
seems to me like childish folly for us 
to reason that because the big ones have 
had great privileges we should be so 
eager to accept petty little ones which 
we know are wrong in principle. Who is 
going to pay attention when we de¬ 
mand our rights if Congressmen be¬ 
lieve that we can be bought with a 
few garden seeds? They do believe 
that and I would, if year after year 
the farmers who elected me accepted 
with thanks a few cents _ worth of 
seeds or some old “reports.” I do not 
know of any more wholesome lesson 
to give Congress to-day than for about 
1,000,000 farmers to send these seeds 
right back to their Congressmen, tell¬ 
ing him they don’t want any more of 
them and that they do want him to 
stop the distribution. Seeds planted 
with a stamp on a Congressman’s back 
may produce a useful crop. 
Leave the Grass. —There seems to 
be more people than ever this year 
leaving town to buy a farm. Dozens 
of them have come to me for advice. 
Most of them have taken farms quite 
long out of cultivation and they plan 
to do great work. Most of such farms 
have considerable grass land—some well 
seeded and others poor. The aver¬ 
age “city farmer,” when he strikes the 
country is seized with a wild desire 
to plow up most of the soil and plant 
corn, potatoes or other cultivated crops. 
The neighbors often advise this, for 
to them will go the job of plowing the 
sod at $5 per day. Judging from my 
own experience 1 would advise these 
new farmers to go slow on this “sod 
busting.” Hay is a good crop—usually 
salable and not requiring cultivation or 
hoeing. I would look the meadows 
over, select the best—that is, the strong¬ 
est stand of grass—and use fertilizer 
freely. Plow up a few acres of the 
poorest sod and plant some hoed crop 
—giving it the best possible care. I 
made the mistake of plowing too much 
grass land when I started. If I were 
starting again I would fertilize the 
best meadows and let them alone, cut¬ 
ting the hay as best I could. Many 
of these city farmers intend to work 
in town a while longer and run the 
farm by hired-man power. All the 
more reason why they should keep all 
the grass land they can. They can 
take their vacation at haying time and 
help handle the crop. The land kept 
in sod will be growing stronger and 
ready to produce other crops when the 
owner can do his own farming. When¬ 
ever these men come and try to pin 
me down to a statement about farm 
profits I want to know what the women 
think about it. I have seen many fam¬ 
ilies start hopefully for the country and 
run into the rocks of tragedy when 
W inter comes. The tendency is to put 
all the capital into the first crop. Tt 
rarely pans out, and Winter brings the 
family face to face with some pretty 
stern facts. This is hard on wife and 
daughters, and they must possess rare 
qualities of hope and courage in order 
to go on. This going from city to 
the farm is a sort of pioneer life that 
tests the character and endurance as 
by fire. 
Taxation.— I do not know who ever 
put me down as an authority on tax¬ 
ation, but I often have questions like 
the following: 
Here is a subject I have long looked for 
the Hope Farm man to write up; people 
who have a small amount of money at 
interest, say $1,000 or $2,000 to have it 
exempted from tax. I have in mind a 
woman friend over 50, stranded alone in 
the world on a small farm. She gets her 
crops put in on shares, keeps all the stock 
the farm will carry, and that she can tend 
to herself: can just make a living with 
strict economy. Now how are such people 
to get a living when too old to work, and 
there must be plenty of such people so sit¬ 
uated, both men and women? The govern¬ 
ment officials do not appear to think of 
that, but ex-Presidcnt’s widows have been 
given $5,000 pensions per year and they 
are talking of giving great sums to pen¬ 
sion ex-Presidents. n. e. t. 
As for tax exemption, I do not quite 
see bow we could fairly limit the 
sum of money to be exempted. Per¬ 
sonally, I would agree to see all per¬ 
sonal property or “improvements” ex¬ 
empted, and the entire tax collected 
from real values of land. I would 
have the owner of land state what he 
would sell the land for, and make that 
the basis of tax assessment. That would 
simplify matters, cut out a lot of in¬ 
direct taxes and cut down the waste 
in public expense as nothing else 
would. In this session of the New 
Jersey Legislature a bill was intro¬ 
duced giving municipal authorities the 
right to exempt any class of property 
from taxation and assess the balance 
for the full tax. Had this become a 
law several cities and towns stood 
ready to exempt all personal property 
and collect the taxes on real estate 
alone. The bill was killed, but it shows 
how public sentiment is growing. In 
England old age pensions are paid to 
some 70,000 persons. In Australia vari¬ 
ous plans are carried out for provid¬ 
ing for those who cannot work. Prob¬ 
ably when a President’s widow is pen¬ 
sioned it is not because she needs the 
money, but because the nation takes 
this form of paying respect to her hus¬ 
band. Personally I fell shy about pen¬ 
sions. It seems to me that the great 
majority of people I have known have 
ample 'opportunity to provide for a 
family before they are 45 if they would 
use average energy, judgment and 
thrift. 
Farm and Home. — Transplanting 
those grapevines was a slow job, for 
we want to keep them growing so as 
to get a crop this year. The vines were 
cut back severely and taken up with a 
large bunch of dirt around the roots. 
A hole was dug at the new trellis and 
dirt, roots and all put carefully into it 
—planting about an inch lower than the 
vine stood in the vineyard. Then the 
hole was filled in, the soil leveled and 
stamped down hard, and a good coat 
of manure put around the vine. These 
vines are thrifty and strong, and we 
expect them to proceed at once to busi¬ 
ness. The vines planted by the stone 
walls are handled in much the same 
way—set 18 inches out from the wall, 
trained up on a stout stake and then 
left to run as they like over the stones. 
. The children have taken to 
live stock keeping this Spring as never 
before. The older boy is breeding R. 
I. Red poultry. The other boy is start¬ 
ing with White Pekin ducks, while the 
girls have bantams and rabbits. I be¬ 
lieve it a good plan to start children 
at stock keeping in a business-like way. 
The trouble is that some people overdo 
it, giving the child too much to handle. 
The boys want, me to buy a flock of 
sheep. I never kept sheep on the farm, 
and know nothing about them. I want 
to know what breed will be best for 
our situation—a fruit farm with but 
little chance for pasture. . . If I wanted 
to convince a farmer that he ought to 
sow Crimson clover and Cow-horn tur¬ 
nips in the corn at last cultivation, I 
would not take him to look at my 
clover now. Tt would not appeal to 
him, for the open March with freeze 
and thaw has been tough on the clover. 
Yet T think a good share of it will 
get through. In May I think I can 
convince any man on that same field. 
I could make him thoughtful right now 
in a rye field at the back of the farm. 
On about half this field the Crimson 
clover was good—on the rest it was 
poor. You can see the difference in 
the rye right up to the line. A blind 
man could recognize it if he got down 
and felt with his hands. H. w. c. 
■ 
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& 
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