Sol 
1909. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—The case of the Government against the 
Barber Lumber Company to cancel entry to 35,000 acres 
of timber laud in the Boise Basin, Idaho, valued at 
$1,000,000, has been dismissed. Conspiracy to defraud by 
means of dummy entrymen was charged. The court held 
the testimony did not support the Government’s contentions. 
All the points on which the Government relied to secure 
the conviction of J. T. Barber and S. G. Moon in a pending 
criminal suit are covered in this decision. . . . E. II. 
Harriraan, the great railroad man, died at Arden, N. 1., 
September 9. He was born in 1S48, the son of a poor 
Episcopal clergyman, and he began to work early in his 
teens. He started a Stock Exchange business at the age 
of 22, and prospered greatly. Estimates of Mr. Harri- 
man’s wealth range from $2(10,000,000 to $500,000,000 
and are as indefinite as possible. His principal charity 
was an expenditure of $250,000 for a boys’ home and 
club on the East Side in this city. He had a town house 
at 11 East Sixty-second street, but resided most of the 
year on his 30.000-acre estate at Arden, Orange County, 
which is one of the most costly country establishments 
in the country. Early in life Mr. Harriman married Miss 
Mary Avercll, of Rochester, daughter of a business man 
interested in the Rome. Watertown and Ogdensburg. Site 
survives, as do five children : Miss Mary Harriman, Mrs. 
Robert Livingston Gerry, W. Averell Harriman, Miss 
Carol A. Harriman and Roland Harriman. 
Thirty packages of fish, shipped mainly from Black Lake, 
St. Lawrence County, and from Cape Vincent, on the 
St. Lawrence River, and Lake Ontario, have been seized 
thus far this season at Utica by agents of the State 
Forest, Fish and Game Commission under the law making 
it a misdemeanor for a common carrier to receive for 
shipment or for any person to make shipment 
of birds and game on which there is a closed 
season in this State, except such shipments are plainly 
marked on the outside of the package with the kinds and 
number of such fish, together with the names of con¬ 
signor and consignee and their addresses. It is expected 
that most of these shipments held up by the authorities 
were forwarded by persons who had illegally engaged in 
the netting of fish and hoped to get their spoils through 
to a particular destination. Attention of the express 
companies and other forwarders had been called to the 
new law and attempts which had been made to violate 
its provisions, and express companies issued circulars to 
their agents telling them they would be held personally 
responsible for failure to obey the law. ... A de¬ 
cision has been reached in the Postoflice Department that 
carriers of mail are not required to deliver mail at resi¬ 
dences where there are vicious dogs unless the canines 
are properly muzzled or securely chained. The carriers 
do not need to prove by personal experience that a dog 
is vicious, but may accept the beast’s neighborhood repu¬ 
tation. As long as the owner of a bad dog lets him run 
loose, he will have to go to the postoffice for his mail. 
. . . Twenty persons on the way to St. Peter and 
Paul Cemetery, St. Ixuiis. Mo., were injured, five very 
seriously, when a Missouri Pacific switch engine struck 
and burled a Cherokee pay as you enter car fifteen feet 
at the Oak Hill railroad’s grade crossing in Gravois ave¬ 
nue September 11. The car, one of the new steel type, 
had about 30 passengers on board. None was able to 
escape before the car had been turned completely around 
and thrown to the opposite side of the street. Had it 
been a wooden car, generally used here, some of the pas¬ 
sengers would have been killed. . . . September 11 
a disastrous fire at Almonte, Ontario. Canada, caused a loss 
of $200,000. . . . The special graft Grand Jury in 
session for two weeks at Youngstown, O., reported Sep¬ 
tember 11. returning 47 indictments against 17 men, of¬ 
ficials of Youngstown and Mahoning County. The special 
Grand Jury was called as a result of an upheaval made 
when leading citizens, irrespective of party, got together 
and decided to employ detectives to ferret out charges of 
official crookedness. The jury returned a scathing ar¬ 
raignment of conditions in Youngstown. It charges that 
gambling dens and dives have been protected. Report 
says the officials under indictment include members of 
the Board of Education, members of the City Council and 
certain county officials, including at least one of the 
“good roads’* commissioners. Two contractors are also 
indicted. ... La Paz, the oldest settlement in Cali¬ 
fornia, was struck by a tornado September 12. Seven 
lives are known to be lost and the shore is strewn with 
wreckage from ships and boats in the roadstead. In many 
places the water was four feet deep in the streets and 
some of the thoroughfares were channels for raging tor¬ 
rents. Houses have crumbled into the flood and many 
others are badly damaged. . . . The main office and 
distributing agency for the Fred G. Clark Company, manu¬ 
facturers of lubricating oils and chemicals, Cleveland. 
O., was damaged by fire September 12 to the extent of 
$500,000, the loss being fully covered by insurance. Fifty 
thousand barrels of lubricating oil was destroyed, but a 
building containing 25.000 barrels was saved. 
An automobile going at the rate of 32 miles an hour, as 
showu by its speedometer, crashed into a street ear near 
Syracuse, N. Y., September 14, killing Mrs. James McKay, 
of Canton, Pa. Her husband, who was driving the auto, 
had his skull fractured and may not recover. In the 
rear seat of the machine were McKay’s sister, Mrs. 
Timothy Conklin, of Troy, Pa., and her husband. The 
latter has a probable fracture of the skull. Both men 
were unconscious for several hours after the ao< ident. 
Forest fires are reported from the Napa and 
Sonoma valleys and also in the southern counties near 
Ix)s Angeles, Cal. The Watters Springs property in Napa 
County was burned, causing a loss of $30,000. The 
Rurke Sanitarium and cottages near Santa Rosa have 
been destroyed and the towns' of < alistoga nr.d St. Hele¬ 
na in the upper part of the Napa valley were threat¬ 
ened. Thousands of acres had been burned over and 
much ranch property destroyed. In the canons below 
Mount Wilson observatory near Los Angeles, great fires 
are burning. Fires near Oxnard have caused $20,000 
damage. The country is as dry as tinder and the fires 
are difficult to exiinguish. . . • An oil lake In the 
Gulf of Mexico, 160 miles south by east of Galveston, 
fed by at least three jets, is reported by shipmasters. 
That a thin coat of oil has existed in this region for 
several years was well known, but that some extraoi- 
T HE RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
dinary occurrence is responsible for the flowing of oil fiom 
the bed of the Gulf is evidenced by the investigation made 
by Capt. C. Netherton, of the steamship Comedian, and 
Capt. J. Gaine, of the British steamship Aureole. The 
depth of water at this point is 5,400 feet. Three jets 
about 300 feet apart are bubbling oil. The oil zone is 
about a mile and a half wide and five miles long. In 
many places near to the jets the oil is three or four 
inches deep and a dead calm prevails, while the sea is 
turbulent beyond in all directions. A survey shows that 
the oil lake is on a line almost due south with the oil 
fields of east Texas. Experts advance the opinion that 
a subterranean eruption has severed the big vein of oil 
feeding the Texas fields. 
CROP PROSPECTS. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—James S. Whipple, New York- 
State Forest, Fish and Game Commissioner, recently pur¬ 
chased from private parties 13 miles of telephone wiies, 
comprising a system heretofore constructed connecting 
Indian Lake with Blue Mountain Lake, in the Adiron- 
dacks. He has also secured a five-mile telephone line 
running to the northeast of Indian Lake, and lias men 
in the field building 13 miles of new construction from 
Indian Lake to Lake Biseco. It is intended by the de¬ 
partment: to perfect as rapidly as possible the observa 
tion telephone station system throughout the Adirondacks 
for forest fire-fighting purposes. There are no fires in 
the woods now, because of recent rains. Commissioner 
Whipple has plans in prospect to make it possible for 
the fish and game protectors and fire-fighting forces t<> 
call upon each other when help is needed. The season of 
greatest activity for the game protectors begins with the 
opening of the deer hunting season, on September 16. 
The grandstand at the Mineola, L. I., fair grounds was 
burned September 9. The structure was the largest of 
its kind in the State and the damage is estimated at 
$20,000. Sparks from the grandstand set fire to the 
main exhibition building and the stables, but the blaze 
was put out before any considerable damage was done. 
On an order of the court, State Superintendent of In¬ 
surance William H. Hotchkiss has taken over the New 
York Horse Insurance Company. An examination of this 
company on July 1 last showed assets of $198 and lia¬ 
bilities $3,579. This company is one of five live stock 
assessment companies operating in this State. Its chief 
business was the insuring of horses. 
“THE BLUNDERBERRY.’ 
In “The Country Gentleman’* “Ananias B. Good” 
writes the following, in which he certainly “makes 
good”: 
“Some years ago I was trying to cross the rattlesnake 
plantain on the rum cherry, with a view to securing an 
antidote for delirium tremens. But my assistants be¬ 
came so inebriated working with these materials that 
they did many strange and unexpected things. lhey 
got several of my best kinds of crossing stock all mixed 
together, including my Scotch whisky vine and my Ger¬ 
man sausage tree. From these mixtures came all sorts 
of odd and useless results, many of which had no adver¬ 
tising value whatever; hut amongst the lot was this 
Blunderberry. 
“The plant is something between a vine and a tree, 
and is very prolific when it blossoms. But as it blooms, 
in this country at least, only on the 29th of February, 
we get a crop only in presidential years. I offered it 
privately to two very gullible seedsmen to be brought 
out as the Leap Year Fruit, or Presidential Manna; but 
neither man had the ready money; and I find that in 
this plant creating business it is best always to do busi¬ 
ness on a cash basis. In my failure to make an imme¬ 
diate sale, however, I committed the second and most 
serious blunder connected with the Blunderberry. 
“Borne question has been raised as to whether my 
Blunderberry is a genuine creation or only a newspaper 
fake. 1 have decided, however, to dispose of this innu¬ 
endo once for all by offering a prize of a farm in Cali¬ 
fornia and an Ingersoll watch to anyone who will prove 
that anything like what I have described ever existed 
before. Furthermore, I am willing to outdo the original 
creator of such advertising specialties and will offer ten 
thousand dollars {$10,000) cash, cold coin, to anyone 
who will prove that the Blunderberry has any earthly 
use. 
“It has always been my misfortune to wake up too late 
when anything especially good was' to come off. Had I 
got out my Blunderberry a few years earlier, or bad I 
promptly introduced my seedless apple, I might have 
made a good thing. Now, however, the field has been 
taken up by very similar, but really quite inferior, va¬ 
rieties.” ANANIAS B. GOOD. 
A GREAT EGG SCHEME. 
You say “now that the busy season is over." With 
me it is the thickest of the fight, picking plums that will 
rot if not picked as soon as ripe. Crops bountiful; 
plums “till you can’t rest.” Peaches twice too thick. 
Grapes never better. Pears light but fine—cherries gone, 
but. a full crop. s - J - A - 
Erie, Pa. 
We had a refreshing rain September 10, not enough 
to replenish streams, but sufficient to moisten soil plow 
depth. I have been pricing fertilizers' recently, getting 
quotations of $18 for 8-5; $21. for y 2 -8-2; $21 for 
1-1-7; $23 for 1-7-5; $19 for 10-2; $22 for 10-2; $21 
for 1-8-3 • $14 for 6-3, etc., most or all above normal 
values. w ' H ' STOUT - 
Pine Grove, Pa. ____. 
MORE OF THE CONSUMERS’ DOLLARS. 
1 am so heartily in sympathy with your position on 
“From Producer to Consumer” that I am writing you for 
information. We expect to harvest at least 500 barrels 
of choice apples', llow can we get these apples to the 
consumer without the middleman or men? Would an 
advertisement in your paper bring it about? We can 
deliver them F. O. B. Corning in any quantity. Our 
varieties are Spy, Baldwin, Greening and Tolman Sweets, 
with a few other varieties. L - K - T ' 
Corning, N. Y. . 
There having been several questions like this we 
give a general answer. An advertisement in The K. 
N.-Y. would no doubt reach some apple buyers. We 
have many readers who want apples, but do not raise 
them. No doubt too such advertising would attract 
some large buyers in a season like this, when apples 
are scarce. It is doubtful, however, if you could sell 
any large quantity of apples at retail in this way. 
Your best plan would be to advertise in your home 
town, or in various large places within fifty miles. 
These local markets are best for your purpose. You 
will be surprised to see how many families are to be 
found in such places who want to buy good apples 
and potatoes. We have worked this local market with 
great satisfaction, and we believe it is your best 
chance for trade. In many of those cities, you will 
find fruit and vegetables shipped in from other sec¬ 
tions. People buy them simply because they do not 
know where to get local supplies. Get up a neat 
circular telling what you have, pack so you can guar¬ 
antee the goods, and then advertise thoroughly in the 
local papers. Many of these papers have what they 
call a “Want” column. We use such columns freely, 
and find that people read them as they do the news— 
hunting for bargains. Do not be discouraged if you 
do not make sales at first. Stick to it and you will 
find your local market the best of all. 
I have just the best scheme ever, but I cannot figure 
out all the details. I see by an article on page 708 
that the editor of the Washington Post “knows that 
eggs can be produced at 20 cents per dozen—strictly 
fresh eggs too—at Christmas.” Now, every one knows 
that class of eggs would bring 45 cents per dozen, leav¬ 
ing a nice little profit of 25 cents per dozen to the pro¬ 
ducer. Every well-informed city man knows that a hen 
lays an egg a day, and that by the skillful use of electric 
lights and shutters she may be made to lay half a dozen 
or more eggs a day, and the only reason the farmers do 
not get those results is because they are “wasteful and 
thriftless.” My scheme is this: Buy a 300-acre farm 
(they may be had for $25 to $30 an acre) and stock it 
to hens. You can keep a thousand hens to the acre, 
and yet have over 43 feet to the hen. This is more than 
the average city man has to his' hen park; that means 
300,000 hens, 300.000 eggs per day or 25,000 dozen at the 
25 cents per dozen which is just the profit, you remember; 
we get $6,250 per day profit. Think of it, $187,500 per 
month, and if we can keep it up a year $2,281,250 all 
in one year and that just the profit, and all on a little 
300-acre farm. But the great trouble is to get the editor 
of the Washington Post to run the farm, for I am sure 
1 could not got anyone else to take any stock in the 
story, to say nothing of taking stock in the enterprise. 
How can I persuade him? Can you help me, or give me 
any suggestions through the columns of Tur R. N.-Y.? 
Such possibilities are very alluring. hbn man. 
TWO SIDES TO “PARTNERSHIP” PLAN. 
The discussion of the benefits of partnerships, in 
your columns, is of interest to me, because at one 
time I thought partnerships a partial solution of the 
hired-help problem. Perhaps they solve the question 
satisfactorily for the employer, but my experience as 
junior partner was far from pleasing to myself, though 
it may be of value to others who contemplate doing 
a hired man’s work for a share of the products or 
profits. 
I was given the preference over nearly 60 other ap¬ 
plicants, and became the associate of a well-educated 
middle-aged man, with a complete theoretical knowl- 
edg of farming, who had spent most of his life practic¬ 
ing in the fields of the paternal homestead. My prospects 
were fine from the start; but after a few weeks I was 
working on a neighboring farm for $18 per month 
and feed for the horse, with which I had encumbered 
myself as a condition of the contract. The details of 
the matter are not to the point. The general aspect 
of the proposition is this: A prosperous farmer on 
a fertile place seldom feels the need of a partner; 
those who cannot make it pay are often willing to 
have some one else take a share of the profit for 
improving conditions. For a long-term agreement, 
an investment, and hard work the partner seldom 
realizes more than a hired man receives for less ef¬ 
fort, and has a chance to make a little more, but 
prospects are as unprofitable on a farm in the tem¬ 
perate zone as on a Mexican rubber plantation. From 
a couple of proposed and one actual partnership my 
expensive conclusions are that those who desire more 
than a hired man’s interest in a farm should have a 
thorough personal acquaintance with the prospective 
partner and should obtain a full knowledge of the 
success of his operations and the condition of his 
land; then look long and then hesitate before leaping 
too far to jump out quite easily. a. g. m. 
Ohio. _ 
WEST MICHIGAN POTATOES,—Geo. E. Rowe gives 
(lie following statement to show the possible profit in 
potato growing:—“Ira Bradshaw, of Antrim County, fur¬ 
nishes (lie facts. He bought 50 acres of land at $8 per 
acre a total of ' $400. Five and one-half acres of this 
was’cleared at a cost of $55: the ground was plowed, 
fitted, seed purchased and planted for $79.75: the spray¬ 
ing. digging and hauling cost $70.56. According to these 
figures the total investment was $605.31. From this 
5V, acres he secured 1.200 bushels of marketable potatoes, 
which wore sold at 60 cents a bushel, a total of $720. 
which sum of money is $114.69 more than bis entire 
investment. His profits' for the season’s work can thus 
lie said to bo 5 V> acres of cleared land. 44 V> acres of 
wild land and $114.69 in cash, because he had all this 
more at the end of the season than he had at the 
beginning.” 
