708 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKEE 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER’S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes 
Established Itso 
Published weekly by the Rural Publishing Company, 409 Pearl St., New York 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. Drr.T.ON, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. $2.04, equal to 8s. 6d., or 
t.% marks, or 1034 francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates 00 cents per agate line—7 words. Discount for time orders. 
References required for advertisers unknown to us ; and 
cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe that everv advertisement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible person. But to make doubly sure we will make good any loss to paid 
subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising in our 
columns, and any such swindler will be publicly exposed. We protect sub¬ 
scribers against rogues, but we do not guarantee to adjust trifling differences 
between subscribers and honest, responsible advertisers. Neither will we bo 
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 yon must have t lentioned The Rural New-Yorker 
when writing the advertiser. • _ 
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 pur¬ 
poses. We depend on our old friends to make this 
known to neighbors and friends. 
* 
Some of your people write of starting to work at 3.30 
a. m. Well, if that won't break up a “back to land 
fever” it must be a hopeless cause. J. s. 
Iowa. 
It is doubtful if talking about it will break 
up the fever. Some poet will tell the city man how 
fresh the air is at 3 a. m.! Nothing but the real 
thing will answer, and that may come too late. 
Farming is no eight-hour day job. 
* 
We find a demand for mixed rye and vetch seed 
for sowing in corn or in orchards. Some of our 
readers who find it hard to separate the seed might 
be able to dispose of the mixture as it is thrashed 
out. It ought to be in about the right proportion for 
seeding. Our advice is to use rye with the vetch and 
give it a fair trial this Fall. Remember, however, 
that this crop is best for fruit, dairy or truck farms. 
It may become a weed or a nuisance on a grain farm. 
* 
The recent “back to the land” article by Mr. Carey 
has shaken up the facts about the unoccupied lands 
in New York State. Out of this shake-up will come 
the truth. Next week we shall skip to southern 
Texas with another slice of truth about land deals 
and land boomers. You must have noticed by this 
time that The R. N.-Y. is not run in the interests of 
land sharks or boomers. Some of these gentlemen 
call themselves “home finders.” If they get their 
deserts they will find a home behind the bars! 
* 
When is vetch a weed? We are urging readers to 
try this crop, but it is not at all a one-sided benefit. 
Vetch will seed itself like a weed when it gets started, 
and spread all over the farm. On a fruit or stock 
farm or where truck or corn are grown this would 
be one of the best things that can happen, for where 
vetch grows, there humus accumulates, and the soil 
grows stronger. On a farm where small grain is 
grown for sale the vetch may prove a weed. The 
seed looks like sweet peas, and it will work into the 
grain and injure its sale. We do not know of any 
other objection to vetch, but this is a serious one 
in grain farming. We advise fruit growers and stock 
men to use it wherever they can, but we would 
not seed it whenever it is likely to work into grain 
fields. 
* 
In the last Congress a constitutional amendment 
providing for election of U. S. Senator was defeated 
by “lame ducks” in the Senate. A Senatorial “lame 
duck” is a man who has been repudiated by the people 
of his State and called home to roost in private life. 
There were enough of those characters to defeat the 
plan for which the people have fought for 25 years! 
On June 12 the present Senate passed the resolution 
with only 24 votes opposing. It is not to the 
credit of New England, New York and Pennsylvania 
that they provided 12 of those negative votes! How¬ 
ever, Depew of New York and Kean of New Jersey 
were two of the lamest of the “ducks,” and they 
were removed by the last election. We do not believe 
a single one of these 12 Eastern Senators who voted 
“no” could ever be elected in a popular contest. 
Even Senator Page of Vermont might repeat bis 
famous “act.”’ The papers would support him, but 
the people would knock that support away. The reso¬ 
lution will now go to the State Legislature and will 
surely be ratified. The people long for the chance 
to cut out the barbed wire fence which has no long 
protected monopoly in the Senate pastures. 
Senator O’Brien, chairman of the New York Sen¬ 
ate agricultural committee, has introduced a bill pro¬ 
viding for an investigation to inquire into the prices, 
purity, production, distribution and consumption of 
foodstuffs and farm and dairy products of the State. 
The commission is to consist of the State commis¬ 
sioner of agriculture, the State commissioner of 
health, the chairman of the public service commission 
for the first district, the director of the State Col¬ 
lege of Agriculture, the director of the New York 
Agricultural Experiment Station and the Master of 
the New York State Grange, all ex-officio, and five 
other members appointed by the Governor. The 
members are to serve without compensation. If we 
could have such a commission, and if Gov. Dix 
would appoint a few practical farmers who have been 
stung by commission men something would be done. 
If scientific men, officials and “agriculturists” are to 
investigate there will be little to it. 
* 
The latest thing is that the farmer is to be put on the 
’phone, that is to say, if he cares to take advantage of 
the offer made by the Post Office to have unlimited use 
of a telephone without regard to distance for £3 per an¬ 
num to any farmer who is willing to join with at least 
four of his neighbors for its combined use. The Post 
Office is not making this offer without giving the thing 
a trial first, and we understand that the experiment 
made in a Yorkshire village has proved so successful that 
further development seems justified. 
This statement from the Mark Lane Express shows 
what the English Post Office Department is doing. 
But what has the Post Office Department to do with 
telephones? In “free trade” England the Post Office 
controls telegraph, telephone and express package 
service and works them all in the interest of the peo¬ 
ple. Those farmers are to have ’phone service all 
over the kingdom at $15 per year. In this country 
you would do well to get such service for $25 with 
extras for long distance. A person may go into an 
English Post Office and send a ’phone message or a 
telegram and mail a letter or a package at cost to 
the government. There are no greasy-fingered mid¬ 
dlemen fingering the dollar for the lion’s share. Here, 
in order to do such service, except for mailing the 
letter, a citizen must pay tribute to private monop¬ 
olies and put gold in watered stock. We tie our 
Congressmen with ropes of sand, but let them put 
handcuffs on our wrists! 
* 
We have been analyzing the vote in the New York 
Assembly by which the Collin bill was defeated. This 
was a bill to regulate and control the sales of farm 
produce by commission men. The principle aimed at 
was just and fair. Such legislation should have been 
given us years ago. Yet the Assembly defeated the 
bill 35 to 58. On the affirmative side were six farmers* 
seven lawyers, five merchants, three manufacturers, 
three newspaper men—the others engaged in various 
kinds of business. Opposed to the bill were thirty- 
four lawyers, six real estate men, three farmers, three 
merchants and men from 13 other callings.—a clergy¬ 
man, an undertaker, a druggist and a plumber all 
lined up against the bill. There are 13 farmers in 
the Assembly—four being absent when the vote was 
taken. The three who voted against the Collin bill 
are 
Henry E. H. Brereton, Warren County. 
John C. Meyers, Schenectady County. 
James S. Parker, Washington County. 
We have asked these men to give their reasons for 
voting against this bill. We will wait and see what 
they have to say before expressing an opinion about 
their action. The principle of this proposed legisla¬ 
tion must be made a part of the law and enforced. 
Let us begin right now and organize our forces for 
a battle in the next Legislature. Most of those who 
opposed the bill came from the cities. We may not 
be able to reach them, but let us take care of the 
country members at least. 
* 
With part of the people working for it and others 
laboring against it, the present state of parcel post re¬ 
minds me of an occurranee many of us have often wit¬ 
nessed. Did you ever see a man come to the cross-road 
store or country post office riding one horse and leading 
another? He dismounts, ties the reins of one horse to 
the other’s bridle bit. Now if the horses could get their 
minds to work together, they could run just as fast aud 
far in this manner as if they were loose, but the rider 
reasons that in the absence of a unity of action, one 
horse will pull as hard in one direction as the other one 
does in the opposite way, resulting in their “standing 
hitched.” Whose bridle bit are you tied to? It seems 
that part of the administration has got its orthography 
mixed. It is parcel post we want, not partial post. 
Arkansas. J- h. p. 
That is just what the politicians figure on. They 
get men into a party. Jones knows his party is 
wrong on one thing. Smith knows it is wrong on 
another, and Brown feels the same way. Yet all three 
are tied together with the foolish belief that they 
Junie 24, 
must submit to large things which they feel are 
wrong in order to get a few small things which they 
think are right. One of our most intelligent readers 
says in expressing his opinion of a high protective 
tariff: 
I suppose I am like the victim of the opium habit— 
I would like to be rid of it, but dread to “pay the price.” 
Now the politicians and the big monopolies know 
that while the common voters feel that way they are 
safe, for like the two horses in front of the country 
store there will be no such thing as acting together. 
We have asked our readers for opinions regarding a 
new party or group and have many replies. When 
we know what the Senate will finally do with reciproc¬ 
ity and the tariff bills we will analyze the situation 
as outlined by those letters. Ninety-nine per cent 
of them agree that conditions must be changed, but 
half a dozen plans are suggested. We hope to get 
together on one broad scheme for action. 
* 
One of our readers is an expert fruit grower. He 
has spent long years at the business, faced hard com¬ 
petition and loss and finally made a success. Re¬ 
cently he received this note from a city business man: 
When you are in the city and it is perfectly convenient 
for you to do so, I would be pleased to have you call 
at my store. I would like a little of your advice about 
starting an apple orchard. 
Now this fruit grower wants to know what would 
happen if he wrote a similar letter to a city man 
saying that he thought of starting a grocery business 
and wanted to know how to do it. How much real 
information would a grocer give him? Yet why 
is not one request as fair an the other? It cost the 
fruit grower more to learn how to grow a good 
orchard than the grocer or the baker ever paid for 
liis business education. Why should the farmer give 
up his information for the purpose of increasing com- 
petion? The usual answer we receive to this question 
is that the farmer’s position is a narrow one. That 
part of a dollar which buys 35 cents worth of goods 
is not very broad. Will some one tell us why this 
passage of knowledge between a farmer and other 
business men should be one-sided? 
* 
The Rural New-Yorker perpetrates a rank libel by 
saying that Vermont newspapers favor reciprocity be¬ 
cause they are told to do so. While the News is not in 
accord with the enthusiastic supporters of the so-called 
Canadian reciprocity measure as represented by a con¬ 
siderable majority of the State press, it cheerfully con¬ 
cedes the good faith of such advocates. No State in the 
Union has a more independent press than Vermont; no¬ 
body attempts to dictate its editorial policy; what it 
advocates, right or wrong, is the honest opinion of the 
men who make the newspapers. Plunk that down as a 
fact, Mr. Rural New-Yorker.— Nortnficld News. 
We take great pleasure in plunking it down. That 
seems to be all we need to do. Our Vermont readers 
are doing the rest of the “plunking” far more ef¬ 
fectively than we can. Mr. L. H. Sheldon plunked 
the Northfield News with the point of a good pen. 
I have just written four good solid pages to the editor 
telling him that you generally came pretty near the 
“bull’s eye,” and telling him just what the papers were 
doing. It is a distrssing fact that our papers stand for 
reciprocity, saloons, open Sundays, etc., and nothing 
that benefits the State. I asked him if he did not 
think it rather cowardly for an “independent press” to 
attack the farmer and refuse him a chance to defend 
himself as they do. 
When you shoot at random into a crowd what 
conclusion do you come to when some individual 
squeals? If Vermont had any such marvellously 
independent press that “rank libel” would not be 
worth noticing! The Vermont farmers will play 
the “Senator Page act” on these county papers, and 
make them really represent the people who pay for 
them, or go and represent somebody else. When a 
paper shuffles around waiting for the politician and 
the advertisers to tell it what to do, it is time for 
its readers to “take up the pen.’” These papers can¬ 
not live without subscribers, and if they will not 
represent the country people. who pay for them of 
what use are they? 
BREVITIES. 
The government should take a legal hitch on folks who 
are too eager to get rich. 
The Indian Runner duck people are putting up some 
good arguments. We want the other side, too. 
The cutworms. The place on our farm where those 
pests have done little or no damage is an old chicken yard 
plowed this year for a garden. Did the hens clean them 
out? 
One single cargo from China brought to Liverpool re¬ 
cently 10,000 carcases of hogs, 10,000 cases of lard, 1,000 
cases of eggs and other food. The Chinese ai - e exporting 
more and more food and will soon influence the European 
market. 
The 'French talk of growing tobacco for insecticidal 
purposes alone. They want a plant so rank with nicotine 
that it would be unfit for smoking. They would develop 
such plants by using seeds from the rankest plants they 
can find. 
