106tt 
that in the tree business as in other business, honesty 
and fair dealing predominate, and bring more pros¬ 
perity in the long run. 
No doubt large planters can buy trees more cheaply 
directly from nurserymen, and no doubt the traveling 
salesman sells nine-tenths of the trees planted, and 
further there can be little doubt that he inspires the 
planting of a very large proportion of the trees he 
sells. The planter may intend to plant an orchard, 
but he postpones it. The solicitor induces him to 
make no further delay, and in that way nine-tenths 
of the orchards are planted. There must have been 
some agents and nurserymen who have been honest, 
for r can pass hundreds of orchards in this part of 
Indiana in which I recognize Grimes Golden, Bald¬ 
win, King of Tompkins County, Rome Beauty and 
many other excellent varieties. I am myself a planter 
and have 60 or 70 acres of apples, and while in one 
orchard I have a few Ben Davis which I never 
bought, I have whole blocks of Grimes Golden and 
Jonathan and the other varieties which I did buy. 
I have purchased almost exclusively of nurserymen. 
I do not see why the dealer or agent should be 
distrusted more than the nurseryman. He grows 
no trees. He buys what he sells. All varieties are 
usually the same price. Then why should the dealer 
substitute? I can see why a nurseryman who is 
overstocked with something might try, to work it 
off. In fact, only a short time ago a Michigan 
grower of great prominence substituted something 
else for Glen Mary strawberries for me. He had 
the impudence to claim the right. In another in¬ 
stance, when a young dealer, I purchased fine, 
healthy two-year-old pears from a firm (long since 
dissolved by death) at Geneva, N. Y. I was young, 
and they brought on the packing grounds four-year- 
old cut-back trees that I would not have accepted 
as a gift. My notices of delivery were out, and I 
had to ship 600 miles. It was a sore strait, but I 
compelled them to dig by lantern light at night 
under threat to reject everything. My customers 
on that occasion had nothing to complain of the 
dealer. • 
In regard to that countermand, no man with 
capital enough to live through six months and pay 
I-is traveling expenses could be induced to sell trees 
or anything else on commission. The nurseryman or 
dealer must of necessity make advances to agents. 
He does this on the supposition that the orders are 
genuine and from responsible men. An order is 
nothing more nor less than a contract. A contract 
is always between two or more parties, and is a 
voluntary act, binding upon all. It is true you 
cannot compel anyone to perform a contract, but 
you can recover damages for non-performance. The 
duty of the man who sold his farm, which is the 
basis of this whole controversy, was plain. He 
should have sold the trees, or provided for their ac¬ 
ceptance by the purchaser of the farm. Failing in 
that, he should have offered to pay the nurseryman 
for any expense incurred. I am surprised that there 
should ever have been a controversy. 
INDIANA PLANTE*. 
BEGINNING IN THE BEE BUSINESS. 
I have a farm of 90 acres, with 25 under cultivation, 
and one leg to farm it with. I find it too hard for me. I 
am going into the bee business, but have had no experi¬ 
ence. Will you give me a few good facts? j. s. s. 
Tonfield, I’a. 
The facts which J. S. S. asks for have been given 
in the bee papers and books time and again, and will 
bear repetition as long as there are beginners in 
the bee business. They run about as follows: First, 
unless you are willing to lose your investment, stay 
out of it, or make it small and grow into it. There 
is probably not one man in one thousand w’ho, with¬ 
out previous experience, could take a fair-sized apiary 
and run it one year, Summer and Winter, and break 
anywhere near even. The advice given so often by 
the best writers is begin with one or two colonies, and 
build up, but I would not limit the beginner to less 
than 10 if he can buy them cheap enough to stand 
the loss if he fails, for if he has several to start 
with he will be likely to work a part of them at 
least so that the mistakes he will surely make with 
some of them will not leave him entirely out of 
the game. No one should think of making bee¬ 
keeping a business who cannot give the bees the 
“right of way” over anything else that he may have 
on hand. The bees must have the proper attention, 
at the proper time, to win out. 
A beginner should get one or more of the text¬ 
books on bee keeping and learn everything there is 
in it from cover to cover; then with a few colonies 
to work with, he is liable to develop a true case of 
lee fever; in which case he is perfectly safe to 
\ ork out the problem of making bees pay for him¬ 
self, for bees certainly will pay in a good location 
with proper care. I would also say be sure in 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
buying bees that you are getting healthy stock, as 
it would be worse than useless for a beginner to 
try to cure a case of “foul brood,” which, in spite 
of State inspectors and foul brood legislation in the 
different States, is spreading with alarming rapidity. 
The bee journals are very helpful and a necessity 
to anyone at all largely interested in bees, but they 
will not take the place of good text-books. It is 
often advisable, especially for a young man who 
intends to take up bee-keeping for a life business, to 
work a year or two for some bee-keeper who runs 
several yards and raises honey by the carload. But 
study and practice will place a man where he can 
make a fair success without serving an apprentice¬ 
ship. An often repeated bit of advice is, after making 
your start, make the bees pay for all further invest¬ 
ments. I have personally proved this to be a sound 
HOW THE TILE ARE NOTCHED. Fig. 427. 
business proposition. Also, if going into the busi¬ 
ness, get a good strain of Italian bees, and standard 
fixtures; the reasons for this will be obvious soon 
after the start is made, and it will be a matter of 
regret if this is disregarded. J. a. crane. 
New York. _ 
APPLES ON A MILK ROUTE. 
On page 1006 we printed the little circular which Mr. 
A. J. l'ierpont of Connecticut uses to develop an apple 
trado on his milk route. There was a little coupon to be 
put in a milk bottle when apples were w r anted. Mr. 
Pierpoat now tells about this business: 
The apple slips have worked very well. We sim¬ 
ply distributed them around the milk route, and 
as the customers feel apple hungry they tuck a coupon 
in their milk bottle. The milkman shoves them in a 
MACHINE FOR “HOMOGENIZING” CREAM. Fig. 428. 
separate pocket and turns them over to my apple 
man, who goes in with a load two or three times a 
week, hunts up the customer and supplies her with 
such fruits and vegetables as he has to sell, securing 
her order for Winter apples, potatoes, etc. That is 
an opening wedge to do business with her neighbors. 
Incidentally it advertises the milk business. Custom¬ 
ers show their friends what they got from their milk¬ 
man, and create talk about the milkman and his good 
milk. They feel that perhaps his milk came from a 
leal farm, where they keep real cows. We have 
gained many milk customers through our apple busi¬ 
ness. The apple man naturally talks about clean cows, 
etc. Our milk trade has outgrown the capacity of 
our little farm, only 35 acres of tillable land, and 
one-quarter of that in apples, with 100 head of FIol- 
Novomber 4, 
stein stock, is crowding things too much. October 1 
■we put the price of milk up to 10 cents per quart, 
hoping to curtail trade, but we are still short of milk. 
A. J. PIERPONT. 
CURING THE LIQUOR HABIT. 
Enclosed is a booklet and letter which speak for them¬ 
selves. One hundred and twenty-five dollars is a steep 
sum to pay for three days, when a man earns nine per 
week, and others have to pay for treatment for him. I 
have great faith in your judgment of this business, and 
confess to having no faith whatever in a liquor cure, 
although I have had no experience with any but one 
both powder and pill, which in this case were worthless. 
VICTIM. 
R- N.-Y.—The above is a sample of many letters 
which have come to us of late. We can well under¬ 
stand how mothers, wives or sisters will grasp at any 
straw which promises to save the man they love. We 
understand that these “drink cures” are kept alive by 
the efforts and hard labor of such women. In the 
present case the claim is made that the drink habit 
will be cured in three days. The only statement we 
find about the treatment is that it is a vegetable com¬ 
pound which removes all trace of alcoholic poison. 
They claim that the craving for liquor is the result of 
“stored-up alcoholic poison in the system.” In case 
of any disease our standard advice is to consult 
some reputable physician. This matter was submitted 
to a well-known physician, who says: 
“Here is a group of men whose only claim on our 
confidence is the offering of bank references as to 
their financial standing, and letters from various 
persons similar to those which every ‘cure’ and 
quack finds no difficulty in obtaining, offering to do in 
three days what the wisdom of the ages has failed to 
do. They ‘guarantee’ a cure, but what is this ‘guar¬ 
antee?’ ‘Money refunded if, at the end of the treat¬ 
ment, the patient has any desire for liquor.’ Is any¬ 
one so foolish as to think that when the treatment 
is over he has only to say ‘I would like a drink’ and 
his money will be at once returned? Or do they tell 
you to hand the money to some disinterested party 
where it can be had on the mere statement o r the 
patient that the desire for drink is not gone? 
“But it is not difficult to make a person believe, 
after three days’ physical and psychical treatment, 
that the desire for liquor is gone, but if anyone thinks 
that this distaste is going to be permanent he will 
learn that in the vast majority of cases it is but short 
lived. The many ‘drink cures’ of the past and gone 
have demonstrated this to the complete satisfaction 
of experienced persons. Excessive drinking is a 
habit backed up by weakness of character. No ‘cure’ 
will mend the character. Rarely some cure claims a 
shining success for a longer or shorter time, and you 
may be sure they make the most of it. Reputable 
physicians do not engage in this kind of business, 
nor can they rightly be called a ‘combination in re¬ 
straint of trade’ for not doing so. 
“Anyone with plenty of money, not objecting to 
handing over some of it to a bunch of men engaged 
in capitalizing the sorrows and despair of the drink 
cursed, grasping at the last straw, might try this 
‘cure’ in faint hope that the temporary check to the 
drink craving that it might very likely produce would 
have more or less permanence. You may rest as¬ 
sured that these men have not found a cure for what 
is not and never can be ‘curable.’ Suppose they had 
found a cure in three days for every drunkard (I 
notice they do not lay too much stress on ‘perman¬ 
ence’), and so have distanced the medical science of 
all time. What estimate shall we put on the char¬ 
acters of such men who for the sake of enriching 
themselves withhold from the world army of drunk¬ 
ards this priceless thing? No real cure of medicine 
or science but has been given freely to the world. My 
profession would not tolerate in its ranks a physician 
who would do what these men are doing.” 
A number of letters have recently come from grape 
growers about wine making. They have heard that 
under some new regulation of the Treasury Depart¬ 
ment they are no longer at liberty to make and sell 
wine from their own grapes without paying a high 
tax. Our position on the manufacture and use of 
liquors is well known. It is our business to obtain 
the facts for our readers, and the following note 
from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue seems 
to settle it: 
You arc Informed that Section 3246, R. S., provides 
that no special tax shall be imposed upon vintners who 
sell wine of their own growth, or manufacturers who soil 
wine produced' from grapes grown by others at the place 
where same is made or at the general business office of 
such vintner or manufacturer. The vintner is, however, 
limited to one place at which ho may sell without pay¬ 
ment of special tax. You are further advised that no 
tax is imposed under the internal revenue laws on wines 
manufactured. k. e. cabbt.l. 
Commissioner. 
