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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Home* 
Established /SCO 
Published weekly by the Rural Publishing Company, 409 Pearl St., New York 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
Jons J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
M m. F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Koyle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. $2.04. equal to 8s. Gd., or 
834 marks, or 10J4 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 every 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 lie 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 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 must have mentioned The Rural Nf.w-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. 
* 
The National Food and Drug Board has made an 
important ruling on cider vinegar to the effect that 
it must be the pure juice of fresh apples, without any 
addition of water. Vinegar made from dried apples, 
chops, skins and cores must be plainly labeled in some 
manner to show its source, and where water has 
been added to cider vinegar the label must state this 
fact. 
* 
VicE-President Sherman recently appeared in a 
new suit to illustrate a tariff argument. He bought 
four yards of cloth for $8.44 and paid $40 more for 
having the suit made, with buttons and lining. About 
five pounds of wool were used in making the cloth. It 
would he a good problem in arithmetic to figure what 
share of the consumer’s dollar the wool grower re¬ 
ceived ! 
* 
A friend went to an apple show and came back 
telling of the prominent features. One was the great 
display of fine apples: 
The other feature was the large number of city people 
of means and with none, who have bought 10-acre plots in 
orchards to be planted. They have paid from $150 an 
acre up and located it anywhere from Maryland to Texas 
and are already counting the fortune they will make. 
There has been a perfect craze for investment in 
these so-called “unit” orchards. We have steadily 
refused to advertise such propositions or to advise 
any investment in them. Some of them are backed 
by good men and look reasonable, but we have yet 
to find one in which we would invest a dollar of 
our own money. If a large orchard now in good 
bearing is to be cut up into small lots, that may be a 
safe proposition, but we would not pay out good 
money for others to handle in growing our trees. 
These people will have great fun counting imaginary 
money until the time comes for coining it into the 
real thing. 
In his book on “Fertilizers and Manures,” Prof. A. 
D. Hall gives this quotation from the great German 
chemist, Liebig: 
England is robbing ail other countries of their fertility. 
Already in her eagerness for bones she has turned up 
tlie battlefields of Leipsic and Waterloo, and of the 
Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has 
carried away the skeletons of many successive generations. 
Annually she removes from the shores of other countries 
to her own the manurial equivalent of three million 
and a half of men whom she takes from us the means 
of supporting and squanders down her sejrers to the 
sen. Like a vampire she hangs upon the neck of Europe, 
nay, of the whole world, and sucks the heart blood from 
nations. 
This fearful burst was called out by the fact that 
England was first of the old nations to realize that 
she could not maintain her land without importing 
plant food. For centuries English farmers believed 
and taught that a system of live stock keeping—feed¬ 
ing all crops on the farm—would keep up the soil 
indefinitely. Yet there came a time when in spite 
of the live stock crops began to fail. On the best 
soil it required centuries to bring this about, but it 
came as surely as fate. Then began that world-wide 
search for plant food which aroused Liebig. The 
hones whitening on the desert, the nitrate from South 
America, guano from the islands of the sea, sulphate 
of ammonia from the fumes of factory chimneys, 
the deposits in bat caverns, ashes from seaweeds and 
potash from the German mines. England reached out 
for them all as it became evident that plant food must 
be imported in order to maintain crop yields. From 
cursing her the other nations fell into imitation, and 
finally became competitors in the fierce search for 
plant food. That has been the history of agriculture 
everywhere. For years, sometimes for centuries, 
strong soil is maintained through live stock feeding, 
but sooner or later the loss is felt. The long pro¬ 
cession of animals or the flood of milk passing from 
the farm carries nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid 
pound by pound until the loss is felt. Many of us 
can remember when Western farmers and the West¬ 
ern experiment stations laughed at the idea of using 
chemicals. Now they are coming slowly to it. The 
corncob ashes in Kansas and the ground phosphate 
rock in Illinois only mark the beginning of as wide a 
use of chemicals as now prevails in the East. If our 
Western friends do not believe this they have but to 
study the history of English and European agricul¬ 
ture and see how farmers have in time been driven 
to the use of chemicals. Let them also study the 
agriculture of the Atlantic coast, and they will find 
the most prosperous farmers where the most chemi¬ 
cals are used! 
* 
The R. N.-Y. cannot he accused of being a per¬ 
sonal organ for President Taft, or of advocating his 
renomination. It seems to us that whenever he has 
taken occasion to discuss public questions in their re¬ 
lation to farming he has shown a strange, almost 
childish, misconception of the needs and the thought 
of real farmers. In other smaller matters of admin¬ 
istration he has made what seem to be remarkable 
blunders. It must be said, however, that now and 
then when the conditions arise to call out his real tal¬ 
ents the President rises to the occasion and shows 
himself a great and strong man. Such an occasion 
was found at the recent great dinner given at Pitts¬ 
burgh. This place is the nursery and hotbed of 
monopoly and political graft. Arrangements were 
evidently made to “put President Taft in a hole.” 
An eloquent speaker was engaged to precede him and 
make an argument for the repeal of the Sherman 
anti-trust law which, if enforced, will send some of 
the very gentlemen who organized this nice little 
dinner trap to jail. They evidently expected that the 
President would flinch before those rich and influen¬ 
tial members of his party. It was a hard situation 
but President Taft met it like a great man: 
The two decisions last Spring, in my Judgment, give the 
law definite meaning that any combination in restraint of 
trade with the purpose of controlling prices and stifling 
competition is a violation of the statute. Men know 
whether they intend to stifle competition and control 
prices, and all that is necessary in a court of law is to 
prove the combination and the intent. 
Only one course is open. Either we will have individ¬ 
ualism or we will have combinations in restrain of trade 
going to that point where the people will demand that 
the power of men engaged in such corporations be trans¬ 
ferred to the Government. And then we will have State 
socialism. 
yhis incident reveals the President at his best—• 
calm, clear, strong and convincing. When you come 
to realize the character of that audience and the whole 
situation you can readily see that no ordinary man 
could have met it in this way. Another strong factor 
of the Taft administration, not generally recognized, 
is the powerful crusade against the fraudulent use 
of the mails. Nothing like it was ever done before. 
As stated above, it seems to us that President Taft 
has failed to comprehend the spirit and desires of 
our farmers, yet we are frank to say that he is a 
clean man and a great man when conditions demand it. 
4! 
We have had our say about the “wizards” and the 
plant fakers who hold up the people for the price of 
worthless novelties. Now let us speak of a worthy 
and useful man who has given the world real value 
in new fruits. This is J. W. Stubenrauch of Texas. 
You will find an article by him on page 1110. Mr. 
Stubenrauch gave us the Carman peach. A white 
peach, it ranks with Elberta in popularity, and has 
made fortunes for peach growers. Yet Mr. Stuben¬ 
rauch received little or nothing for it. His other 
peaches, mentioned in the article, have, we believe, 
great value, and will in their time extend the peach 
season. In the future, men will obtain great wealth 
from the sale of these varieties, and it seems to us a 
shame that a modest, hard-working man like Mr. 
Stubenrauch cannot receive fair recompense for his 
labor and skill. He needs it, for his sight is failing, 
and he may he forced to sit for the rest of life in 
darkness. A man may invent a mop-handle or a 
mousetrap and be fully protected in his income from 
their sale. Most of the men who have given us 
the new fruits which have made horticulture a great 
business have gone unrewarded to the grave, and 
often suffered poverty and want. Is there no way 
in which a man like Mr. Stubenrauch can he fairly 
protected in the sale of these peaches? We have had 
the pleasure of helping to chase certain frauds and 
fakers off the map, and shutting up the prolific mouth 
November 1$, 
of others. It would give us far greater pleasure if 
we could only aid such men. as our old friend from 
Texas in obtaining a fair return for their work in 
producing new varieties. 
4s 
Concentrated lime-sulphur for spraying! Millions 
of gallons will he used. We want to know the best 
method of making it. The great majority of us will 
do better to buy some reliable ready-made brand, but 
there are some large fruit growers and others who 
want to boil the concentrate at home. What is the 
best way to do it? We mean the best form of boiler 
and the best form of heat. It may be that steam does 
not give the best method of cooking. We learn 
things from R. N.-Y. readers, and we expect to get 
this information from the old, reliable source. 
4e 
In England there are cooperative farmers’ unions 
which enable farmers to buy and sell to advantage 
and also give mutual protection in legal matters. The 
Mark Lane Express reports the first case on record 
of damages to a farm by a flying machine: 
During the Circuit of Britain race last Summer M. do 
Montaleut, one of the competitors in the event, found 
himself forced to descend in a barley field at Ulley. This 
did not do much damage iu itself, but the public flocked 
across the field to get a glimpse of the machine, and badly 
trampled down the barley. The Rotherham branch of the 
Farmers’ Union decided to support the claim sent in by 
Mr. Beevers, and the matter came up before the Executive. 
Mr. Job explained that on October 2 he wrote to the 
Royal Aero Club, and on the 4th he received a reply stat¬ 
ing they had duly received bis letter and had forwarded 
check for £2 11s. to Mr. Beevers in settlement of his 
claim. They thanked the Farmers’ Union on behalf of 
the foreign competitor for the settlement it had made. 
Mr. Beevers had also written him (Mr. Job) that he had 
pleasure in stating he had received a check for £2 11s. 
for damage done to his crops by Monsieur Montaleut, and 
thanked the Union for the trouble it had taken. 
Thanking a farmer for sending a bill for damages 
fs a new one on this side of the water! He usually 
gets the other thing when he goes alone. Tt was the 
Union that did it. This was demonstrated by the 
report on another case where the Union sued the 
owners of a coal plant for damages done to crops by 
fumes from the chimneys. 
Mr. Swift said the case had done the Farmers’ Union a 
great amount of good. The farmer who lived on the 
farm previously to the one who fought this case was 
frightened out of many a pound. He went with his hat in 
liis hand in a pleading sort of way. and was told he 
could fight them if he chose. Then another tenant came 
and lived on the farm, who was made of a different bit of 
stuff, and who knew he had the Farmers’ Union at his 
back, and who made a claim. 
The Union won the case. That points the way for 
American farmers. Tf we had $5 for every farmer 
who has gone “with his hat in his hand in a pleading 
sort of way”—and got nothing—we could redeem 
thousands of mortgaged farms. We must have fight¬ 
ing organizations like this English Farmers’ Union in 
this country. 
BREVITIES. 
The British Post Office Department not only controls 
the telephone, but will send wireless messages which 
reach ships anywhere within 100 miles off the coast. 
English farmers are now telling the record of big pota¬ 
toes they have known. One man claims to have dug one 
tuber of three pounds two ounces, and another two pounds 
eight ounces, both from the same hill! Next! 
The United States has 100 acres in tea in South Caro¬ 
lina. The crop this year will be about 12,000 pounds, of 
very fair quality. Great Britain and Ireland use more 
tea than any other country, the total consumption for a 
year being 288,503,000 pounds, or nearly 6.39 pounds per 
capita. 
Now and then a farmer writes his experience on some 
practical matter. He says he would write more, but is 
not sure that his English is perfect. Never mind the 
English. We will try to fix that if need be. Some articles 
have nothing but “English” iu them. Most farmers write 
sense, which is worth more. 
Da. E. P. Felt, New York State Entomologist, is send¬ 
ing out a warning regarding the work of the hickory bark 
borer, which is causing destruction in many localities. 
He says that badly injured trees should be cut down 
during the Winter, and the bark burned before the beetles 
can emerge. Wilting leaves and dead twigs in mid¬ 
summer are indications of this trouble in hickories. 
French epicures are lamenting a shortage in snails and 
frogs, both of which have been affected by the dry Sum¬ 
mer. As a result of the drought affecting cabbage and 
lettuce it is reported that adult snails are in gaunt con¬ 
dition. while the young ones have died off in great num¬ 
bers. and dealers say they may have to raise the price 
of Red Burgundy snails from 15 francs to 40 francs a 
thousand. •» 
A Boston produce man, testifying before a Massa¬ 
chusetts commission investigating the sale of cold storage 
products, stated that a fresh egg put in storage in April 
would, if taken out in August, be a better egg than one 
just collected from the hennery. If this is the ease, 
produce men ought to educate the public up to their 
standard, and not permit them to pay 50 cents a dozen 
for “strictly fresh,” when they could enjoy delicious 
elderly eggs at a much lower figure. 
