1234 
RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
December 30, 
How to Grow Mushrooms. 
J. E. M., Orange, N. J .—I wish you 
would tell me how to plant and cultivate 
mushrooms. Also some authorities on same. 
Ans. —Collect fresh horse manure un¬ 
til there is enough for the bed desired. 
Put the manure in a shed, or other 
place where it will be protected, and 
turn it every morning for a week, or 
until danger of burning is over. Then 
mix a little loam in with it, one cart¬ 
load to four tons manure, or an equal 
bulk of well-rotted old manure. Make 
into a bed from nine to 12 inches deep. 
These beds are often made on the floor 
of a cellar, or under the benches in a 
greenhouse. The beds should be firmed 
down well, making up a layer of ma¬ 
nure, pressing down firmly, then an¬ 
other layer, until the desired 'epth. The 
bed is likely to heat up to 100° or over, 
after making it should be allowed to 
drop to 90° before spawning. Insert 
pieces of spawn the size of walnuts in 
the bed two or three inches deep, and 
about five inches apart. About a week 
or 10 days after spawning, case the bed 
with about two inches of fine loam or 
garden soil (florists use the old soil out 
of rose benches). Firm the soil down, 
and then put a covering of straw over 
the bed, to keep it from drying .ut. If 
the bed becomes dry it must be watered 
carefully, water at a temperature of 75° 
or 80°. It is better, however, if water¬ 
ing can be avoided. The temperature 
of the place where the mushrooms are 
grown should be 55° to 60°. In six to 
eight weeks the crop should be ready to 
pick; the bed should last from three 
to four months. Mushrooms are very 
uncertain, however; we have heard of a 
bed failing to begin bearing until nearly 
four months after the spawning. The 
standard authority on this subject is 
“Mushrooms,” by William Falconer; 
price $1 from this office. 
Curing Sunflower Seeds. 
v The “Hope Farm Man” writes about 
the difficulty of curing sunflower seeds. 
I'raised quite a large lot last year, and 
did not have any trouble at all. The 
proper way is to beat the seed out at 
once. I drove the wagon through the 
field, cut off the heads and threw them 
in the wagon; as soon as the wagon 
was nearly full I sat down among the 
heads with a board under my knees 
“edgewise.” 1 picked up a head and hit 
it three or four time over this board, 
turning it around each time; this should 
be done in the poultry yard and the 
heads thrown out for the hens to get 
the few that stick in the head. As soon 
as I finished this lot I drove through 
the field again and threw in more heads 
on top of the reed; these were beaten 
out in the same way. Not needing the 
wagon for a few davs, I left the seed 
in it and pulled it out in the-sun each 
day for a week, and turned the seed 
over several times with my hands. They 
are light and turn easy. This may 
sound like a lot of work, but is as 
quickly done as shucking corn; the seed 
keep perfectly. Never try to cure in 
the head; it won’t work. I tried it. 
Ellerson, Va. w. D. s. 
A Victim and the Land Game. 
The communications from some one in 
Southwest Texas, which have recently ap¬ 
peared in The It. N.-Y., have been inter¬ 
esting and somewhat edifying. The cor¬ 
respondent is described as a “sucker in 
Southwest Texas,” the “Land of Heart’s 
Delight,” and signs himself “A Victim,” 
which is prohably not the name under 
which he receives his mail from the post 
office. The sort of communications with 
which his well-written letters would be 
classed is always seized upon with avidity 
and applauded by those who want to relieve 
their surcharge of disappointment by 
scolding somebody and emitting lusty cries 
of “fake” and “fraud.” That there is 
abundant reason for disappointment, abund¬ 
ant cause for the charges of faking and 
misrepresentation, is true enough, hut how 
many are there who while voicing these 
cries or endorsing them scratch deep enough 
to discover that their troubles result from 
their own bad judgment; or having gone 
far enough to find it partly their own 
fault and partly something else go far 
enough again to ascertain what the some¬ 
thing else is. 
Let us analyze this “victim’s” letters 
and see if there is not something more to 
he learned from them than that he has 
occasion to shy a few harmless and inef¬ 
fective verbal bricks at express companies 
and land agents. Ilis earlier crop failures 
were, according to his own recital, due en¬ 
tirely to a total neglect to inform himself 
as to when and how his neighbors had 
best succeeded when planting the crop he 
was then putting in. There was simply a 
total disregard for the experience of others, 
others by the way, who by planting at the 
proper time and in the proper way had 
raised considerable and profitable crops of 
the beans that he failed with. There was 
a plaint about the need of irrigation and 
the expense of getting the water for it. 
Every effort toward anything good is in¬ 
variably attended by expenditure of money 
and labor, anywhere, at any time. But 
was it not possible to discover this need 
of water and of ascertaining the only 
means of getting it before any start was 
made, or even any land purchased? 1 
think so. 
He has unkind words, only, for Mexican 
labor, and an evident bias against Mexi¬ 
cans. I do not know what manner of Mex¬ 
icans he came in contact with or how be 
treated them. I know that for three years 
I used Mexican laborers, both where 
I was at their mercy, in the absence of any 
other labor, and whore they were employed 
in conjunction with American labor, and 
1 know that I found them generally faith¬ 
ful, reliable, able and willing. They could 
not do the work of Northern laborers, nor 
upon the other hand did they ask anything 
like the wages that the latter asks. 1 never 
had any difficulties worth mentioning with 
them as a class or as individuals. 
There is also a complaint about the 
shrinking market prices of watermelons dur¬ 
ing a season, which incident was merely 
a duplication of the market conditions of 
previous years, all of which was easily 
ascertainable history. I saw it myself 15 
years ago, though I had no occasion to 
give it particular attention, as I had no 
thought of raising watermelons. And there 
is a further lament over the shipment of 
a crate of eggplant from his Southwest 
Texas location to l’ittsburg. Pa., to Pitts¬ 
burg, Pennsylvania, mark you, in which 
transaction the express company got most 
of the proceeds. It is certainly going 
some after vegetable markets, this stretch 
from Southwest Texas to Pittsburg, Pa., 
and even so, the express charges were ob¬ 
viously exorbitant. But neither the dis¬ 
tance from Southwest Texas to Tittsburg 
nor the express rates have changed any 
since the lamenting victim chose his pres¬ 
ent location. Maps were printed and ex¬ 
press rates published some time ago. 
So much for the individual responsibility 
for failures and disappointments. And now 
we come to the part played by the agents 
or owners or company or whoever it was 
who got hold of the land for mere specula¬ 
tion and who cut it up and advertised it 
and went through the usual program with 
it. Let me say that I hold no brief for 
land agents or speculators. I am opposed 
to land speculation and have fought it 
for years. I have no doubt at all that I 
hate it vastly more than our Southwest 
Texas “Victim” does, because I know how 
and why it comes about and what its 
awful toll from humanity is, while the 
chances are ninety-nine to one that our 
Southwest Texas “Victim” would throw a 
temperish spasm over a serious even though 
simple proposal of public policy to stop 
that sort of thing—by making it unprofit¬ 
able. This seems to be substantiated by 
his concluding thought that he would have 
“done all right” if he had purchased a lot 
of the surrounding land and let other people 
do the work as tenants and give to him 
half the crops. Doubtless he would, buff 
it would have been a little rough on the 
other fellows. The only change by this 
means effected would be in the identity of 
the “victims.” 
But reaching again after the speculators 
who advertised and boomed and sold the 
land, and what do we find? That they 
told the favorable things about their land 
and its location, and its possibilities, and 
not the unfavorable things. I think I have 
known other people who did this. To bring 
it home to our own circle, T think I have 
seen beautiful apples at the top of the 
barrel while their ugly, gnarled little 
brothers filled all the middle. I think T 
have seen cows sold on the record that, 
with a little stretching, they made one day 
long time ago. I think I have seen farms 
sold on the strength of crops they once 
raised—before they were ruthlessly run 
down. I think I have heard merchants and 
publishers and all sorts of people extol the 
merits of their wares while they utterly 
neglected to make any mention whatever 
of their shortcomings. This is no answer, 
I concede, for the whole thing is ethically 
wrong on anybody’s part. But land agents 
and land companies and land speculators, 
while constituting a class of monopolists 
— monopolists of natural opportunities— 
have no monopoly on lop-sided represen¬ 
tations to effect sales. The speculators 
with whom the “victim” dealt may have 
even lied to him. I have known of such 
cases. And that is doubly reprehensible, 
because the man who lies to you to get 
your money is not only obviously a liar 
but also obviously a thief. But that is a 
moral, a criminal Question which needs no 
discussion and with which in fact we need 
not concern ourselves in connection with 
the particular subject under consideration. 
The basic sin of the whole thing is em¬ 
braced in permitting land speculation at 
all, a sin that society commits against 
itself; not only commits against itself but 
voluntarily presents large premiums to 
those who will give their individual co¬ 
operation to the commission of the crime. 
And does anyone ask or care how the land 
speculator got his wealth—after he has 
gotten it? Not a whit. 
Now why do men acquire tracts of land, 
as in this case in Southwest Texas, and 
parcel it off and advertise it glowingly 
and sell it to “victims?” To make money. 
To acquire, in truth, wealth, large profits, 
for which as mere speculators, mere trans¬ 
ferers of title they render no equivalent 
whatever. Their speculative profits merely 
represent so much money, so much wealth 
taken out of the pockets of labor, out of 
the pockets of land users, without giving 
anything back. They do not furnish the 
land and its value. The land and its 
value, its usefulness, would all be there 
if the speculator had never existed. How 
can all this victimizing, this misrepresent- 
ing, this tribute-exacting, this diverting 
of unearned wealth from producers and 
would-be producers to non-producers he 
stopped? By mere legislative enactments 
against it? I think not. Enactments 
simply to prohibit it could not he passed. 
Enactments that could be passed would not 
be effective. Can it be stopped by an oc¬ 
casional outcry of fake and rogue and 
knave? Not in several thousand years—so 
long as it is profitable. The profits which land 
speculators take is merely capitalized eco¬ 
nomic rent. Collect this rent annually in 
the form of taxes, taking the burden of 
all other taxation off labor, off homes, off 
labor’s products, and putting it where it 
belongs, and land could no longer be profit¬ 
ably held for speculation. When specula¬ 
tion is no longer profitable it will stop, 
stop automatically, and all the evils which 
spring from it will stop with it. 
KOBEitT STILLMAN DOUBLEDAY. 
Washington. 
40,000 Farmers Let This i 
Iron Hand Machine Plant! 
Their Potatoes 
F orty thousand farm-, 
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to them in time saved, work 
saved, worry saved, and in¬ 
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because they know it doesn’t 
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Absolutely Certain^ 
and Accurate 
It can't forget a hill—it can't be affect¬ 
ed by the cold, and the size of the seed . 
doesn’t matter. Over 25 years ex-' 
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Vt'VuCUUXIUUi 
ASPINWALL 
POTATO PLANTER NO. 3 
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98 main Street, . . Attica, l\l. Y. 
WE WANT TO BUY 
ABOUT 
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BOX BOARDS 
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SAYLESVILLE, R. I. 
GENUINE THOMAS 
PHOSPHATE POWDER 
Key-Tree Brand 
Special Notice and Warning! 
As several so-called “Basic Slags” and “Basic Phosphates” of more or less doubtful 
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Genuine Thomas Phosphate Powder 
Key-Tree Brand 
The remarkable results from the use of Genuine Thomas Phosphate in fertilizing Fruits, 
Cereals and Leguminous Crops, no doubt account for the offering of 
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There is as much difference between 
Genuine Thomas Phosphate Powder 
and many other so-called “Basic Slags” as there is between a high-grade mixed 
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Professors Maercker and Wagner, the leading agricultural authorities of the 
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they vary in effect on growing crops from eighteen to one hundred per cent. 
The Total Phosphoric Acid may appear all right in a doubtful Basic Slag, but 
remember it is Available Phosphoric Acid that you are seeking. 
The ease with which Basic Phosphatic Slags may be adulterated, and the danger 
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“The high agriculture value of phosphatic slags has led to their adulteration and 
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Key-Tre errand 
Bearing on the tags the following Trade Mark 
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THE COE-MORTIMER COMPANY 
51 Chambers Street, New York City 
For yonr convenience we also distribute from Boston, Mass.; Belfast, Maine; Baltimore, Md.; 
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Our Booklet, “Up-to-Date Fruit Growing with Thomas Phosphate Powder,” is sent free 
if you mention The Rural New-Yorker 
