THIS RURA.I> NEW-YORKER 
March 9, 
Hope Farm Notes 
“FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES.” 
Part II. 
Plant Food Losses. —You see our wise 
men are already beginning to be frightened 
over the great loss of plant food. There is 
talk of prohibiting the export of phosphoric 
acid. This might be done but it would be 
like a spoonful to a cartload compared to 
the fearful drain of plant food and mud 
which escapes into the ocean each year. 
We cannot stop that fearful drain by legis¬ 
lation. It must be done by using canals 
and ponds to hold the surplus water. We 
shall see later how the Chinese use the niud 
from their canals to fertilize the land. We 
know a number of farmers who have small 
ponds. During a drought or when the pond 
is low they find several inches of black de¬ 
posit all over the bottom. This has sunk 
out of the water, and when put on the land 
or into a compost always shows itself in a 
crop. If this comes out of the water of a 
small pond, imagine what must be lost out 
of the rainfall which soaks and gullies 
through the open land. The Chinese keep 
their soil filled with humus and always 
covered with some living crop. This en¬ 
ables it to hold and utilize more of this 
moisture but the storage canals and ponds 
keep the reserve. Of course rice culture re¬ 
quires an abundance of water, yet all crops 
are insured by providing for the water sup¬ 
ply. The Chinaman feeds and clothes his 
family out of the produce ftom about 2% 
of our acres. And think with what patient 
toil this water is raised out of the canal 
or well. There are few engines in use for 
pumping. In some eases cows or water 
buffaloes are hitched to a sort of sweep 
power and made to run a pump. A large 
part of the irrigating water is raised by 
human power. There are foot pumps on 
which men work as in a tread [tower, slowly 
and patiently lifting the water to their 
fields. It was no uncommon sight to see a 
father and several cons stepping monoton¬ 
ously' ou in these foot pumps hour after 
hour as the small stream of water was 
lifted. Other pumps were built like the 
paddle wheel of an old sidewheeled steam¬ 
boat. In these cases the operator “walks” 
on the outer rim, slowly turning the wheel 
and paddling up a small quantity of water 
which runs off into a trough. One may well 
wonder what these patient toilers are think¬ 
ing about as they go cheerfully through 
their monotonous round of labor. Is it the 
patient heritage of centuries or a religion 
based on fate? 1 certainly should not envy 
the job of one who must bring up a boy 
iu any such “old-fashioned” way. I think 
It is because the plain food problem has 
crowded the Chinese so hard and constantly 
that they have had little time or energy 
to spend on what we are pleased to call 
the “larger affairs of life.” Yet, what 
strength of will must be theirs to hold the 
body up to such grinding toil ! 
Plant Food. —It is hard for our people 
to realize the extent to which the Chinese 
save all mnnurial wastes. There is no 
sewage system of carrying away human 
wastes in the large Chinese cities, because 
this would mean a vast drain of fertility 
into the river.and ocean. It is all needed 
on the land, and so earth closets are used— 
the wastes being collected every morning. 
They are carried away in boats through the 
canals or In small wheelbarrow tanks. The 
idea Is to put everything of this nature into 
the soil. Every scrap of manure is gathered 
from the roads or streets—nothing is 
wasted. Instead of paying great sums of 
money to have these wastes removed King 
states that the city of Shanghai sold the 
right to remove these wastes once per day 
for $31,000 in gold ! On the farms are to 
bo found great earthenware jars of 500 to 
1,000 pounds capacity for holding these 
wastes. King saw a pigpen with a tight 
floor of stone which had been washed clean 
—even the washings used in a compost. All 
this may seem very small business to many 
of our .farmers—but see what It means! 
After 4,000 years of cultivation one-sixth 
of an acre of good land in China will main¬ 
tain one person! This is the result of sav¬ 
ing water and plant food which in our 
system of farming is wasted. Think what 
an American with 10 good acres could do if 
he could make his soil as productive. I 
give much space to this wonderfully useful 
book because it gets down to the very 
heart of the plant food problem. 
Saving Wastes. —Up to within a few 
years the Chinese hare made Little or no use 
of “fertilizers” as we understand chemical 
plant food. In England and along the At¬ 
lantic coast in this country, plant food 
from the corners of tlie earth has been gath¬ 
ered and applied to the soil. Battlefields 
have been dug up, sea islands scraped, 
swamps tapped and mines opened, with the 
result that iu both continents the older 
soils are most productive and profitable. 
The Chinese have not been able to obtain 
this commercial plant food, but by saving 
what other nations waste they have kept 
up their soiL There could be no better 
illustration of the difference between East¬ 
ern and Western economy. One saves every 
scrap of fertility and keeps its money at 
home. The other wastes billions of value in 
plant food and then spends millions in an 
effort to replace it. Let us see what this 
means. The chemists tell us that the aver- 
ege annual waste for 1,000,000 of adult pop¬ 
ulation will carry over 7,000,000 pounds of 
nitrogen, 2,500,000 pounds of potash and 
1,000,000 pounds of phosphoric acid. Under 
• our present system of sewage this and more 
is swept away into the sea. We think this 
“sanitary” disposal of these wastes a great 
achievement. Clustered around the mouth 
of the Hudson ILiver are the homes of 
3,000,000 and more adults—all draining to 
the ocean. We nearly had a “tariff war” 
with Germany over the importation of less 
than half the potash wasted in this way 
from the single city of New York. In 
China the system of using these wastes 
enables the Chinese people to put back to 
their soil each year 182,000,000 tons of 
nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid ! 
Fertilizer History.— -Down near Cape 
Cod during the period shortly after the Civil 
War people had started well toward these 
“small” plant food economies. There was 
little manure to buy and fertilizers had not 
been developed as now. I have spent hours 
as a little boy on the road with a wheel¬ 
barrow, picking up horse manure wheTever 
it could be found as public property. We 
scoured the country for old Loncs, raked 
forest leaves and dug up swamp muck. Had 
I thrown any kind of ashes out as boys 
do now 1 should have been whipped ! Every 
scrap of waste was saved and used. Then 
came the manufacture and sale of chemical 
fertilizers for various crops. They were 
easy to buy if not to pay lor and people 
let go their economical habits and let the 
wastes alone. It must be evident that with¬ 
in three generations this fearful drain of 
plant food waste must be stopped. Of 
course some of it is returned—fish gives us 
nitrogen and phosphoric acid, while seaweed 
gives potash, but it is like pouring out a 
barrel and getting back a spoonful. 
A Civilized Waste. —In this connection 
King discusses the substitution of tobacco 
for opium among the Chinese. Opium is no 
longer openly used iu China except by some 
who are old with the habit confirmed. There 
are heavy penalties against growing the 
poppy for opium making—from flue up to 
death. Yet as the opium habit goes out 
tobacco comes in. Aside from the filthy 
nature of this habit King shows how the 
tobacco crop will exhaust the soil. The U. 
S. tobacco crop of 821,000,000 pounds took 
from the soil 28,000,000 pounds of nitrogen, 
29,000,000 pounds of potash and 2,500,000 
of phosphoric acid. This was lost in such 
a way that even the Chinese could not re¬ 
cover and save this plant food. This 
toba-oco land would produce 20,000,000 
bushels of wheat which would provide food 
and return fertility to the land. Should 
China consume as much tobacco per capita 
as is used in this country, her people would 
need 2,S00 million pounds. It if were 
grown at home it would mean a food short¬ 
age of 40,000,000 bushels of wheat as food 
and a loss of the plant food. If the Chi¬ 
nese continue to import tobacco, the vast 
sum of money required to pay for it must 
be earned from other crops and the plant 
food value must also be raised in cash and 
sent abroad for fertilizers! King writes a 
powerful statement against tobacco. He 
says that China must sooner or later pro¬ 
hibit tobacco growing as she has that of the 
poppy in order to save her land and her 
money. King goes so far as to say that all 
civilized nations must in time adopt such 
u measure, for the drain of money and waste 
of plant food for tobacco cannot be en¬ 
dured forever! 
Feeding Plants. —If the Chinese farmer 
could discuss a station bulletin he would say 
he wanted all nitrogen “available.” Most 
of the wastes which are saved as plant food 
are applied as liauids or as composts. 
Manure is put into jars or cisterns and 
mixed with water—with ashes added as 
needed. The fertilizer manufacturers tell us 
of their '“wet mixtures” in which tankage, 
leather, muck, rock phosphate, etc., are 
mixed with sulphuric acid and put into con¬ 
crete “dens” to work and stew at a fearful 
heat. The plant food comes out more avail¬ 
able than when it went in. The Chinaman 
also has his "wet mixtures” of manure, 
ashes and water. He ferments it until 
ready and then carries in buckets and pours 
around the plants. This starts them as a 
solution of nitrate of soda would. As we 
have seen, the Chinese farmer forces his 
crops into a quick growth so as to keep the 
ground covered and grow as many crops 
as possible each year. 
If not used as a liauid the material is 
composted, which results in working up 
coarse material into a fine product and also 
making it more available. The Chinese and 
Japanese are masters at compost making. 
They let nature do. for the most part, what 
we pay our fertilizer dealers for doing. In 
parts of Japan oriees and subsidies are 
provided for farmers making the best com¬ 
post heaps. In one case payment is made 
to all farmers who will nrovide and use a 
compost covering 20 to 40 sauare yards in 
accordance with certain nrovisions. In an¬ 
other prizes are offered for the best compost 
heap in the county, and these prize heaps 
are entered in a competition with prize 
winners in other counties. When you 
come to think of it. this means far more 
to the community than a horse race or a 
ball game. In America the iatter sports 
would draw a great crowd, while it is 
doubtful if half a dozen “cranks” could bo 
induced to go and look at a compost heap. 
Yet the. latter might mean the enduring life 
of that community, while the race or ball 
game would be like froth on the milk pall. 
H. w. c. 
THE PEACH CONSUMER’S DOLLAR. 
We used to have the idea that the 
only way to sell our peaches was through 
the grocery stores and commission men 
of the nearby towns. This entailed 
delivery by wagons a distance of six to 
12 miles, quite an undertaking with 
limited teams and a perishable product. 
We managed this way for a number of 
years, until one season, when weather 
conditions were such that it was practi¬ 
cally impossible to get the fruit to mar¬ 
ket in good condition, owing to the 
ravages of brown rot. The situation 
called for radical treatment, so we 
adopted the plan of selling in the or¬ 
chard to the consumer at about whole¬ 
sale prices. As a result of this method 
the remainder of that crop went before 
it had a chance to rot, some of them be¬ 
fore they were really ready to pick. 
We have followed this plan ever since 
with very satisfactory results to the 
producer and I presume to the con¬ 
sumer, as we usually have more de¬ 
mand than peaches, one season disposing 
of over 3000 baskets in this way at re¬ 
tail, beside selling a few hundred to 
dealers who came after them. 
The point is this, we estimate that 
transportation, commission, etc. would 
cost 15 cents to 25 cents per basket, and 
by giving the buyers this much of a 
reduction, they feel justified in driving 
often 10 to 15 miles and buying freely. 
I see no reason why a somewhat similar 
plan would not work with other prod- 
Wiies you write advertisers mention The 
I t. N.-Y. and you’ll get a quick reply and a 
“square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
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Put tho numbers of the other books you 
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Put the numbers of the books you need on 
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Please send me the following books free of charge: 
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UCtS. C. P. B. 
German Parcels Post— Regarding the 
German parcels post described by Mr. Price 
in The R. N.-Y., would like to mention that 
the first zone there (10 miles) means 10 
German geographic miles, which is about 
50 American miles. For this distance the 
charges were 35 years ago 25 pfennigs or 
six cents, and beyond that thoroughout the 
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New York. John iiaesloqp. 
AGRICULTURAL LIME 
O KU AgTieulUiml Lime is Granular in form. Our 
Ground Limestone is of a fineness suitable for 
land purposes. These products run 96jfc pure and in 
eveiy way meet Government requirements. 
On account of fineness of these products they can 
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Quotations made on application. 
COMSTOCK LIME & CEMENT CO. 
Phone 1560 CorUnnd(, 80 Cortlandt St., N. Y. 
HOUSE, BARN f 
I AND BUILDINGS 
ALL LIGHTED 
f BY ELECTRICITY W 
The oil lamp is out of date on the farm, 
danger to every building in which it is used- 
It’s a continual source of 
a nuisance to care for— 
an unsatisfactory apology for the light that ought to be used on every 
farm. That’s why the oil lamp is being rapidly replaced by the 
electric light—even on farms not within reach of the wires of a public 
electric lighting company. 
Every farmer can now have his own electric lighting plant, and ob¬ 
tain an abundant supply of brilliant, convenient, safe electric illumina¬ 
tion for his home, barns and grounds. The apparatus required is a small 
gas engine and dynamo, a simple switchboard and a storage battery called 
“Cblonbe accumulator” 
The battery stores the electricity, generated by a few hours’ occa¬ 
sional running of the gas engine and then supplies this current for il¬ 
lumination whenever and wherever needed about the farm. 
The cost of the complete equipment is from $450 and upward. If a gas 
engine is already in use on the farm, the outlay is proportionately reduced. 
An electric plant can be easily installed and can be operated by anyone 
without the least danger. Full instructions are furnished with each plant. 
Full information about electric plants is given in our book, •* t for.na¬ 
tion on Electric Lighting.” 
Write our nearest Sales Office for a copy. 
Tbeeeectbic StoraceBaitery Co. 
18S8 Philadelphia 1912 
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