81-4 
The Rural New-Yorker 
TUB BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban llomcs 
Established isso 
Published weokly by the Rural Publiahing Company, 409 Pearl St., New York 
Herbert \V. Coi.t.inc.wood, President and Editor. 
John .7. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. Duxon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royi.e, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. 82.04, equal to 8s. 6d., or 
8J4 marks, or 10)4 francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates 60 cents per agate line—7 words. Discount for time orders. 
References required for advertisers unknown tons ; 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 anv such swindler will be publicly exposed. We protect sub¬ 
scribers against rogues, but we do not guarantee to adjust trifling difference* * 
between subscribers and honest, responsible advertisers. Neither will we lie 
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 >ew-yokkeb 
when writing the advertiser. 
That was a wonderful Summer meeting of the 
New York State Fruit Growers at Albion. It was 
made possible chiefly by the automobile. Without 
these swift and commodious cars, such a meeting 
would be limited to a radius of but a few miles of 
the hall, where speeches are made. As it is a 50-mile 
limit is easy, and most of the speeches are cut out. 
No use talking, the automobile is changing country 
gatherings and country travel, and thus country life. 
* 
The New York State Fair has become a great ex¬ 
position, where a farmer may And every detail of his 
business illustrated or discussed. The exhibits cover 
all the products of the temperate zone and all the 
tools and methods which the brain of man has devised 
to aid farm work—indoors and out. The educa¬ 
tional features are presented to eye and ear by 
exhibits and lectures. The best of all is the crowd 
of fine country people who come in from the farms 
ready to talk and make friends and give information. 
The fair has grown in strength and character with 
the solid development of an oak tree. It is a great 
exhibit—a credit to its managers, and we would urge 
all New York farmers who can do so to attend. Of 
course The R. N.-Y. will be there—“tenting on the 
old camp ground,” and glad to see all friends. 
❖ 
Here are the four things which are most important 
for farmers: 
1. A fair parcels post—transportation. 
2. Agricultural credits—liquid farm capital. 
3. Public supervision of middlemen—business pro¬ 
tection. 
4. A Federal “Blue Sky” law—investment security. 
It is astonishing how the old parties and the new 
one go on talking generalities and pounding the dust 
out of old issues. Here we have a quartette of living 
issues which come up 365 times a year to our country 
people, yet they are little more than splinters in the 
party platforms. The “Outlook” names 61 demands 
in the Progressive platform, the Democrats have 
about 50 and the Republicans over 40, and the Social¬ 
ists and Prohibitionists between them many more. 
Let us have quality as well as quantity. The quartette 
above mentioned will make good farm music. 
* 
We want you to read that “Plain Tale From the 
Hills.” After you have read it, sit down and let 
your mind try to fit you right into the place of Mr. 
Hoskins. This is not a “yellow” story. We might 
easily have given more details and put in mustard 
and pepper. Our object is to present the cold facts 
just as they are. This is in no sense a criticism of 
the New York Department of Agriculture. The Com¬ 
missioner treated this case with consideration as soon 
as his attention was called to it. We tell this plain 
story so that all may see the great loss, if not in¬ 
justice, which the present tuberculin law has caused 
and will cause in the future to men like Mr. Hoskins. 
If a law is defective or unfair, the first step toward 
remedy should be a fair illustration of the way it 
works out. This is what we have shown in the case 
of Mr. Hoskins. The law must be changed, and we 
think all fair-minded men will be willing to help 
change it. If some of the officials who appear to 
have become inspection-crazy object to this, we think 
we know how to handle them. 
* 
Most of the scientists have argued against the 
potato as an article of diet. It is amusing sometimes 
to see “authorities” talking learnedly to farmers 
against eating potatoes. These experts do not seem 
to know what a large share the potato makes of the 
diet of most country people. It is easily cooked and 
can be served in numberless ways. In the new book 
on “The Potato,” by Grubb and Guilford, Dr. J. IT. 
Kellogg makes out a strong case for potato eaters. 
He says that the starch of potato is more easily 
THE HURAE NEW-YORKER 
digested and appropriated by the body than the 
starch of corn and most other cereals. The potato 
is deficient in fats and protein, but these are made 
up by cream or butter, meat, beans or peas. The 
great value of the potato consists in the salts (chiefly 
potash) which it contains. These act to keep the 
blood in an alkaline condition, and overcome the 
effect of uric and other acids in the blood. Those 
who have suffered from these acid conditions know 
that potash salts are usually given them as medicine. 
It appears that of all the vegetables the potato con¬ 
tains these salts in largest proportion. Few of us 
have thought of baked potato and cream as a medi¬ 
cine, yet, in a way, it answers the purpose. Dr. Kel¬ 
logg goes so far as to say: 
“If the consumption of potatoes in this country could 
be quadrupled the result would undoubtedly be the saving 
of many thousands of lives annually and an incalculable 
amount of suffering from disease.” 
This new view of the potato as a substitute for 
pills and powders and puckering doses is an agree¬ 
able one. It may be desirable to organize a potato 
consumers’ league that the gouty and rheumatic may 
realize how much of a drugstore is contained inside 
the humble tuber. 
* 
On September 3 the voters of Ohio will vote on 
41 amendments to the State constitution. We have 
asked a large number of Ohio farmers to discuss 
these amendments. Many replies are at hand, but 
we have space only for two typical replies—on the 
next page. The following note from the letter of a 
bright Ohio woman echoes the sentiment of most of 
those who write us: 
Every voter who is in doubt concerning any amendment 
would better vote “No,” for “It is better to endure the 
ills we have than to fly to others that we know not of.” 
It will be noticed that a large proportion of these 
amendments simply declare that laws may be passed 
to do or attempt to do certain things. For example, 
No. 38: 
Sec. 11. Laws may be passed regulating and limiting 
the use of property on or near public ways and ground for 
erecting bill-boards thereon, and for the public display of 
posters, pictures and other forms of advertising. 
This is to overcome any objection that the old con¬ 
stitution would not permit public interference with 
what we might call the private advertising right of 
a farmer. The trouble with most amendments of 
this sort is that they may open the way to legislation 
almost undreamed of at this time. 
* 
A fair share of our time is spent trying to sharpen 
the blunted corners of various “square deals.” A 
number of farm and poultry papers announce that 
they will stand by their readers in business with ad¬ 
vertisers. Every year we have a number of cases 
where these papers cut over the corners. These are 
usually clear cases of misrepresentation or worse. 
The paper carries them along until it is evident that 
nothing except exposure-will compel restitution— 
and then they quit and get out of the game. We have 
a number of such cases on hand now where we never 
advertised the party at all. The paper which did 
advertise him flinched at the prospect of really'strik¬ 
ing home to the pocket-book, and an appeal is made 
to The R. N.-Y. Most of them finally settle. One of 
the records we value most is that of one of these 
half fakes who would not settle until The R. N.-Y. 
talked to him. We understand he told a friend some¬ 
thing like this: “Those other fellows are talkers. I 
think The R. N.-Y. has got the punch and the nerve 
to land it.” If you think this gentleman *vvas wrong, 
study these farm and poultry papers and see how 
many punches they deliver. “A punch” in this busi¬ 
ness is the true name of a fake or fraud printed so 
that all may read it. 
* 
To settle a discussion, will you state which farm crop 
takes least plant food from the soil, and which one is, on 
the whole, most exhausting? J. h. l. 
Long Island. 
If you could call ice a farm crop it would fill the 
first requirement. We have some readers who, during 
the Summer, grow corn in a deep, narrow valley 
through which runs a brook. When the corn crop 
is harvested the gate of a dam is closed so that a 
pond is formed. During the Winter ice is sold from 
this pond. In the Spring the water is let off and 
the deposit has fitted the land for another corn crop. 
If you rule out ice, we would say that honey takes 
less plant food per ton than any other crop. Sugar 
has little plant food, hut there is considerable waste 
in producing it, while there is none whatever in 
honey. The most exhausting crop is tobacco, both 
because of its requirements and the fact that but 
little if any of its plant food returns to the soil. King 
states that in a single year the tobacco crop of this 
country took from the soil 28.000.000 pounds of nitro¬ 
gen, 29.000,000 pounds of potash and 2,500.000 pounds 
August 31. 
of phosphorus. In smoking or chewing, as ordinarily 
practiced, all this plant food was lost to the soil. The 
same amount of plant food used to produce food or 
in fact any other farm crop would be returned to 
the soil in large part. Tobacco farming is, therefore, 
aside from any opinion one may have of the tobacco 
habit, the most wasteful type of agriculture we have. 
* 
Whenever we speak of the need of agricultural 
credits some one comes forward to say they are not 
needed—that farmers can now get all the money 
they need in legitimate business. Here is a case re¬ 
ported by the Agricultural College of Kansas. West¬ 
ern Kansas this year produced a good crop of feed, 
but live stock is scarce. Last Winter the drought 
pinched this part of Kansas and live stock was 
cleaned out. Now, if these Western farmers had the 
stock they had to sell last Winter they could make 
money and also help out the meat supply. But last 
season many of them exhausted their local credit in 
an effort to live. Now, with neither cattle nor credit, 
their hands are tied, and some one else will reap 
where they sowed. 
What is needed badly at this time is some agricultural 
credit associations from which these farmers could get 
money at a low rate of interest. It will be a great boon 
to western farmers when the national government or the 
State or the county is able to lend money to these farmers 
in critical periods. It will be the making of them. Right 
now it would relieve a serious condition. 
Not only to Western farmers but to thousands in 
the East as well. The fact is farmers need credit 
accommodation just as much as other business men 
do, and in many situations from the nature of their 
business they are discriminated against. This may be 
done by the very people who tell them they are the 
“foundation of society.” 
* 
We have, in times past, referred to agents of L. 
P. Gunson & Co., who go about “doing" farmers. 
One of them went into Vermont with his glowing 
tales of oats that produce 150 bushels per acre, Cali¬ 
fornia corn that does well in the frost and potatoes 
that are blight and bug-proof. He seems to have 
done well among the men of the Bashful State, but 
finally he struck one of the genuine Vermont girls. 
Here is the report: 
I am enclosing some wonderful circulars, no use for 
farmers to be poor! Potatoes that don’t need bugging, 
corn that’s ripe before it's planted, etc. The agent got 
so mad at me because I said “hump” at the potato story, 
and would not let my husband buy anything, that he told 
him “Your wife may run you, but she don't me,” and said 
be would find out who ran the farm and make me pay for 
insulting him. I told him that be had told the truth then 
about tbe stuff, it showed just what it was. A good many 
bit round here, so I told him we could easily And out 
next year what it was and buy seed. Think I've read of 
that firm iu The R. N.-Y. or some about like them. 
J. H. T. 
Yes, you saw that firm in The R. N.-Y! We un¬ 
derstand they say they are not responsible for what 
their agents say. If they were they might well view 
the future with apprehension. Such agents are the 
“commercial Burbanks” who claim to have oats 
grafted on clover so that they develop a long tap 
root! But what about the “Bashful State” now? 
We were brought up to believe that Vermont women 
represent the best crop from that State. It is true! 
One sure and pleasant way to make the financial 
fakers go to sawing wood for a living would be to 
scatter the Vermont girls all over the country in 
farm homes. That would be a sure thing, but the 
Vermont men ought to prohibit any exports of their 
best crop! Hurrah for the Green Mountain girls! 
BREVITIES. 
Barley is the late hay crop. 
How is the wood shed—full? 
Begin to consider the stoves. 
Silage and clover! That’s the combination to put the 
old cow over. 
All earthworms look alike to most of us, but scientists 
have described no fewer than 40 distinct species in Great 
Britain alone. 
The time to sow the cover crop in the corn is when the 
corn would naturally be worked for the last time. Usually 
it does not pay to cultivate after the tassels form. 
An English newspaper states that a farmer in Cheshire 
lost 14 valuable cows through treating them with an arsen¬ 
ical weed-killer in mistake for a fly repellant. The cows 
were treated iu the morning and dead at night. 
Still comes the cry—how to kill ants. Find the ant 
“hill,” punch a crowbar down, pour in two ounces of 
bisulphide of carbon and put a blanket over. In tbe house 
three grains of tartar emetic to four ounces of syrup 
smeared over bits of china. The ants obligingly carry 
this dose home and feed it to their young. 
Oil mill, merchants and banks at Natchez, Miss., formed 
a fund to pay 50 cents a hundred for Cotton boll-weevils, 
caught iu Adams County. The number of weevils brought 
in .Time 20. July G and July 13 totaled 47,000. according 
to the New Orleans Picayune. It was reported that some 
unscrupulous collectors turned in weevils from coekleburs 
instead of from cotton bolls. 
