1912. 
©67 
THE RURA.I> NEW-YORKER 
LARGE PUBLIC QUESTIONS. 
[Editor’s Note.—U nder this heading we intend to 
have discussed questions which particularly interest 
country people. We do not agree with all that our 
correspondents say, but we shall give men and women 
who possess the courage of conviction an opportunity to 
say what they think about certain things whicli interest 
country people]. 
MONEY FOR THE FARMER. 
Liquid Farm Capital. —It is now becom¬ 
ing apparent that liquid capital is as 
necessary in the business of farming as it 
is m any other; that in addition to the 
money invested in the farming plant, in the 
land, there must also be money to carry 
on the operations of planting, sowing and 
harvesting, whether these operations take 
up little or much time, and that the farmer 
who has not this surplus capital must be 
able to get it easily and surely. The finan¬ 
cial machinery of the merchant and manu¬ 
facturer is adjusted to this end, the crea¬ 
tion of the corporation is especially de¬ 
signed and adapted for quick, positive ac¬ 
tion. In the bond, stock, bill of lading, 
acceptance, warehouse receipt, the business 
man has a form of security that he can 
use at an instant’s notice, is good collat¬ 
eral for a loan, or for sale; low rates of 
interest prevail, short or long time loans, 
wherever these forms of collateral are of¬ 
fered. The farmer has none of the means, 
the laws and methods are archaic, have 
outrun their usefulness, and must be 
adapted to our present day methods of 
business. 
A New Method. —We shall have to 
evolve a new method; such a system as 
the Russian might be adapted to our col¬ 
ored population in the South, but not to 
the larger, independent farmer all over 
the country. For one thing there cannot 
be any special privilege in it; the farmer 
does not want that It must be so that 
the. individual farmer can take advantage 
of it. purely as an individual ; no paternal¬ 
ism about it at all. Prior to about 25 or 
30 years ago the farm mortgage was the 
favorite investment; insurance companies, 
trust companies, trustees and the private 
investors of every kind were anxious to buy 
good farm mortgages, and such States as 
Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas were largely 
developed with these funds, and the change 
of these funds to investment in lands for 
a time had almost as much to do with 
“hard times” as the drought and the grass¬ 
hopper. This was about the time of the de¬ 
velopment of the present day corporation 
with its bonds and stocks, and the bond 
was found especially desirable as an in¬ 
vestment, being of a convenient and regu¬ 
lar size, satisfactory rate of interest, long 
time, regular time and place of payment, 
no dilatory tactics to prevent foreclosure 
in case of failure to repay the principal, 
so that large investors now consider it as 
the standard investment security. Now the 
farmer must adjust farm securities to these 
present day requirements. 
Mortgages as Loans. —About 15 years 
ago, in connection with a vice-president 
of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insur¬ 
ance Company, whose business was the in¬ 
vestment of the reserve funds of that com¬ 
pany, 1 was greatly surprised to learn that 
while formerly largely invested in farm 
mortgages, they had quit making these 
loans and were withdrawing them as fast 
as possible and reinvesting in good bonds; 
that these were found much more satis¬ 
factory, in the payment of interest and 
principal, with no tedious and annoying 
foreclosing. This experience of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company 
no doubt was the experience of many other 
careful investors, and was based purely on 
the fact that the form of investment of¬ 
fered by the farmer was not equal, or 
rather it was not as desirable as that of¬ 
fered by the corporations in the form of 
a bond. Now, I believe the first thing 
that is necessary to do is to revise our 
laws in such a way that the farmer can 
take advantage as an individual of the 
forms of security offered by the individual 
bondholder or stockholder of a corporation, 
that he will be able to raise money for 
long time, just as the corporation does on 
its bonds, or he can use it as security or 
collateral for a loan just as the individual 
bondholder of a corporation does. 
Suggested Remedies. —There are vari¬ 
ous ways urged to remedy this defect in 
our financial system to help the farmer. 
First are those who believe voluntary co¬ 
operation is all that is necessary, and with 
proper laws governing co-operative com¬ 
panies great good could be done, but it 
would not overcome all the evils. The new¬ 
ness of the country and the restlessness of 
our rural population would work constantly 
against co-operation. Second, are some 
who believe in direct State aid, by lending 
public funds to farmers. We do not be¬ 
lieve that a majority of our citizens would 
go into quite so extreme a socialistic 
scheme. The man who does not need or 
want to get public money would not want 
to invest in mortgages, which would be 
what such a plan would amount to, and he 
would be liable for his share of the loan 
as a taxpayer. 
Thirdly, would be a plan that would 
carry out our ideas of a purely voluntary, 
individual action, so that every man who 
owned land, who was engaged in farming, 
that is, who used his land for legitimate 
food raising purposes, could comply with 
certain simple, clearly defined conditions, 
which might be embodied in a State law, 
and get funds on long time and low rate 
of interest, to be repaid at the time of the 
regular payment of taxes and to the same 
officer. Such a law would probably have 
to provide for a uniform appraisement of 
real estate throughout the State, based 
on a fair cash value. Next, the transfer 
laws would have to be very simple, some¬ 
thing like what is known as the Torrens 
law. Let the county treasurer with the 
recorder of deeds be authorized to issue 
bonds to whatever per cent thought desir¬ 
able on the value of land, on the applica¬ 
tion of any land owner who had complied 
with conditions as prescribed. As these 
bonds would be true debenture bonds of 
the highest standing, they could lie desig¬ 
nated as forms of investment for trust 
funds, school funds, and should even be 
proper investments for the surplus funds 
of the postal savings banks. Should the 
individual farmer desire to do so, instead 
of the bond being sold and he receive the 
proceeds, he should be at liberty to take 
the bond himself, which he could use as 
collateral at his bank. Should he desire 
a short time loan, the only cost to him in 
such a case would be the small cost there 
would be entailed in operating the finan¬ 
cial machinery of such a scheme. The 
bond could run for 25 years, with, say, 
interest only for the first five years ; after 
that, repayment of principal. ' Any good 
actuary could calculate the minutise of 
such a plan. As we are just starting on 
the special privilege house cleaning, it 
does not seem to me that we can suggest 
any plan consistently that would give the 
farmer any special favor. Nor does he 
need it, nor want it, but the business laws 
of the farm are far behind those of 
the rest of the business of the country, and 
the aim of this is merely in a tentative 
way to develop some practical plan by 
which the farmer as a business man can 
help himself, and not as now, be helpless 
to take advantage of opportunities that 
may come to him, or to help himself in the 
event of necessities. D. h. c. 
Michigan. _ 
DRINKING UP A HILL 
We are informed of a remarkable opera¬ 
tion in reclaiming a swamp now being com¬ 
pleted near Rochester, N. Y. 
This swamp is located at the upper end 
of a lake and is surrounded by hills con¬ 
taining a sandy clay soil. The proposition 
of the company undertaking the work has 
been to separate the swamp from the 
deeper portions of the lakes by throwing a 
dike across at a section where the water 
stands at a depth of about 10 feet. This 
dike had to be made a little less than a 
quarter of a mile long, and was built about 
80 feet wide, the intention being to lay 
it out in building lots for the gardeners 
and truck farmers who will occupy the 
land. The water above the dike or building 
lot section will lie pumped out by a cen¬ 
trifugal pump driven by an electric motor. 
By regulating the pumping, any desired 
amount of moisture can be kept in the soil, 
so this section will not be dependent on 
the rainfall. With the fertile soil of these 
swamp lands and absolute control over 
the moisture, the ideal conditions of truck 
farming and gardening will be obtained 
in this section. In the reclamation of this 
swamp the hardest part of the work has 
naturally consisted in the construction of 
the building section which separates the 
lake from the reclaimed land. It is inter¬ 
esting to note that here again the cen¬ 
trifugal pump has demonstrated its general 
utility. By using two of these pumps the 
hill used for constructing the dike has been 
literally pumped into the swamp: and it 
has been done in au incredibly short time 
at a very low cost. 
In order to do this a Goulds centrifugal 
pump was placed at the bottom of the hill. 
This pump discharges an eight-inch stream, 
or 2.000-gallons per minute. This stream 
was driven through 900 feet of pipe to the 
top of a 75-foot hill. There part of it 
was driven through another smaller pump 
with such pressure that it cut the soil 
loose, carrying it back through a flume to 
the swamp. Thus the water tore tip the 
hill and washed it down as thick mud. 
This stream of mud was directed where it 
was wanted in the swamp, and as it dried 
left a dyke a quarter of a mile long, 80 
feet wide and 10 feet high. It is said 
that the entire cost of eating up this hill 
and washing it to the swamp was five 
cents per cubic yard. The picture shows 
how the hill was eaten or washed away, 
and how the mud was floated to the swamp. 
One may well ask what next? 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—Undervaluation of sugar 
entries at New Orleans cnarged against the 
American Sugar Refining Company from 
1901 to 1907 amounted to $103,533, ac¬ 
cording to figures announced August 29 by 
Collector of Customs Hebert. If settlement' 
is not made it is said the matter will be 
referred to the federal attorney for action. 
The federal grand jury of the northern 
district of Texas returned August 29 an 
indictment against several prominent oil 
men as representatives of the Standard Oil 
Company. The charge is restraint of trade 
and commerce and unlawful conspiracy and 
combination in violation of the anti-trust 
laws. It is alleged the individual defend¬ 
ants, the Standard Oil Company and the 
Magnolia Petroleum Company, conspired to 
destroy the business of the Pierce-Fordyce 
Oil Association of Texas. 
A shipment of honey bees broke loose 
and captured a freight train on the Great 
Northern in Minnesota, August 30. When 
the train started from Minneapolis there 
were 10 hives of bees consigned to the 
Rev. Francis Jaeger at St. Bonifacius, Minn. 
By the time the bees got to Crystal Bay 
three of the hives were smashed and as a 
result no freight was left there. The car 
door was opened, but quickly closed again 
with a pole. At Minnetonka Beach a po¬ 
liceman was asked to restrain the bees 
from interfering with interstate commerce, 
but he declined. 
Solomon Luna was found dead August 
30 in a sheep dipping vat ou his ranch, 
75 miles from Magdalena, N. M. Lnna 
was known as the greatest sheep ranchman 
in the world. He was president of the 
Albuquerque Bank of America. For 16 
years he was National Republican com¬ 
mitteeman for New Mexico. 
William M. Wood, president of the Amer¬ 
ican Woolen Company and a leading figure 
in the textile industry of the .country, was 
arrested August 30 on a warrant based ou 
an indictment charging conspiracy in con¬ 
nection with “planting” dynamite in va¬ 
rious places in Lawrence at the time of the 
strike of last Winter. The theory of those 
who obtained the evidence which was pre¬ 
sented to the Grand Jury is that persons 
interested in the operators’ side of the 
labor struggle placed the dynamite where 
it was found in order to discredit the 
strikers’ cause. Dennis J. Collins, a dog 
fancier of Cambridge, and a third man 
were indicted at the same time. The 
name of the third man has not been made 
public. He is described as the head of an 
aniline dye concern. 
Under authority granted by the last pos¬ 
tal appropriation law Postmaster-General 
Hitchcock issued August 31 an order in¬ 
creasing on September 30 next the salaries 
of 42.000 rural mail carriers. The com¬ 
pensation of the carriers on standard routes 
of which there are 30,000, is increased from 
$1,000 to $1,100, with proportionate in¬ 
crease for shorter routes. The order in¬ 
volves about $4,000,000 a year. An ad¬ 
vance from $900 tG $1,000 a year for 
standard routes was made in 1911. When 
rural delivery was started 16 years ago 
the carriers got $200 a year. Mr. Hitch¬ 
cock has also directed that rural carriers 
shall have 15 days annual leave with pay. 
Seven persons, including nearly the entire 
train crew, were killed and 20 injured, sev¬ 
eral seriously, September 1, when a fast 
sleeping car train of the Chicago and 
Northwestern Railroad was ditched in a 
washout caused by a cloudburst five miles 
south of Shawana, Wis. 
Following a night of torrential rainfall 
and cloudbursts throughout western Penn¬ 
sylvania, eastern Ohio and a large part of 
the Panhandle district of West Virginia, 
reports from the flooded region September 
2 tell of 43 dead, four missing, destruction 
of $5,000,000 in property and of railroads 
and telegraphs demoralized. For nearly 
five hours the rain fell in torrents. Cloud- 
busts filled fertile valleys with raging 
rivers that annihilated crops and carried 
away bridges and railroad tracks. Light¬ 
ning struck in many places. Quiet streams 
rose in an hour and became agents of de¬ 
struction. Railroad traffic was practically 
stopped and wire traffic was paralyzed 
throughout most of the region. Colliers, 
W. Va., was practically wiped out. Cherry 
Valley, W. Va., was in ruins. Avella, 
Canousburg, Washington, Burgettstown, and 
a dozen smaller places in the extreme west 
of Pennsylvania were inundated. At New 
Philadelphia, Steubenville and other Ohio 
towns near the Ohio River the damage was 
heavy. The Panhandle division of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad ceased train opera¬ 
tions. Fourteen miles of track was washed 
away near Colliers. Three bridges were 
carried down stream. For miles along 
Raccoon Creek the roadbed was submerged. 
Washington county reports property dam¬ 
age that will exceed $2,000,000. Many 
sheep and cattle were drowned in the fields. 
Washington county is the greatest wool 
growing community east of the Mississippi 
River. The streams throughout this county 
and Greene County contained many bodies 
of dead sheep. A freight train which was 
running along the banks of Hariner’s Creek 
during the worst of the storm was pitched 
into the water by a cavein and all the crew 
except the engineer are thought to have 
been drowned. The intense heat which has 
prevailed for several days at Chicago was 
suddenly relieved by a terrific thunder 
shower September 1, which started 40 fires 
and flooded the city. The rainfall was 1.45 
inches in an hour and a quarter. Nine 
persons had succumbed to the heat before 
the storm broke. 
Two great earth slides at Culebra Cut, 
one of 900,000 cubic yards and the other 
of a third of that amount, have filled sec¬ 
tions of the Panama Canal, partly buried 
a big steam shovel and other machinery, 
and threaten the destruction of the Young 
Men’s Christian Association club building. 
The latter, which is two stories high, has 
moved 18 inches toward the cut, and en¬ 
gineers say it cannot be saved from sliding 
in. The Commission has had warnings, 
forbidding its use, posted on the building. 
The whole hill upon which the structure is 
built, Culebra Heights, seems to be going 
down rapidly. Commission engineers say 
the latest slides will delay work on the 
cut from six weeks to two months. 
One of the large grain elevators of the 
National Malting Company, at 103d street 
and the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago 
Railroad yards, Chicago, burned September 
3. The loss was estimated at $250,000. 
Fifty workmen escaped. 
All the constitutional amendments pro¬ 
posed by the recent Ohio State Constitu¬ 
tional Convention, except that providing 
lor woman suffrage, were approved by the 
voters at a special election September 3. 
Ohio’s Constitution will be one of the most 
radical in the United States. The amend¬ 
ments adopted include the initiative and 
referendum, home rule for cities, license 
system for saloons, the taxation of incomes 
and inheritances, abolishment of capital 
punishment, minimum wage, eight-hour 
day on public work, and 35 others. The 
women agitating suffrage conducted the 
most aggressive and spectacular features 
of the campaign. Their aggressiveness at¬ 
tracted the fire of an organization opposed 
to suffrage, but the principal cause of their 
defeat is to be traced to the liuuor inter¬ 
ests. These have been well organized for 
years and fonn<J it easy to have their 
license amendment put through. It also 
was easy for them to turn their great 
strength against suffrage. 
Vermont failed to elect a Governor Sep¬ 
tember 3. Returns give the Democrats 
and Progressive candidates together about 
6,000 more votes than the Republican can¬ 
didate received, with less than 1,100 votes 
for either the Prohibition or Socialist can¬ 
didate. Both Republican candidates for 
Congress were safely elected. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—Riverside Sadie 
De Kol Burke, a California Iiolsteiu cow, 
owned by A. W. Morris & Sons of Yolo 
County, is the first cow in the world to 
average over 100 pounds of milk a day for 
six months. She beats the record of Cham¬ 
pion Aralia De Kol for the first six months 
of the second year test. Riverside Sadie 
yielded 18.275 pounds of milk. Aralia De 
Kol’s record for a year was 28,065 9-10 
pounds of milk, or 1,137.73 pounds of 
butter. 
George M. Whitaker, secretary of the 
National Dairy Union, and president of the 
Farmers’ National Congress, died at Fort 
Atkinson, Wis., August 30. Mr. Whitaker 
was horn in 1851 at Southbridge, Mass. 
The Virginia State Fair offers a number 
of premiums for fruit, fruit packages, nuts, 
nursery and ornamental stock grown in 
Virginia. Entries close September 14 ; judg¬ 
ing begins October 8. Exhibits in this de¬ 
partment may be shipped at any time to 
A. Warwick, general manager Virginia 
State Fair, care of Merchants’ Cold Stor¬ 
age Company, Richmond, Va., and same 
will be properly stored, taken to the fair, 
carefully unpacked and placed on exhibi¬ 
tion. every care and caution being exer¬ 
cised to preserve exhibit intact and make 
it attractive and pleasing to the public as 
well as exhibitor. Those forwarding ex¬ 
hibits in this way are requested to advise 
the general manager of their shipments, so 
that entry cards may be held there and 
placed on exhibits. No charge made for 
this service. 
DRINKING UP A NEW YORK HILL. Fig, 401. 
POURING OUT THE MUD BELOW. Fig. 403. 
