llH-i 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
November 23, 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMERS PAPER 
A national Weekly Journal lor Country anti Suburban Homes 
Established i8S0 
Published weekly by the Rural Publishing Company, 409 Pearl St., New York 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
Jour J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wjl F. Dillon, Secretary. Mas. E. T. Royle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. S2.0f, equal to 8s. 6d., or 
8J4 marks, or 10^ francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or hank 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 to us j and 
cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe that everv advertisement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible person. But to make doubly sure we will make gooa any loss to paid 
subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising in our 
columns, and any such swindler will be 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 Ihe complaint must be sent to us within one month of the time of 
the transaction, and you must have mentioned The Rural New-Yorker 
when writing the advertiser. 
Tpie pleasant town of Get There lies far up a rocky 
hill, across the sands of Courage and above the swamp 
of Will. The path that leads to Get There leaves the 
pleasant thoroughfare, and wanders off ’mid rocks 
that grind and briar vines that tear. And thousands 
pass along the road that leads to Nowhereville, and 
grumble at the few who climb to Get There on the 
hill; and others start the thorny path and seek the 
town to gain, but falter at the swamp of Will and 
turn them back in pain. Oh, happy town of Get There, 
shining in the morning sun, you only show the toiler 
how yet higher peaks are won; the truest recompense 
you give for self-denying years is but the promise old, 
yet new, that conquers doubts and fears. For no one 
lives at Get There, but with heart and purpose set 
on better things, from peak to peak they climb up 
higher yet. 
* 
The political cabinet makers have begun to work 
at their trade, and are submitting models to Governor 
Wilson. It is pretty rough carpentry, for the work¬ 
men mostly use dull axes which they want to grind. 
Gov. Wilson is fully qualified to select his advisers. 
He will be held responsible for their behavior in office 
and it is his right to be left free to make his own 
choice. If we were in his place we should select old- 
time friends if possible—men that we felt were tried 
and true. If among these old friends there were none 
exactly suited to the special work of the different de¬ 
partments we should search for strong men of high 
character and ability regardless of sectional residence 
or political following. The point we make is that 
the President should be left free to select his political 
family of advisers in his own way. We are more 
interested in the Department of Agriculture than in 
any other, and we are frank to say that if we were 
the President-elect we would fill this position first of 
all, and turn to the best-equipped man in the country, 
a tried and true personal friend, Dr. Liberty Hyde 
Bailey, of Cornell. 
* 
It is protested that the frequently published statement 
that farm life has made the women of the farm especially 
prone to insanity is a calumny. There is no statistical 
authority for the assertion, and the author of this bulletin 
has endeavored for nearly a score of years to discover the 
originator of the fabrication, with indications that the 
irresponsible author was for many years a popular writer 
on domestic subjects. 
The above is taken from a report by Geo. K. 
Holmes, of the Department of Agriculture. Again 
and again some rascal starts this old insanity state¬ 
ment, and fools spring up to carry it along. We have 
the best of evidence from directors of many State 
insane hospitals that the great majority of their pa¬ 
tients come from city and town. In fact, they say 
that the quiet of farm life should be selected as part 
of a cure for most forms of insanity. We know of 
several cases where this sad disease is a family or 
hereditary trouble, and in every case doctors advise 
farm life as giving the best possible chance for the 
children. These “popular writers on domestic sub¬ 
jects” ought to be put into overalls and worked a 
couple of years on a back town dairy farm. They 
would then have some saner ideas of life than they 
ever had before. 
* 
Recognizing in a practical way that agriculture is 
the basis of present prosperity, and its maintenance 
the only guarantee of future security, the State has 
made large grants of public funds to place this art 
upon a scientific and enduring basis. Agricultural de¬ 
partments have been added to our great universities, 
and secondary agricultural schools have been estab¬ 
lished, while extension work by means of publications 
and institute instruction has kept pace with other edu¬ 
cational methods. All this is well; much has been ac¬ 
complished along the lines of theoretical and practi¬ 
cal instruction, and no intelligent farmer has anyone 
but himself to blame if be fails to place his work 
upon as sound a scientific basis as are most of the 
other industries. Yet all this will not make a success¬ 
ful farmer, or farming a profitable occupation, and 
if farmers cannot make their business profitable it is 
useless to expect them to continue it, no matter how 
great the need for their products may be. Agricul¬ 
tural education must now take another step forward, 
and the matter of distribution of farm products be 
given a like amount of attention to that which their 
production has received. It still remains true that 
a bumper crop means low prices for the producer 
without a corresponding reduction in favor of the 
consumer, and each year sees an enormous waste of 
perishable food products at the farm because no 
practicable means have as yet been devised for placing 
them in the hands of the hungry thousands, perhaps 
only a few miles away. While this condition exists, 
the whole duty of the State to its citizens has not 
been fulfilled, and our boasted civilization displays 
a flaw discreditable to the intelligence of the twentieth 
century. 
* 
Many of the sermons and essays on Thanksgiving 
seem to us quite perfunctory. It seems somehow as 
if men and women felt that they had a more or less 
disagreeable duty to perform and tried to do it. One 
would hardly think the President and some of our 
State governors would enjoy writing their proclama¬ 
tions, but is must be said that they met the situation 
with good spirit. Our readers know that we look 
upon every day as suitable for giving thanks, for 
every one of us can, if we care to, find a multitude 
of blessings. And it is a wise and good thing to 
provide a special day for Thanksgiving—after harvest 
and before the Winter comes fully upon us. It is as 
well now as it was nearly three centuries ago to close 
the farm season with a special tribute to the Giver of 
all good. There will be feasting and praise in more 
than 150,000 households where The R. N.-Y. is read. 
We hope it will be our privilege to be pleasantly re¬ 
membered as one of the invisible companions in every 
one of these households. The year has been a good 
one for us, and we have much to be thankful for, but 
as we look back over the year the crowning blessing 
of it all is the true and tested loyalty of our friends 
of the Rural family. 
* 
Last week we told of a case in Pennsylvania where 
a coal company is competing with farmers. One 
branch of the operating company conducts a string of 
stores, while another operates farms. The produce 
grown by one branch is to be sold through stores con¬ 
ducted by another, while the parent company will do 
its best to see that workmen trade at these stores. 
Against such competition as this an individual farmer 
would have little or no chance in the market. We 
think this is only a beginning of attempts on the 
part of large corporations and railroads to go to farm¬ 
ing. Take the case of a railroad entering a large city. 
The plan will b'e to establish large markets at its city 
terminal. Land along the railroad will be secured and 
efforts made to grow such crops as potatoes, onions, 
cabbage and fruit on a large scale by means of cheap 
foreign labor superintended by trained farmers. Such 
crops sent over the railroad could be sold at jts own 
terminal market, and the managers would hope in time 
to control most of the crops grown by individual 
farmers along its line. In other words, the plan evi¬ 
dently is to try to apply the factory system to farm¬ 
ing. If there were to be fair competition in selling 
farm crops we should have little fear of such a 
scheme, but with the railroads in control of markets 
and the factory towns handled as that Pennsylvania 
coal company plans to operate we can see little chance 
for increasing that 35-cent dollar to the individual 
farmer. It becomes more and more evident every year 
that the only hope for the farmer lies in sound co¬ 
operation, so that the actual producers may have a 
fair chance in the markets. 
* 
Our housekeepers here —a city of 10,000—would like to 
be able to obtain good eating apples. They cannot get 
them in the country around or from their grocers. I know 
good apples are grown in this State, and New York es¬ 
pecially, for I have seen them hanging on the trees, pass¬ 
ing through the country. Could not some of your farmer 
subscribers be induced to send boxes or barrels of apples, 
strictly first class, sound, well matured, selected fruit, for 
general distribution in a place like this? 
That extract is taken from a letter just received 
from a town in Maryland. Without question there 
are hundreds of other towns where similar conditions 
prevail. Now the shadow which hangs over the 
future of fruit growing is the fear that too many ap¬ 
ple trees are being planted. If we are to judge by 
the present methods of distribution there is some 
ground for this fear. But go into any town of 
3,000 or more inhabitants and see how many people 
you can find who have all the good apples they need! 
In spite of our immense apple crops the American 
people are not eating one-tenth of the fruit they would 
if a systematic campaign like that for breakfast 
food were made. Here is this single Maryland town 
good for 1,000 barrels more than were ever sold there 
before, while in some of our apple sections growers 
are forced to take what greedy buyers offer them. 
We can all see that this is no job for an individual 
farmer to take hold of. This is where cooperative 
packing and selling must come in, and the oppor¬ 
tunities for pushing such work are beyond computa¬ 
tion. 
* 
The State Grange of Kansas is to meet in Manhattan, 
December 10, 11 and 12. The regular sessions will be 
held in the Grange Hall down town, but it has been 
arranged to give Wednesday forenoon to a visit to the 
Agricultural College. The Automobile Club will take the 
entire delegation, about 120 to 150 persons, to the college 
farm. 
We print this report from Kansas to point out once 
more how the motor car is changing the character of 
farm life and farmers’ meetings. In former years 
such gatherings were limited to a hall or, at best, 
to a small part of a town or city. Now the explosion 
of gasoline in the motor car has blown down the 
barriers, and instead of being confined to a hall and 
a hotel the meeting is easily and quickly carried about 
anywhere within a radius of 20 miles. And all this 
stirring up and mixing of the people is helping us 
solve some of the problems of farming. Farmers only 
needed to get about and talk and discuss things with 
others in order to see how they need to cooperate and 
work together. In this way it is brought home to us 
as it cannot be in any other way how all other classes 
are getting together for mutual improvement and de¬ 
fense. This gasoline is not only eating up the miles, 
but also eating up old prejudices and methods which 
have long since served their time. 
* 
The egg-laying contest just closed at the Connecti¬ 
cut Agricultural College was as exciting at the close 
as a baseball championship or an election. In Aus¬ 
tralia these contests have helped the poultry industry 
in several ways. Egg consumers have become inter¬ 
ested and without question greater attention has been 
given to the value of eggs as food. The other day 
we saw a group of workmen eating their dinner in 
front of one of the largest buildings ever erected in 
New York. The great majority of them had thick 
slices of bread with hard fried eggs-in place of meat. 
So we may say that the Business Hen did her share 
in helping to lay these great city buildings. In older 
countries the problem of meat scarcity is met by in¬ 
creased egg production and the future of the egg 
demand in this country is beyond belief. The contest 
just closed has shown the possibilities of a good hen 
well cared for. It has also stirred up and mixed 
breeding stock and breeders as nothing before it has 
done. In the new contest the most appealing thing to 
us is the thought of that Idaho woman 51 miles from 
the railroad entering a pen of Leghorns. If those 
hens are responsive to thought influences we know 
where they will get strong backing in this contest. 
BREVITIES. 
An agricultural college has been started in Santo 
Domingo. 
Alfalfa may make poor land good, while millet will 
make good land poor. 
Yes, the horse or man who will stand without hitching 
may be called a “post graduate.” 
The horse needs water in the field—as much as the 
hired man. He cannot go like the camel. 
Some men gamble with cards—others with cows, when 
they never know what the cattle are doing. 
As he walks along the way of life the man who hardest 
rubs against the world is he who feeds a lot of lazy 
scrubs. 
The use of burial caskets of cement has come to the 
point where a Canadian company has secured a patent 
and will manufacture. 
The lime craze (or sense) seems to have struck Cali¬ 
fornia. There are fine deposits of limestone in Southern 
California waiting for the squeeze of the crusher to intro¬ 
duce them. 
Abe Martin of Indiana says: “This is startin’ out t’ be 
a great apple year fer th’ middle man. Passin’ prosperity 
around would be all right if tlier wuzn’ so many o’ us 
eatin’ at th’ second table.” 
The Colorado Experiment Station will supply to 
Colorado people pure cultures for vinegar making. These 
“pure cultures” put into cider will develop the special 
bacteria needed to make good vinegar. 
A barrel of extra quality American apples is a holiday 
gift often sent by American business men to European 
friends. A merchant who wished to send one barrel to 
Vienna and one to Berlin was recently quoted a little 
over .$13 a barrel for choice apples delivered at these 
points with all charges paid. 
The quarantine on Christmas greens from New England 
will* doubtless be used by some dealers as an excuse for 
higher prices, but it is the opinion of some excellent 
authorities that there is an ample supply of material in 
the Adirondacks, the mountain regions of Pennsylvania 
and New Jersey, and some Southern districts. 
