THIS RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
33« 
March a. 
PUBLISHER’S DESK 
We receive many letters that do not 
contain the name or address of the 
writer. Such anonymous communica¬ 
tions cannot receive consideration. Al¬ 
ways sign full name and address when 
writing us—you need have no fear that 
your name will be printed without your 
permission. 
Would it be too much trouble to give mo 
the reliability of the Veterinary Science 
Association, London, Ontario, Canada? 
They wish to employ me as an assistant 
manager. j. or. n. 
Colorado. 
This concern has been working fake 
schemes on the people of the States for 
the last 15 or 20 years. They may 
promise you a position as manager, but 
we think when you get down to par¬ 
ticulars you will simply have a chance 
to sell something for them on commis¬ 
sion, and you may be required to put 
up some cash in advance at that. They 
claim to give a course in veterinary 
science and to graduate students, but 
they are not recognized by State au¬ 
thorities, and their certificate of grad¬ 
uation, if they give one, would not 
authorize the holder to practice veterin¬ 
ary medicine in the States nor any¬ 
where else. 
I wish to inquire if you know anything 
of the American Investment Association 
of Minneapolis, Minn.? They claim to 
bring the sellers and buyers of farms to¬ 
gether and charge an advance fee of $7.50. 
and if the sale is made they want $7.50 
more. There is no guarantee that they will 
sell the farm. a. t. m. 
Minnesota. 
Charging an advance fee for listing 
farms was originated by W. Ostrander 
of Philadelphia. The business consisted 
in collecting the fees rather than in 
selling the farms. This Minneapolis 
concern seems to be following the Os¬ 
trander lead in collecting the fee first, 
and if it has sold farms we have no 
records of such sales. It is time enough 
to pay a commission on a sale after .he 
contract is signed, and our advice would 
be not to pay any such fees in advance. 
I am sending you enclosed Mr. Fhilo’s 
latest. Perhaps you have read this won¬ 
derful combination of somewhat toned-down 
guff. But what strikes me as remarkable 
is the fact that what you have to buy in 
Florida is so dirt cheap and the things 
you have to sell bring enormous prices. If 
this is the case in Florida, it isn’t so in 
Indiana, or any other State I know. n. s. 
Indiana. 
Mr. Philo will undoubtedly influence 
some poor people with a little money to 
leave their homes and invest their sav¬ 
ings in his Florida scheme. In this 
pamphlet he talks about building a town, 
and promises prizes to those who sug¬ 
gest a name for it. The joker is found 
in the requirement that the person pro¬ 
posing the name must make a remittance 
for land. If you really want to go to 
Florida do not play sucker to any pro¬ 
moter. Go there and you can select 
land better suited to your needs than 
the promoters will sell you, for any 
way from a half to a tenth of the prices 
you would pay them. 
The so-called “blue sky” act, first adopt¬ 
ed in Kansas and directed against ques¬ 
tionable investment companies, became the 
law of Vermont by the approval of Gov¬ 
ernor Fletcher to-day. The State Bank 
Commissioner will investigate all such com¬ 
panies hereafter before giving them a li¬ 
cense.—Daily Paper. 
Good for Vermont. We also have 
good prospects of a similar law in New 
York. The corporations which issue and 
sell bogus certificates are creatures of the 
State, and it is a scandal that the State 
should license crooks to prey on its 
citizens. It makes the State a partner 
in the crime. While the State author¬ 
izes the creation of corporation entities, 
it should at least restrain it from delib¬ 
erate robbery of the people, through 
the privilege granted it by the law. 
We have just received a complaint 
from the shipper which illustrates a 
frequent experience of shippers of farm 
produce to city markets. Last month 
a most experienced grower in the State 
of New Jersey shipped 11 baskets of 
Ohio Nonpareil apples to a commission 
man in Wallabout Market, Brooklyn. 
The commission merchant claims that 
about this time he received 10 baskets 
bearing neither his address nor the 
name and address of the shipper. He 
was told by the truckman that these were 
found in the car; that they belonged 
to him, and he received the 10 baskets 
and receipted for them, and did not 
know the name of the shipper until the 
freight bill was presented for payment. 
Afterwards he discovered that the con¬ 
tents of the 10 baskets were not Ohio 
Nonpareil apples, but the poorest qual¬ 
ity of Kieffer pears. He sold them at 
50 cents per basket and made returns of 
$3.35 net to the shipper. The shipper’s 
estimated value of the apples was $1.75 
v a basket, and this the commission mer¬ 
chant agreed was a fair price at the 
time. The railroad claims that it has 
the merchant's receipt for the ship¬ 
ment of apples, and since their records 
are clear they refuse to make good the 
loss. The commission merchant, on the 
other hand, claims that shipments of 
this kind are constantly being received 
from railroads without examination of 
their contents, and that the receipt given 
for them was nothing more or less than 
an acknowledgment of the receipt of 
so many baskets, but what is a shipper 
a hundred miles away going to do in a 
situation of the kind? The rule has been 
to suffer their loss in silence and trust 
to luck for better treatment the next 
time. 
It is repeated instances of this kind 
that have suggested a provision in the 
market commission bill that will 
tend to protect shippers in such circum¬ 
stances. Our suggestion is that the 
shipper be required to mail a bill of the 
quality and grade of goods to the con¬ 
signees at the time that the goods were 
shipped. If the merchant disputes the 
quantity or quality of the goods, that 
he be obliged to notify a local inspector 
promptly and have a certified accounting 
of the shipment made before he at¬ 
tempts the sale. Failing to do this the 
merchant would be responsible for the 
goods billed. This, of course, implies 
that the State should employ local in¬ 
spectors to look after matters of the 
kind, and the State can do shippers and 
consumers no better service than to pro¬ 
vide such a system of inspection. While 
in such cases the total loss comes on art 
individual producer, the consumer bears 
his share of the burden in tbe increased 
cost of living which results from such a 
system. We withhold the names of the 
parties in this case for the present, be¬ 
cause the matter is yet under adjust¬ 
ment, and we propose to see that the 
shipper in this case gets paid for his 
apples. 
E. G. Lewis of University City has pur¬ 
chased 23,000 acres of land near Pascadero, 
Cal., where he expects to establish an ideal 
colony at an expense of approximately 
$10,000,000. Two thousand business men 
from various parts of the country are in¬ 
terested in the project it was learned to¬ 
day from those closely associated with 
Lewis, who at present is in California. 
A residence right may be purchased on 
much the same lines as an insurance policy, 
according to the age of the applicant, it 
was said. Upon the payment of a stipu¬ 
lated sum persons will be assured of a 
home for the rest of their lives. 
There will be no taxes to pay directly, 
as 10 per cent of the income from each 
piece of property will be put into a com¬ 
mon fund from which all taxes will be 
paid. Then in case a man has a crop fail¬ 
ure one year he will have no taxes to pay, 
but the burden will be borne by his neigh¬ 
bor who may be raising a different kind of 
fruit and have a large crop. 
It was said that if the project proved 
a success Mr. Lewis will begin at once the 
establishment of a similar colony in Flor¬ 
ida. 
lie also has plans to consolidate five 
monthly magazines with a combined circu¬ 
lation of three million copies a month. Two 
of them are published in Chicago and three 
in New York. They will be brought to St. 
Louis and published in the Lewis plant at 
University City.—Nashville Democrat. 
The above sounds familiar. Why any 
respectable paper should give publicity 
to such stuff is more than we can un¬ 
derstand. It puts the publisher in the 
position of a conspirator in the Lewis 
schemes. Less than a year ago Lewis 
was pitiably whining that he was broke, 
and appealing to sympathetic women to 
send remittances to help him out. This 
after collecting and squandering some 
eight or ten million dollars collected on 
schemes from poor country people. Now 
he looms up with another ten million 
proposition. It is a matter of court 
record that when Lewis was collecting 
money on real estate and publishing 
schemes in St. Louis and representing 
great profit to the investors in them, that 
he was losing over $50,000 a month in 
the publishing business, and that the 
real estate was then encumbered for 
more than it was ever worth. Lewis 
has promoted 75 or 80 schemes, big and 
little; and the people who put their 
money into them invariably lost it. The 
present scheme will be no exception. One 
of them was a California land scheme 
too. When he was working the St. 
Louis schemes he paid an attorney a re¬ 
tainer of $10,000 a year to help him 
avoid the laws of his State and county. 
The legal fee of course, came out of the 
pockets of his victims. If there is any¬ 
one silly enough to want to contribute to 
a similar fee now Mr. Lewis is evidently 
at the new stand ready to receive remit¬ 
tances. j. j. 0. 
DRILL YOUR OATS—IT PAYS 
Illinois Experiment Station shows an average gain of 
3.6 bushels per acre. 
At Kansas Station they found a gain of 4 bushels 
per acre. 
Iowa Station found a gain of over 9 bushels per acre. 
Get this extra crop by using Single Disc Van Brunt 
Drill—the drill that will not choke in sticky, trashy 
ground. Guaranteed to make a good seed bed in any 
ground that can be seeded. 
Here Arc the Valuable Features— 
"Wheels always stand true 
Hopper trussed—don’t sag 
"Adjustable gate force feed 
•Bearings extend under frame 
Adjustable spring pressure 
^ “Every seed at bottom of furrow 
The Van Brunt adjustable gate force feed compels 
even seeding in any kind of ground without bunching 
or damaging the kernel. 
Van Brunt Closed Delivery permits seed to drop 
into furrow when it is wide open. “It beats the dirt.” 
Write at once for new free book, VB No. 33 
JOHN DEERE PLOW CO. 
MOLINE, ILLINOIS 
i ou gel Dig prom* from nght farming—even on a small farm. The right 
way u the machinery and tractor way. If your farm isn’t big enough to keep a traetoi 
buiy gel together with a few of the neighbors and buy a 
‘Asrluii 
_ _ Porte 
15-30 h.p. 
You’ll all enjoy lighter work, better crops and bigger profits. Any intelligent farm hand caa 
run one after our expert has taught him. A GasPull will do all your plowing, harrowing. 
threshing, shredding, baling, filling silos, etc. We have complete outfits 
for all this work. 
A 1 5-30 h. p. GasPull has the power of 1 5 horses at the cost of ten. 
We have bigger ones for threshing and big farm work.. 
Write for GasPull Data-Book, No. 352 and ask the name of 
our nearest dealer. 
RUMELY PRODUCTS CO. 
(Incorporated) 
Power-Farming Machinery 
LA PORTE, IND. 
on 
Fairbanks-Morse Eclipse Engines 
Simplest, most practical, lowest priced high grade engines 
now offered. Light enough to be easily moved from place 
to place. Use little fuel. 
Built in Two Sizes: No. 1 and No. 2 
Either size furnished with or without pump jack. 
No. 1 Eclipse engine will run on a pint of gasoline 
per hour. Powerful enough to pump from wells of ordinary 
depth; also run cream separator, washing machine, etc. 
No. 2 is twice as powerful as No. 1. Recommended for 
deep wells, running feed grinders, wood sawing, etc. 
Write for Catalog No. FD 598 and tell us what you 
want to run with the engine. 
Fairbanks, Morse & Co. 
Chicago Cleveland Cincinnati New Tork 
I and Gasoline Engines. Oil Tractors, Pumps. Water Systems Electric Light Plants, Wind Mills, Feed 6rlnders 
