THE RURAIi NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER’S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal tor Country and Suburban Homes 
Established tsso 
Published weekly by the Hu rill Publishing Company, 3113 West 30th Street, New York 
Hkrbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
.Iohn J. Dillon. Treasurer and General Man ape r. 
Wsi. F. Dillon. Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
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Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates 60 cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper is hacked 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 any such swindler will be publicly exposed. Y e 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. 
Nolice of the complaint must be sent.to us within one month of the time of 
the transaction, and you must have mentioned The Rural New-iorker 
when writing the advertiser. 
Gov. Sulzer signed the Cole commission man’s bill, 
and thus established a new principle in business law. 
We have favored this legislation for many years. It 
is needed and it is just. For many years the smaller 
shipper of produce has been at the mercy of the com¬ 
mission dealers. The larger shippers who could af¬ 
ford to follow up their shipments were robbed at 
times, but the heaviest loss fell upon the smaller ship¬ 
pers, who were required to take just what was of¬ 
fered them. They need not expect that the new law 
will double the 35-cent dollar. This law is not all we 
need, but it is a beginning, and if we will follow it 
up and make what we can of it, a stronger law will 
follow. The first thing of all to do is to prevent if 
possible any of the old fakes and snides from ob¬ 
taining a license. Right now is the time to shut them 
off, and the only way to do it is to present evidence 
against them. If you have ever been “scalped” by 
any New York commission man and can prove it, here 
is your chance to help make this law effective. Let 
us have the facts at once, and we will see that they 
go to the Commissioner of Agriculture. 
* 
Possibly some of you gentlemen think the advo¬ 
cates of a fair direct primary law for New York do 
not mean business. If you think that, go and ask the 
Senators whose names we printed on page 659, what 
they think about it. They are getting straight talk 
from the voters who sent them to Albany. Here is 
part of a letter sent to one of them: 
Well, there can be no real betterment of the political 
conditions in this county, and I believe in most other 
counties, and in the State, until the old party machines 
are knocked into smithereens and thrown on the rubbish 
heap. Whom do we want for Governor of the State—- 
the man elected by the people, or Chas. Murphy and 
Barnes ? 
This is very mild compared with what some of 
these Senators are getting. Some of our people write 
that they were shocked to see the familiar names of 
old friends in the “black list.” Now it will be the 
easiest thing in this world to get out of this black 
list. All these Senators have to do is to come for¬ 
ward and say they will support a square and straight 
primary law. That will put them in the white list 
at once. As a little bit of history we remind our 
friends that five years ago we posted the names of 15 
Senators who went wrong on insurance reform. 
Just two of them went back to Albany for another 
term. 
* 
Dairymen, and we should think the majority of 
breeders, will favor the plan of testing Guernsey 
grade cows officially. The grade is the business cow. 
The surplus of purebred stock must find a market in 
dairy herds. The business record of the grade cow is 
the best possible advertisement for pure Guernsey 
blood. That is the way it strikes a dairyman, yet 
some of the leading Guernsey breeders oppose the 
plan. Here is the reason given by one prominent 
breeder: 
One thing that I feel is dangerous in this scheme, is 
that if you record the pure crosses of the blood in grade 
cattle, in three or four generations, there will he a gen¬ 
eral clamor all over the country to admit these animals 
to full register in the Herd Book of the Guernsey breed. 
The most important function that the Guernsey Club has, 
is to maintain the purity of the breed, and if you make 
an opening wedge to let in grades, which certainly will 
follow if you record their blood, the purity of the breed 
will be destroyed, and, in my opinion,'a great damage 
done. A pure-blooded bull for breeding purposes, as you 
know, is very much superior to a bull out of the best 
grade cow ever produced, as he is so much more pre¬ 
potent. If you record the performances of grade cows, 
I think it will be a great temptation for the ignorant 
breeder to have bulls from good grades at the head of 
his herd, which will be a distinct backward step. 
This seems to us what one may call a very “stand 
pat” argument. It ought to he possible for the 
Guernsey Club to control this matter so as to keep 
the breed pure, and at the same time advertise it ef¬ 
fectively through its grades. 
New Jersey has a strict employers’ liability law. It 
has in some cases worked hardship to farmers. 
Some men do but a small business, and a few acci¬ 
dents to careless hired men would consume the profits 
of several years. Efforts were made in the last 
Legislature to exempt farm and house servants from 
the penalties of this law. Contrary to the general 
understanding, this bill failed to pass the Assembly, 
and thus the law stands as before. 
* 
A subscriber to The R. N.-Y. told me that he saw in 
the paper one week an article stating that if potatoes 
for seed, were soaked in a solution of formaldehyde, it 
would prevent their blighting, because the blight is on the 
seed. lie seemed to think that the potatoes would not 
need spraying for blight if this was done. w. s. c. 
We print this in order to point out the frequent 
mistake of careless reading. Your friend never saw 
any such statement in The R. N.-Y. He probably 
read hastily what we have said about potato scab and 
got it mixed in his mind with blight. Then, under 
argument, he probably became positive that we did 
say that soaking seed to prevent scab will also prevent 
blight. The two diseases are different, and the soak¬ 
ing with formalin will not take the place of spraying. 
We refer to this in order to urge our people to be 
careful how they read. We find that some read a 
fact and then proceed to jump from it to a conclusion. 
Then they call this conclusion a fact and go on until 
they are out over their heads. The trouble is that 
jumping at conclusions is a sure journey to the jump¬ 
ing-off place. 
* 
The following bills have passed the New York 
Legislature, having been approved by the Governor, 
and are now laws: 
1. —To amend agricultural law iu relation to the sal© 
of farm produce on commission. 
2. —To authorize the organization of business co-opera¬ 
tive companies. 
3. —To authorize the organization of personal credit 
co-operative banks. 
4. —To create a bureau iu the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture to develop and promote co-operative work and or¬ 
ganizations in this State. 
5. —To regulate milk gathering stations and to license 
and bond their operators. 
The land bank bill, which was intended to facili¬ 
tate the loaning of money on farm mortgages and 
urban homes, passed the Senate and was up to the 
third reading in the Assembly, but was defeated at 
the last moment by withdrawal by Assemblyman Ro- 
zan, who introduced it. His reasons for doing so 
are not known to the friends of the measure. The 
record, however, is a pretty fair one for one season. 
Some of the bills were initiated, and all of them ap¬ 
proved, by the State Standing Committee of the New 
York State Agricultural Society, and the members of 
the Committee, including representatives of the 
Grange and of the Farmers’ Alliance, and other 
farm organizations throughout the State, did good 
service during the session of the Legislature in pro¬ 
moting the interests of these measures. The agri¬ 
cultural hills were originally presented by Ex-Senator 
Roosevelt and Assemblyman Cole. Since Senator 
Roosevelt’s resignation the bills were intelligently 
and ably handled by Senator Wheeler. Assembly- 
man Cole, Chairman of the Agricultural Committee 
in the Assembly, did yeoman service on the bills 
from start to finish. Mr. William Church Osborn 
personally, and through his representative, Mr. Hor¬ 
ace V. Bruce, rendered a service in the preparation 
and presentation of these bills which ought to be ac¬ 
knowledged by the agricultural interests of the State. 
The Agricultural Committee were without funds and 
these measures required considerable study and legal 
talent for their preparation. Mr. Osborn was tire¬ 
less and painstaking in this gratuitous work and now 
that the labor is over and the results are accom¬ 
plished, we feel that a word of recognition is the 
least that the farm interests of the State can extend 
to Mr. Osborn and his efficient assistant, Mr. Bruce. 
It is sometimes said that farmers are ungrateful; 
that they are quick to criticize; slow to act in meas¬ 
ures for their own interests, and ungrateful for serv¬ 
ices rendered them. We do not think that these 
charges apply to farmers more than other classes 
of people who are busy with their individual affairs 
while others are shaping laws and formulating poli¬ 
cies, but, however this may be in general, surely 
the criticism would not apply to the work done on 
these measures during the past six months. Farmers 
have responded to every call made by the leaders in 
support of these bills. Many of them attended hear¬ 
ings and conferences and conventions at their own 
personal expense in support of these measures, and it 
now remains to express, on behalf of the farmers 
of the State, this word of appreciation of the serv¬ 
ice of the men who undertook the work in the Legis¬ 
lature and elsewhere and carried it to a successful 
termination. 
May 24, 
We have in times past given records of the way 
some middlemen incubate on farm eggs. Here is a 
story which one of our readers sent to the “Nebraska 
Farmer”: 
In the Spring of 1911, in trying to build up a private 
egg trade, we made a practice of stamping the date and 
farm name on every egg. We sold our surplus to the pro¬ 
duce dealers, who iu turn sold to the storage people. 
During the first week of this month (March, 1913), one 
of the local grocers, on opening a case of storage eggs, 
found some of those dated eggs of ours. You can imag¬ 
ine what he was up against when it came to selling them, 
as there are no Chinamen here. I wonder what the ef¬ 
fect would be if everybody dated all eggs sold for a year? 
Gage Co., Neb. j. H. tubbs. 
Just think that out for a moment. These eggs were 
“strictly fresh” when sold, and Mr. Tubbs was so 
sure of them that he put his name on the shell. 
After nearly two years these very eggs are sent from 
storage right back to the home town for sale ! Ancient? 
No name for either the eggs or the tricks of the 
dealers! What Mr. Tubbs did as a matter of con¬ 
fidence and pride now becomes the badge of a bad 
egg! 
* 
We are often asked why retail prices of foods vary 
so widely in different parts of New York City. Some 
of the causes are: distance from wholesale stores, de¬ 
livery to customers, class of customers, rents, and 
business policy of the retailer as to profits. New 
York is a collection of neighborhoods, many as di¬ 
verse in population and living customs as though 
thousands of miles separated instead of adjoining. 
A retailer called “Joe,” south of Fourteenth Street 
and west of Sixth Avenue, sells green groceries and 
fruits. His expenses are small, every bit of space in 
his store is occupied, and he delivers nothing. His 
lettuce is sold out of the original package, not washed 
or trimmed. His customers demand a cheap price 
and they get the goods without any fixing up. An¬ 
other retailer not far from Forty-second Street and 
Fifth Avenue sends a large automobile for supplies 
to the wholesale district every morning. His store is 
large and rent heavy. Everything is done that time 
and skill can do to make the place and goods at¬ 
tractive. The head of lettuce that “Joe” sells for five 
cents brings 15 or 20 cents in this other place because 
of the work and expense connected with it, and the 
customers who are ready to pay the price. Modify 
these two cases in different ways and you cover most 
of the causes of varying retail prices in New York. 
* 
The New York “Sun” tries to be funny or sarcas¬ 
tic whenever any discussion of farm problems is 
started. It recently printed the following: 
A part}' of 150 well-to-do Scandinavians who came to 
America in the steerage 30 years ago and went west ar¬ 
rived yesterday from Minnesota and North Dakota in 
Pullman coaches and sailed first-class on the Oscar II. 
of the Scandinavian-American Line to spend a year at 
their old homes in Norway and Sweden. 
This party included bankers, agents and business 
men. In its sarcastic way the “Sun” says this re¬ 
port cannot be true because it has been told that farm¬ 
ers have not received their fair share for the past 20 
years or more. The chances are that not half those 
Scandinavians have made their money at plain farm¬ 
ing. They probably came here 30 years ago and 
“took up” government land at $1.25 or a little more 
per acre. Partly through their industry, but largely 
through the great increase of population around them, 
this land is worth 100 times as much as when they first 
took it. They are not going to Europe on the gains 
from their labor as producers. Part of them belong 
to the middleman class, while others are well-to-do 
through the rise in the price of land. We would like 
to have our 'farmers generally ride in Pullmans and 
take expensive trips if they could earn the price at 
genuine farm labor with ordinary capital. If it 
would help the condition of the average farmer to 
claim that any 150 plain men can do the same thing 
that these Scandinavians have done we would sit up 
nights inventing new methods of making the claims. 
The fact is that our farmers have been the victims 
of bluff and big stories too long. The daily papers 
used to picture the farmer as an uncouth and awk¬ 
ward “jay.” He made them change that picture, and 
now these papers are printing the meaner and more 
harmful story of the farmer getting rich and respon¬ 
sible for the high cost of living, when in truth he 
receives only 35 cents of the consumer’s dollar. 
BREVITIES. 
May thus far has proved a great blowhard. 
Lansing, Mich., has voted to establish a public market. 
The real estate meu seek to warm cold feet with hot 
air. 
To measure the flow of a spring, dam up the stream and 
let the overflow away through a pipe or notched board. 
The cold of May 10 caught a good share of the straw¬ 
berries in full bloom. There was heavy loss in the 
latitude of New York. 
