168 
regulations have been adopted governing elevators 
whereby only such elevators as pay homage and 
thereby become “regular” are permitted to participate 
in the markets which the boards of trade reflect. 
To tighten their grip on the cereal commerce these 
boards of trade procured from the courts a series of 
rulings *.o '-a effect that grain market quotations are 
a commodity of commerce that belong to the boards 
of trade. The result is obvious. The farmer gets 
a pittance for the value of his grain, and what is 
not taken from him is exacted from the consumer. 
Next time you hear a railroad president or high 
financier decrying the shortcomings of agriculture, 
have pity for his ignorance or his shortsightedness, 
but do not condemn the farmer. The worm may turn 
as well as go forward. w. v. rooker. 
Indiana. _ 
ACID PHOSPHATE IN MANURE PILES. 
I have had a debate with some farmers about using 
acid phosphate on manure to save the ammonia. I claim 
that land plaster is better, and that the acid phosphate 
will liberate ammonia instead of holding it. Who is 
right? J- s. m. 
The object in using any substance of this sort is to 
change the form of the ammonia. It escapes from the 
manure in the form of a carbonate or gas, as fermen¬ 
tation goes on. We saw on page 28 how ammonia is 
given off when coal or wood is burned. The action 
in the manure is much the same as this burning, only 
slower. In making sulphate of ammonia we saw 
that sulphuric acid was used, for when this was put 
with ammonia gas a chemical change occurred, and 
the ammonia became a solid—the sulphate. Now 
in using either land plaster or acid phosphate the 
object is the same—to change the escaping gas into 
a solid. This makes the manure pile a factory, the 
same as the factory where sulphate of ammonia is 
taken from furnace fumes. Land plaster, kainit, acid 
phosphate and other substances are used for this 
purpose. The acid phosphate or superphosphate as 
sometimes called is best of all for this purpose. It 
is more soluble than the land plaster, and when used 
freely will make a quicker combination. It is ex¬ 
cellent for use in the manure pile, for it holds the 
ammonia and adds phosphoric acid. The objection 
to the use of acid phosphate in the stable is that 
when put in the gutters and stalls it may injure the 
feet of the stock. As it will often “eat up” the bags 
in which it is carried or burn the hands when spread¬ 
ing it is not safe to let it get into the feet of cattle. 
To a less extent this is true of kainit. Plaster can 
be used in the stalls or gutters safely, but it will not 
hold as much ammonia as the acid phosphate, and 
adds no direct plant food to the manure. In hand¬ 
ling such manure why not imitate the manufacturers 
as described on page 28? First hold the ammonia 
mechanically and then use chemicals to change its 
form? Dried swamp muck in the gutters and stalls 
will absorb the liquids and the acid phosphate in the 
pile will change the ammonia to a sulphate. 
A TALK ABOUT FARM EDUCATION. 
The R. N.-Y. did a great work in printing the 
letter from Grant G. Hitchings, the extended notice 
of “A Great Educational Convention,” and the ear¬ 
nest invitation on its editorial page to discuss the 
subject of agricultural education. This problem of 
rural education contains some very serious difficulties, 
based largely on the pedagogical notions and preju¬ 
dices still held by the teachers, and sometimes, I am 
sorry to say, by some of the farmer patrons of the 
schools themselves. The place to solve this educa¬ 
tional problem is, I believe, in the common rural 
schools of the country. The editor of The R. N.-Y. 
strikes the nail on the head with his statement that 
more than 90 per cent of the children of our schools 
never get beyond the grammar grade of the city or 
the common schools of the country districts, and that 
there is a growing demand for a system of educa¬ 
tion that will fit these 90 per cent of our children 
for the industries in which they must earn a liveli¬ 
hood. Right there, too, is the hardest place to re¬ 
form matters. For example, if The R. N.-Y. should 
offer a prize of the last authorized unabridged edition 
of some standard dictionary for the best speller in 
each ungraded rural school in the country entering 
the contest the result would undoubtedly be truly 
alarming—for the parties paying for the dictionaries. 
If, on the other hand, the offer should be a prize 
of a Leghorn cockerel with a five-point comb and 
near the standard of perfection to the boy in each 
school entering the contest who would make the 
best working trap-nest from the specifications given 
by the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station in 
Farmers’ Bulletin 357, the number competing would 
most probably be very, very small; or perhaps in¬ 
stead a suitable prize for girls, based on bread-mak¬ 
ing would show the same results. Probably any 
reader of The R. N.-Y. will agree that the discipline 
gained from competing for the prizes based on skill 
TH RURAL ISIK VV-YORKER 
with the hands and on good judgment would be as 
valuable as that gained from the memory work of 
learning to spell hard words. But this crude illus¬ 
tration shows how hard it is to do anything in the 
line of education that is out of the usual and cus¬ 
tomary. The teachers know how to spell and how to 
teach it. They know how to arrange the words neatly 
on the board, and how to have the pupils place them 
on the papers. They know how to grade them and 
every little detail of the work from beginning to 
end is clear to them without a bit of thought or plan¬ 
ning; and everyone knows how instinctively workers 
in any line rebel against doing anything out of the 
ordinary and usual course of doing things. Dr. Max¬ 
well, Superintendent of Schools in N. Y. City, found 
the most bitter opposition in making a few simple 
changes on these very lines. Contrast the teacher’s 
knowledge of spelling and its teaching with the ig¬ 
norance of trap-nests and bread-making. Few teachers 
know what a trap-nest is, or its object, or what tools 
to use, to say nothing of knowledge of points of 
comb, standard of perfection, and farmers’ bulletins. 
Spelling can be taught without thought by the sheer 
force of habit ; trap-nest and bread-making are an 
unknown and an untried future, suggestive of thought 
and work and difficulties and trouble. And then, 
horror of horrors, there is the superintendent, who 
has been a teacher himself, and has never made a 
trap-nest! 
Practically all the States now have traveling li¬ 
braries and traveling pictures which are sent to any 
of the schools if some responsible person will vouch 
for their proper care and their return with prepay¬ 
ment of charges. This is well, as is the sending of 
certain apparatus for scientific experiment on the 
same terms. Almost all the States also duplicate 
the moneys spent for apparatus, books, maps, and 
even pictures. Objections have been made to this 
last use of the public moneys, but it is justified by 
its friends on the grounds of the aesthetic, cultural, 
and moral value of pictures and the beautiful. But 
why not supply the school with models for homemade 
trap-nests, sanitary feeding troughs, comfortable 
stanchions, drawings, plans and pictures of well- 
planned yards, gardens, etc.; Besides at every 
teachers’ institute held in the country the farmers 
should see that model lessons be given by competent 
instructors in appropriate and neat garb on such 
topics as sewing, gardening, etc. It is not enough 
that lessons of this kind be given before farmers and 
farmers’ wives whose habits have been formed, but 
we must reach the receptive mind of the child through 
the trained teacher. The same kind of model lessons, 
also in appropriate dress, and with as little of the 
air of the school as possible, should also be given in 
the normal schools which supply teachers for the 
rural districts. Above all, these teachers must not 
give the lessons in a dry and uninteresting way— 
akin to the work in a museum or laboratory. The 
normal schools and normal colleges, and colleges and 
universities with normal courses and departments are 
almost always located in or near suffciently large 
places so that opportunity is at hand for frequent 
visits to good and well-directed nurseries, poultry 
farms, fruit farms, vineyards, State experiment sta¬ 
tions, creameries, etc. The same 'thing is also true 
of the location of nearly all of the teachers’ insti¬ 
tutes. This seems to me to be a most practical way 
for us to get a most difficult problem. 
The difficulty then seems to resolve itself into a 
mass of matter taught, some of which could be well 
left out, and more of which could be better taught in 
less time. But aside from this we must find the time 
to have the things taught which will enable our chil¬ 
dren to get more enjoyment out of country life, to 
understand it better, and to make it furnish them a 
better and a surer living. Such an education we have 
a right to demand from our share of the public 
moneys. Such an education we shall get for our chil¬ 
dren when we demand it and not before. l. a. t. 
THE PROBLEM OF THE HILL LANDS. 
Of all the States of the Union none presents a 
greater variety of problems than the Empire State. 
This is so because the great State of New York pos¬ 
sesses such a wide variety of soils, grows such a 
variety of crops- and under such varied conditions. 
The State not only contains many wide and fertile 
valleys, but rich plains and table lands and fertile 
hillsides. On the other hand arc found also swamps 
and lowlands, mountain and hillsides too steep to till, 
and uplands whose soils are of the poorest type. Upon 
these varied soils are grown 22 leading crops, and 
through excellence of soils and workers the Empire 
State leads in the production of 11 of them. 
Chief among the problems which are now forcing 
themselves upon our attention in New York State, 
and at the same time throughout many parts of the 
central eastern and New England States is that pre¬ 
February 12 , 
sented by the hill lands. On these lands are located 
that class of farms popularly known as “abandoned 
farms,” which have aroused such universal interest 
and widespread discussion during the past few' years. 
These discussions have for the most part been so 
rambling and beside the point, and the popular im¬ 
pression of what constitutes an abandoned farm is 
so vague and uncertain, that I am led to inquire what 
constitutes an abandoned farm, and to give my own 
ideas as to what the answer should be. This problem 
is of sufficient importance to have called for consid¬ 
erable effort on the part of both the State College 
and the State Department of Agriculture, and the U. 
S. Department of Agriculture has recently taken up 
the problem through its Office of Farm Management. 
It is hoped that the careful study which has been 
made of the problem during the past Summer will 
result in a concerted effort to improve conditions in 
the near future. In fact such an effort is now under 
way. 
The term “abandoned farms” is a very unfortunate 
one. What constitutes an “abandoned farm?” If we 
were to apply the term literally we should have con¬ 
siderable difficulty in finding one in New York State. 
The term is then evidently not meant to express a 
fact. As commonly used it is applied to all that class 
of lands which are so low in productivity as hardly 
to pay the taxes and support the family which lives 
upon them. But they are not absolutely abandoned. 
Casual observers frequently apply the terms to farms 
on which there are uninhabited houses, or even to 
those having a window boarded up, or farms on which 
there are unused fields grown up to weeds and grass. 
To such it does not matter if the farm has simply 
been consolidated with its neighbors, or purchased by 
a successful farmer in the valley, or rented as pas¬ 
turage for sheep, horses or fattening cattle. Like the 
man who is looking for trouble, this class of people 
are sure to find what they are looking for—“abandoned 
farms.” In the absolute sense of the term there are 
few abandoned farms in New York State. I make 
this statement after more than six months of travel 
largely in the regions where these conditions are sup¬ 
posed to exist, in the hill or upland sections of the 
southern, eastern and central counties of the State, 
during which time I was actually hunting for such 
farms. But if we accept “abandoned farms” merely 
as a term, meant to indicate all those farms whose 
productivity, and hence whose value, is low; those 
farms whose buildings and fences are poor and whose 
fields are frequently overgrown with weeds; those 
farms which are being allowed to remain in grass 
and used for pasturage only; or those farms allowed 
to revert to woodland from which they ought never 
to have been cleared;—if we accept this meaning of 
the term, then we are bound to admit that there are 
hundreds of abandoned farms in New York State. 
Successful farming is largely an adaptation to 
conditions under which one is working. Unsuccess¬ 
ful farming is often due to a failure to make this 
adaptation. This is largely the reason for the so- 
called abandoned farms. Much of the land ought 
to have been abandoned for the purpose for which 
it was used. Some of it ought never to have been 
cleared from the forest in the first place. On some 
lands the system formerly practiced may have had 
its place at one time, but the time has passed. Sys¬ 
tems of the past have been largely those designed to 
get the most from the land this year, regardless of 
next. So that the fertility of the soil has been ex¬ 
hausted to a greater or less degree, and its physical 
condition nearly ruined. Humus is the great need, 
and whatever new system may be designed, for a 
time it must have for its key-note the restoration of 
the physical condition of the soil by the addition of 
humus in some form. One cause of the decreased 
supply of humus on these lands is the running out 
of clover. Clover has probably failed for several 
reasons; (l) on account of the poor physical con¬ 
ditions of the soil; (2) because of the lack of 
humus; (3) because of soil acidity. Other reasons 
more or less dependent on these might be cited. 
These conditions must be restored before clover 
can be successfully grown. 
With these carefully observed facts in mind it 
seems to me that Professor L. II. Bailey is right 
in looking forward to three lines of development 
in the East: (l) the growing of fruit; (2) revival of 
the animal industries and the extension of dairy¬ 
ing, and (3) the growing of forests. With the first 
two must also be developed an adaptable and sus¬ 
taining crop rotation. I hope to discuss each of 
these lines of development separately in future 
articles. The problem, however, is not so simple 
as this, for the hill lands are largely peopled by the 
most conservative class of our population. Their 
forefathers were conservative, and any progressives 
among them have either gone west to new lands 
or to the 'cities, leaving behind them the least pro¬ 
gressive of their class, people conservative almost 
to the point of stubbornness and inertia. These 
are the owners and operators of the lands on which 
efforts in these new directions must be expended. 
M. C. BURRITT. 
