THE; RURA.E NEW-YORKER 
343 
1010. 
Every Reeder of This 
Paper Will Profit by Writ¬ 
ing a Postal for This Free 
Rook Showing How to 
Double Your Potato 
_ Money 
We can’t, and we don’t want 
o tell you in this small space a 
good, practical points about how to increase 
your potato profits because we want YOU as a 
practical man to send us your name and address 
and let us mail you this valuable and interesting 
little book— free. 
That’s worth your while. 
Just your name and address sent us on a 
postal will do. 
You’ll get the book promptly—free. 
It tells you the one way to plant potatoes 
cheapest—how to save seed and cost of fer¬ 
tilizer—how to properly care for your potato 
field to get best crops easiest with the famous 
Acme Hand Potato Planter which costs onlyona 
dollar complete, express cliarges.prcpaid. 
Read What Others Say 
Secretary Robt. W. Furnas of State Board of 
Agriculture, Brownville, Neb. says. “I have 
tested the Acme Hand Potato Planter. To be 
brief, it fills the bill. It is a wonderfully con¬ 
venient and valuable little implement.” 
Agricultural College, Lansing, Mich, says: 
“Your Acme Hand Potato Planters have outdone 
our expectations. They will find favor among 
practical farmers, as they are simple, cheap and 
save a great deal of labor and do better work 
Please send us four more for Spring work.” 
Our Free Book tells you what others say like 
J. H. Brown who says: “The Acme is more 
perfect in its actions than the costly two-horse 
planters. I planted one acre without stopping 
and faster than one man could cut the seed. I 
shall hereafter use the Acme in preference to 
the hoe or trench method. There is more fun 
than work in using it.” 
You’ll Say This Too 
You can’t beat that kind of facts. You’ll find 
they are facts and you’ll say so too. 
We only ask you to write a postal for this book 
so you can decide for yourself whether you 
want to send us only a dollar bill so we can send 
you an Acme Hand Potato Planter all ready to 
use complete, with express charges prepaid. 
When you do send for an Acme, it’s got to 
satisfy you by the work it shows you it will do, 
or we return your dollar at once if you simply 
write us and say so. 
Write now for this book anyway. Investiga¬ 
tion this way will save you many a day’s time— 
and many a dollar in seed. In fact, planting 
with an Acme makes potatoes grow much larger 
crops and this free book tells you why. So 
write for it. Address 
Potato Implement Co* 
Box 525 
Traverse City, Mich « 
Acme 
of 
Potato 
Profit 
' 
.* ' 'I 
Every Piece at Equal Depth 
I s the Secret of Right Potato Planting 
lhe even stand and equal opportunity of every plant give assurance of 
tiie best possible potato crop. These conditions are assured by the use of the 
STEVENS POTATO PLANTER 
Fewer parts, simpler construc¬ 
tion, more accurate work, costs 
less than any other potato plan¬ 
ter on the market'. Additional 
yield on a fevv acres will pay for 
the machine in a single season. 
Furnished with fertilizer and 
STEVENS MANUFACTURING 
corn planter attachments at 
slight additional cost. 
Sold on Trial and Guaranteed 
Write us today for particulars 
and directions for getting a 
Stevens Planter on 30 days trial 
without trouble or expense on 
your part. 
CO.1702 PierceAve., Marinette, Wis 
TWICE THE WORK-HALF THE LABOR 
The Patented. Light Running Excelsior Hand Cultivator does 
work of four men, and runs 50 per cent easier and docs 100 per cent bet 
ter vuik than any other band cultivator. It has many new improve¬ 
ments, new design, reversible hoes with patented adjustment for depth 
and ar.gle. It skims the ground, cuts deep, wide, narrow, pointed or round 
EXCELSIOR HAND CULTIVATORS 
save time, money and labor as well as helping you raise better crops The 
Excelsior does Close” work without injuring the plants. Hand weed¬ 
ing is only necessary between the plants. 
The Excelsior is build of steel and malleable iron. Several styles with 
attachments as desired—cultivator teeth, plows, rakes, etc., with special 
tools tor onions. Guaranteed to give absolute satisfaction, last longer 
and do better work with less labor than any other hand cultivator made’ 
WRITE QUICK FOR OUR CATALOG 
which describes our full line of Excelsior single and double wheel hand 
cultivators. Excelsior Seeders, Excelsior Bone Cutters, entirely different 
from other makes—many new improvements—the best garden tools made. 
Agents Wanted Everywhere. 
THE EXCELSIOR GARDEN TOOL CO. 1208 Cherry St. Erie, Pa. 
THE NURSERYMEN’S SIDE OF THE 
SUBSTITUTED TREE CASE. 
Part III. 
There was a time when the nursery¬ 
man had men who remained for years 
in his employ, learning the business 
thoroughly, knowing every tree and 
plant. The peach nursery was budded 
white fleshed and yellow fleshed va¬ 
rieties alternately. The budder looked 
at the glands of the leaf, and in other 
ways he so familiarized himself with 
trees that it .was hard to fool him as 
to variety. Of such employees few re¬ 
main, and the nurseryman and planter 
must depend upon the slip-shod, devil- 
may-care sort of a fellow that they can 
pick up anywhere. Nine hours work 
and play mixed, 15 hours for sport and 
sleep, and the following day a tired, list¬ 
less who-cares sort of a fellow to look 
after all this work, that of all other 
business, needs -clear brains and honest, 
conscientious attention, without which 
no man could guarantee anything, for 
with the very best of help and care 
mistakes are bound to happen. 
Then again the planter and customer 
has changed. The time was when peach 
trees, for instance, were graded in two 
grades, two to three feet, and 3^ feet 
up. Now -the grades 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 
to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 6 feet, with a caliper 
measure for the three higher grades, 
thus adding considerable to the cost of 
handling. The old-time customer gave 
his order to his nurseryman with the 
privilege of substituting equally good 
kinds, if out of kinds wanted. The cus¬ 
tomer had implicit confidence in his nur¬ 
seryman, generally giving his order one 
year in advance, and the nurseryman 
had the welfare and prosperity of his 
customer in his mind, and dealt with 
him accordingly, besides having orders 
in advance he knew just what and how 
many to grow. There were few com¬ 
plaints, no damage suits and both pros¬ 
pered. The customer of to-day as a 
rule waits until about planting time be¬ 
fore he starts to order, and the average 
man then writes to many different nur¬ 
serymen, sending a list of his wants 
and asking for lowest quotations. He 
has the nurseryman’s catalogue and 
prices before him, but he wants lower 
prices. Each nurseryman receiving that 
list is very certain that it is in the hands 
of a dozen or more of his competitors, 
and they will more than likely cut their 
list prices, and he must do the same if 
he expects to get the order. When the 
planter has all his quotations at hand 
he looks first for lowest prices, and tak¬ 
ing the lowest of the lot, it is dollars to 
doughnuts that he does not write to that 
lowest bidder and tell him he has lower 
quotations from several other nurseries, 
but preferring to buy of him he will 
give him the order if he still makes a 
further reduction in prices, and very 
often these are the cases when the nur¬ 
seryman knows he is dealing with a 
shark and unloads on him the shark’s 
share. 
The man who is willing to pay a fair 
price, and buys of reliable men, either 
seedsmen or nurserymen, seldom has 
reason to complain. On page 830 of 
I he R. N.-Y. the editor says that of all 
his trees that have come into fruiting 
very few have proved untrue to name; 
so few that he was surprised there were 
not more, knowing as he does how easy 
it would be to mix buds or trees. The 
editor does not say from how many dif¬ 
ferent sources he has procured his trees 
that have fruited true, but I have no 
doubt they came from more than one 
nursery. ^ As it is with the editor so it 
is with thousands of other planters, men 
who have planted thousands and tens of 
tnousands of trees, have found at times 
some mistakes have been made, but 
being reasonable men they have had no 
trouble to have all such errors rectified 
and satisfied without recourse to law or 
lawyers. Such men are never heard 
1 om ; they are too busy making a suc¬ 
cess of their successful business to hire 
lawyers to get them into expensive law 
suits. My own experience has been that 
most men are honest; that if one wants a 
g'»od thing and is willing to pay the 
P> ice it can be bought. Once in a while 
”Ti u w * lat . Burns wrote is still true: 
lie best laid plans of mice and men 
gang aft aglee,” and this applies to seeds¬ 
men and nurserymen as well as other 
business men, and calls for a charitable 
construction to be put on all mistakes. 
Take seedsmen, for instance; while I 
was in business we bought largely of 
vegetable, flower and grass seeds, and 
had reason for very few complaints. 
We had samples and prices of grass 
seed sent to us for inspection. We put 
each sample under a microscope, took 
the number that was pure and clean, paid 
the price, and never once failed to get 
the goods. When a man goes from 
place to place to buy seed or plants, and 
beats a dealer down below a living price, 
he ought to know the chances are 
against him. In an editorial on page 
56 The R. N.-Y. says: “In a case of 
wholesale ‘ substitution where half or 
more of the trees are wrong, we should 
hold the nurseryman responsible and ex¬ 
pect him to pay for his serious blunder.” 
To this I agree with some qualifying 
conditions. For instance, if a man had 
ordered, as noted on page 1,102, 3,500 
peach trees, and only received about 
one-fifth of the number true to label, 
no excuse could be offered for such 
a mix-up as this, but when some of 
those varieties that are substituted 
prove to be equally as or more valu¬ 
able than those ordered, due allowance 
should be made for this. The Capt. 
Ede is a popular profitable peach almost 
everywhere. The Susquehanna is not 
considered a • profitable peach with a 
few exceptions anywhere. I would con¬ 
sider that if a nurseryman had substi¬ 
tuted for me Susquehanna for Capt. 
Ede he had damaged me, while vice 
versa would have helped me. -In the 
nursery business as in all other affairs 
American nowadays, the spirit of get 
rich quick seems to have a strong grasp, 
not only on the dealer but upon the 
grower. The planter wants a big cata¬ 
logue, with big descriptions of big novel¬ 
ties, and with big colored plates of old 
fruits under new names, and the press, 
including the agricultural and horticul¬ 
tural papers, help this along so as to 
get big advertisements from these big 
concerns. If the Carnegie Institute had 
not made Burbank one of its benefici¬ 
aries he would not have the thousands of 
dollars worth of free advertising that 
he has had from the the press of the 
country. The fulsome sickening praise 
that the press bestowed upon Burbank 
turned a most valuable man -into an 
egotist. The placing headlines in even 
the daily press about his wonderful pro¬ 
ductions made people hungry for them, 
and impatient with the nurseryman or 
seedsman who did not list them. If 
some ordinary person had claimed he 
had originated, much less created, a 
Sunberry or Wonderberry, Mr. Childs 
would not have noticed it. But when 
the whole press of the country has 
heralded Burbank as the wizard of the 
horticultural world, when Carnegie In¬ 
stitute grants him $100,000 to continue 
his work, when the National Govern¬ 
ment and all the press hails him as the 
creator of the spineless cactus, why 
shouldn’t Mr. Childs introduce the Won¬ 
derberry to a Burbank-crazed and won¬ 
der-loving people? If the agricultural 
press had not given a lot of reading 
space to the Spencer Seedless apple 
that old fake would never have got 
the start it did. I am glad to know 
The R. N.-Y. had no part in these free 
blows, with the expectation of sharing 
the advertising melon when it was cut. 
1 aking a common sense view of all 
the complaints, real or imaginary, be¬ 
tween the nurseryman and the planter, 
I would say the courts are not familiar 
with such matters, and in my humble 
opinion they should be settled by arbi¬ 
tration. Men who are practical fruit 
growers and nurserymen, outside of the 
locality of either party, who would un¬ 
derstand the whole matter, could visit 
the orchard in fruiting season and as¬ 
certain the facts, whether a substituted 
variety was as profitable as the one or¬ 
dered. etc., and not settle it either from 
sympathy or prejudice. Sympathy for 
the poor fruit grower because he is 
ignorant in such matters? Not at all. 
In these days of agricultural colleges 
where short courses are open to every 
farmer’s boy, and farmers’ week to every 
farmer; when the institutes are held 
at the farmer’s doorstep, and agricultural 
papers exposing frauds flooding every 
home, with all these sources of in¬ 
formation there is no excuse for ignor¬ 
ance. If men refuse to avail themselves 
of the free and widespread source of 
knowledge, there should be no pity or 
sympathy for them. Prejudice against 
the nurseryman because he ought to 
know, and profits by the fraud, should 
not we ; jh altogether against him. be¬ 
cause of facts already stated, that it is 
impossible for bim personally to oversee 
or handle every part or even a fractional 
part of the many details of his business. 
As a business man the nurseryman will 
compare with any other class of business 
men in the world. • e. s. black. 
PURE LIME SCREENINGS SaMS 
lime, car lots only, for $5.00 per ton in Bulk f. o. 1>, 
cars at any point between Buffalo ami New York, 
(in the main lines of the X. Y. Central, Erie, 1). L. 
& W., Peiina., Lehigh, O. ami <’. R. R. of N. J. 
Address J. \V. BALLARD CO., Binghamton, N.Y. 
LET ME START YOU IN BUSINESS! 
I will furnish the udvertisliipr matter and the plans. X 
want one sincere, earnest man in every town and town¬ 
ship. Farmers, Mechanics, Builders, Small Business man. 
Anyone anxious to improve his condition. Address 
COMMERCIAL DEMOCRACY. Dept. D-35, Elyria. Ohio. 
“HINTS ON FARM DRAINAGE.” 
Copy mailed free to each applicant for prices on our Modern Drain Tile. 
N. Y. SI AIE SEWER PIPE CO., - 805 Illinois Building, Rochester, N. Y„ 
