766 
THE RURAL NEVV-YOR KER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country nnd Suburban Home* 
Established isso 
Published weekly by the Kura) Publishing Company, 333 lYest 30th Street, New York 
Herbert W. Oollinowood, President and Editor. 
John" J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Mannprer. 
Wm. F. Diixon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. {52.04. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
marks, or 101 $ francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal cheek or bank draft. 
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 backed by a respon¬ 
sible pci son. But to make doubly sure we will make pood any loss to paid 
subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler advertising in our 
columns, and any such swindler will be publicly exposed. YVe 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 the complaint must be sent to us within one month of flic time of 
the transaction, and you must have mentioned Tiik Rural New-Yorker 
when writing the advertiser. 
TEN WEEKS FOR 10 CENTS. 
I N order to maintain the improvement and enlarge¬ 
ments that we are now planning for The R. 
N.-Y., we should have a circulation of 200.000 
copies weekly. We must depend on our old friends 
for this increase. To make it easy for these friends 
to introduce the paper to other farmers who do not 
now take it we will send it 10 weeks for 10 cents for 
strictly introductory purposes. We will appreciate 
the interest of friend ; who help make up the needed 
increase of subscriptions. 
* 
T HOUSANDS of our readers will join with us in 
Ihe deepest -sympathy for our old friend. Prof. 
II. E. Van Deman, who has just been obliged 
to undergo a serious operation. Van Deman’s friends 
are everywhere, and they are of the warm-hearted 
kind who remember. Let us all hope that our good 
friend may speedily recover. 
* 
I N the June number of the Woman and Home De¬ 
partment we shall begin a series of articles on 
Farming by Women. 
The first one will tell how a woman who fell heir 
to a farm in Maine handled the hay crop. There are 
many women who have been left to take care of 
farms. Some are compelled to live alone—others 
farm by proxy. They grow everything from hay to 
honey, and we find that they keep books more accu¬ 
rately than the men. Their figures will make us all 
think. 
* 
A FEW years ago The R. N.-Y. began to talk 
about using the moving picture show to help 
farmers’ institute work. We were promptly 
given HO reasons to prove that it could not be used. 
Yet it is being used right along. In Washington the 
State Good Roads Association sends about a motion 
picture showing how to use the split log drag on the 
road. Mr. D. Ward King, the inventor of this drag, 
is the hero of the motion picture. They tell us boys 
and girls leave the farm to chase the motion picture 
show. Can we not use it to help move them back? 
T HE public sentiment of this country will soon 
break out like a volcano on the subject of tem¬ 
perance. While Prohibition as a political issue 
has not made great progress, as a social and business 
issue it is rapidly becoming the largest tiling in pub¬ 
lic life. It is confidently stated by those who know 
that Congress will, within a few months, take the 
first steps toward submitting a constitutional amend¬ 
ment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of dis¬ 
tilled liquors. The House is ready to support partial 
prohibition—the Senate will probably delay. There 
is no particular division of parties over the ques¬ 
tion. There is a new division—saloon and anti¬ 
saloon. During the past five years the growth of 
temperance sentiment has been astonishing, and par¬ 
ticularly in the country districts. The discussion of 
the 35-cent dollar has helped in this, because farm¬ 
ers see that the vast sums spent for liquor represent 
an economic waste. Absolutely no good can come 
out of the business of selling liquor, while it absorbs 
millions which ought to be spent for food and other 
necessities. The brewers, distillers and saloon keep¬ 
ers understand the mighty struggle that is coming 
and they are trying to prepare for it by various 
compromises. They will fail. Slowly but surely the 
liquor business will be driven into the large towns 
and cities, where it will become so evidently a men¬ 
ace and an economic disaster that public sentiment 
will wipe it out. If anyone doubt the truth of this 
prophecy let him consider how the temperance ques¬ 
tion lias gained as a factor in public life during the 
past 10 years. We can remember what a fierce 
storm of hatred arose when President Hayes stopped 
serving wine at the White House. When Secretary 
Bryan served grape juice in place of liquor he had 
the outspoken endorsement of a great majority of 
American citizens. No class of people in this coun¬ 
try are more interested in pushing this question of 
temperance than farmers. The money squandered 
for drink helps keep their dollar at 35 cents. 
* 
F OR a dozen years we have been coming at this 
season to give this advice —Plant Corn! Here 
we come again, more emphatic than ever before. 
Corn is the great American grain food—the most use¬ 
ful plant servant that grows on the farm, rut it 
into the silo and it gives the cattle barn pasture 
while snow and ice cover the fields. Dry and husk 
it and the grain feeds everything on the farm, from 
grandfather down to the smallest baby chick. Win¬ 
ter the horses on the dry stalks and turn the hay into 
cash. And where can the crop he found that can 
take care of an old sod or of a cover crop like corn? 
The tough, rank-growing corn will eat up the sod 
and leave it in far better shape for seeding to grass 
or grain, or for potatoes or any other farm crop. 
What can be better for a young orchard than a 
quick-growing flint variety? The crop will pay for 
all labor in the orchard and leave another cover crop 
to he plowed under. Feeder, farm scavenger and soil 
worker—that is corn. Work up that old eyesore of 
a pasture, or that old back field, fit it and fertilize it 
and plant corn! Plant corn! 
* 
I N this discussion of utility and standard poultry 
we want it clearly understood from the start that 
The R. N.-Y. is not appearing as the champion 
of Tom Barron or anyone else. All there is about it 
is that these Barron birds, with their egg-laying per¬ 
formance. have brought to a blaze the conflict be¬ 
tween utility and “standard,” which has long been 
smouldering. The foundation fact is that these Eng¬ 
lish birds, entered as “Wyandottes,” are laying rings 
around the other birds at the egg contests. We shall 
not be surprised if the American Leghorns prove to 
be the “white hopes” to beat them out yet, but to-day 
these “Wyandotte” hens are champions. Now the 
point is this: Are these birds true "Wyandottes,” or 
are they cross-bred birds with Leghorn or other blood 
mixed in? What difference does it make? Suppose 
a cow were to make the world’s record at producing 
milk or butter. She is “boomed” as a Jersey cow, 
and her great record adds to the value of every other 
Jersey, and particularly to her own family lines. 
There is a great demand for her “blood” on the 
strength of her record. Now comes an authority 
claiming that this cow is a “grade” or a cross-bred 
cow, carrying both Jersey and Guernsey blood. Any¬ 
one can see that this would complicate matters at 
once, for if this cow had the blood of both breeds in 
her veins she would he a very useful dairy animal, 
but under breeding rules not eligible to registry, 
being neither a “Jersey” nor a “Guernsey,” but a 
cross-bred cow. The case is not exactly the same 
with poultry, yet if a man is paying good money for 
Leghorns, Wyandottes or “Rocks,” he has something 
definite in mird, and does not want a mixture of 
breeds unless he knows what he is buying. Now we 
open our columns to any evidence to show that these 
English Wyandottes are anything but what their 
name implies. Opinions and guesses are not evi¬ 
dence. It ought to he possible for the poultry experts 
to prove this point one way or the other. It seems 
to be up to the “standard” people to offer the proof 
first. Now, gentlemen, 3011 have the floor! 
* 
W E are asked many times if there is on the mar¬ 
ket to-day a light gasoline or electric cultivator 
which will do the work of a single horse or a 
single team in a practical manner. We do not know 
of one which may be endorsed as fully practical. Such 
a tool is greatly needed, and many engineers and 
mechanics are trying to work out the plan. They 
seem to have worked on two quite different prin¬ 
ciples. One type presents a heavy machine with 
cultivator teeth dragging behind it like the plows 
on a tractor, tearing or digging up the soil like a 
horse cultivator. Such a tool must he quite heavy 
in order to grip the soil hard enough to drag itself 
along. The other type applies only enough motive 
power to the wheels <0 move the weight of the ma¬ 
chine and a little more. The tearing or scratching 
effect upon the soil results from a power separate 
from that which moves the machine on. In one 
type digging is effected by a drum with teeth or 
spikes in its surface, which revolves or rolls over, 
tearing up the soil as it goes. In the other type 
sharp teeth are set in a ring, which revolves with 
a circular motion like the fingers of the hand 
whirled around in soft sand, or not unlike the 
Claws of a lien digging and scratching in a garden. 
We think the type which separates the power of 
May so, 
locomotion from that of work will most likely* prove 
superior. At this time we do not know of one of 
these power cultivators which we can unqualifiedly 
recommend. We know a large gardener and nursery¬ 
man who says after a trial that he will promptly 
buy 20 of a certain machine when certain parts and 
adjustments are made stronger and mechanically 
correct. This man says that these machines, work¬ 
ing properly, would enable him to dispense with at 
least 30 work-horses, just as the automobile has cut 
out four or five driving horses. We believe the gas¬ 
olene cultivator is on the way and nearly in sight. 
At this time, however, the truth is that he who 
buys one must expect to pay for a share of the 
experimenting needed to perfect the machine. If 
any man is willing to do that it is his privilege to 
do so, and lie helps other farmers by doing it. but 
lie should know before lie starts what he is doing. 
* 
I HA YE grown Alfalfa successfully on several farms 
in Maryland and also in New York, and have 
also had, in both States, a number of failures. I 
feel confident that failure in the last year or so has 
been largely caused by seed of improper adaptation 
to the locality. n. w. it. 
We have had many statements like the above. We 
believe that much of the Alfalfa seed which has 
been used in the Eastern States is quite unsuited to 
the local conditions. Most likely we shall find that 
with Alfalfa, as with vetch and to some extent seed 
corn, the conditions of the section in which it is 
grown have much to do with its behavior when 
planted. In fact this question of seed adaptability 
and purity seents to he the coming great agricultural 
problem. We think it will be found greater than 
fertilizing or cultivation. 
* 
T HERE are two things about this Mexican situa¬ 
tion which we should all remember. The war 
now raging in Mexico is mainly a class strug¬ 
gle for the land rights of small freeholders. Mexico 
has been and is a country of large estates, with two 
principal classes—great land owners, and laborers, 
who lmv<_ been in some ways little better than slaves. 
The great land owners have controlled the country in 
an arbitrary, despotic way. There is now appearing 
a third class—small freeholders, or the more intelli¬ 
gent laborers who desire to obtain land of their own. 
In one way not unlike the situation in France at the 
time of the Revolution, this new class of Mexicans 
are fighting to destroy land monopoly. When we 
come to understand this we may* see how impossible 
it would be for this country to “pacify” Mexico. 
This land question is one which the Mexican people 
must settle for themselves. A strong class of small 
freeholders is always the surest guarantee of peace 
and order. The other thing to remember is that all this 
war talk is largely kept up by promoters or exploit¬ 
ers who have started rubber, fruit or oil propositions 
in Mexico. We have, in years past, exposed some of 
the companies which have sold stock in these Mexi¬ 
can enterprises. Some of them are fakes and nothing 
more: others are honest enterprises. All took their 
chances in a country which they knew was like a 
political volcano, and there is no reason why they 
should involve this nation in war. 
BREVITIES. 
Rest and warmth is about all the little chick needs 
during the first -IS hours of its life. 
“What is meant by a food stuff?” asked the professor 
of domestic science. “My young brother,” answered the 
young woman. 
Bee-keeping in Porto Rico has grown in five years to 
a $100,000 business. The Porto Rican human may have 
his lazy days, but the bees are busy. 
You will be interested in that story of the custom 
canning business, page 770. Here is a new scheme for 
carrying fresh meat through the warm weather. 
What do you say to agriculture in Greenland? It 
has been started in fox farming in four small islands in 
Good Hope Bay. We shall not emigrate. 
Massachusetts undertook to bell the eat by passing 
a law to compel Tom and Tabby to stand foi- a license. 
The bill was defeated by a useful class of citizens, long 
known as friends of the cat. 
Wisconsin University is planning a correspondence 
course in food study for prospective brides and young 
housekeepers. In the correspondence before marriage 
“angel food” is most discussed. Afterward the bride 
sadly finds that her husband is made by what he eats. 
A number of delegations have been sent to Europe 
In “study farm conditions” at public expense. No doubt 
other gentlemen would be glad to go. Now comes the 
word that 50 South African fanners will go to Eng¬ 
land. Scotland, Canada and the United States to ob¬ 
serve farm conditions. These men seem to be real 
farmers. 
On April 3, 200 cases of California asparagus ar¬ 
rived in Liverpool, England, iu good condition. This 
asparagus brought good prices, and there wijlhe a large 
demand for it in the future, during the Snason before 
local asparagus comes into market. There has always 
been a large demand for canned American “grass.” 
This is the first time the fresh “grass” has been sent 
over. 
