40 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FA INVER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journul for Country and Suburban Homes 
Established I860 
I'nMUhrd wrrkly br the Rural Publishing Company, 333 West 80th Street, New fork 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
W* *. F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Rovle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries In the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 8 s. 6 d., or 
8 I 4 marks, or 10!fc franca Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office ns Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates, 75 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 bncked by a respon¬ 
sible person. We use every possible precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. But to make doubly sure, we will make good any loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertisements in our columns, and any 
such swindler will bo publicly exposed. We are also often called upon 
to adjust differences or mistakes between our subscribers and honest, 
responsible houses, whether advertisers or not. We willingly use our good 
offices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we will not 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 the time of 
t lie transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when wilting the advertiser. 
EMEMBER that trouble is not unlike a fertile 
egg. The more you brood it the nearer you 
come to hatching it into life. I)o not play 
the part of sitting hen over your nest full jf trou¬ 
bles. While you think your lot in life is the worst 
ever, others may be envying you. 
* 
J OE WING of Ohio, before the New York State 
Breeders, made a good argument for more sheep 
on New York State farms. We think the time 
has come for this. Sheep will improve the land. 
Now that we realize that wool is not all there is to 
a sheep the meat question comes up to all of us. 
Sheep are particularly good on fruit and gardening 
farms. They clean up the weeds and make good 
use of wastes, and in some ways are more satis¬ 
factory than hogs. There ought to be more sheep. 
* 
I N the change which is rapidly coming in New 
York farming, vegetable growing begins to rank 
with dairying as a great industry. It now ranks 
in total value above fruit growing and has hardly be¬ 
gun to develop outside of a few central districts. Such 
a great business naturally needs organization and 
leadership, and both are at hand. The New York 
Vegetable Growers meet at Ithaca, Feb. 9-11, and 
there will be other one-day meetings in various parts 
of the State—the first at Buffalo Jan. 14. This is 
the time of organization in all lines of farming, and 
the vegetable growers may well imitate the fruit 
growers and get together. 
* 
W E want a complete discussion of the proposi¬ 
tion of making beef on our Eastern farms. 
More and more of our farmers are changing 
from dairying to beef-making, and still more are 
considering the step. Incompetent help, interference 
by inspectors and other causes are inducing such 
men to sell their dairy cows. One farmer in Penn¬ 
sylvania sold his Jersey cattle last year, and since 
that time has fattened over 30 head of good beef 
cattle—growing all the feed except cottonseed meal 
on his own farm. There are others who have done 
much the same thing. Now we want to hear from 
such men and get their experience, whatever it may 
be. We do not care so much for theoi-y, but we 
want fact and experience which only farmers can 
give us. We shall all be better off for getting to¬ 
gether with such information. 
* 
I NOTICED an editorial on page 1444 regarding why 
people write questions to agricultural papers, rather 
than to their own experiment stations. I have tried 
both, and I am pretty good at asking questions too; 
the answers I get from the experiment stations are usu¬ 
ally brief and not always complete, covering the main 
facts but not the details asked about: in fact, they read 
somewhat like the reports and bulletins, too imper¬ 
sonal. The answers from the agricultural papers cover 
the main facts and also the details, the personal element 
is there too. The above answers your questions in my 
case, possibly it is the same with others. c. G. r. 
Illinois. 
Probably that is a fair statement. Very likely 
the experiment station will say that popular educa¬ 
tion and popular correspondence is not their busi¬ 
ness. Still, they have facts to communicate, and 
the bulletins are not always clear to the average 
reader. We often think that a good letter writer 
who could put strong personality into his corres- 
pondence and had the patience to answer the same 
thing over and over could do much to make the 
station popular. 
* 
G ERMAN farming is so highly developed that 
the people feel confident that they can provide 
necessary food for years even though sur¬ 
rounded by enemies. There are two great prob- 
lems, however, which German chemists must work 
out. There must be fuel for motor cars and a sup¬ 
ply of rubber. Substitutes for gasoline are being 
found in benzol and alcohol. Benzol is a by-product 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
in coke manufacture. Alcohol is made in vast quan¬ 
tities from potatoes. A mixture of these two sub¬ 
stances is giving satisfaction. After the war we 
think such use will spread. As for rubber, the Ger¬ 
mans are developing substitutes. Denied imports 
of caoutchouc or India rubber, they are developing 
it from scraps, such as old boots or rubbers, bands 
or other material. This is combined with acetone 
and benzol products to make a fair substitute. Here 
is another thing which will be imitated by the 
world in the future. Necessity always drives men 
and nations to the scrap heap to save what pros¬ 
perity threw away. As for nitrogen, the great need 
of both war and agi’iculture, the Germans will save 
sulphate of ammonia from their factory fumes and 
make cyanamid from nitrogen taken out of the air. 
Even when driven to the extremities of war this 
wonderful German nation shows the world how to 
utilize and save. 
* 
A NENT southwest corner, page 1420, Ohio grows 
30,000,000 bushels of wheat on 2,000,000 acres of 
land. With the same total expenditure, but dif¬ 
ferently distributed—less labor, more seed and 
more manure and fertilizer—Ohio might easily grow 
this wheat on 1,500,000 acres, thus saving the rent 
on half a million aci-es; or, if owned, permitting it to 
rest for the coming generation, which is sure to need 
it. And so with the other crops. Ohio farmers are an¬ 
nually toiling over a million acres of land that, for 
their sake and that of posterity, would better be per¬ 
mitted to grow up in brush and weeds (of course grass 
and fruit would be the logical crops). This is the 
brand of efficiency we are trying to teach. 
Ohio Exp. Station. ciias. E. thorne. 
And this brand should be marked A No. 1, for 
it is the real thing. True efficiency cuts out wastes 
by making each unit more productive or useful. 
Most farmers work too hard, and too much of their 
labor is spent on things that do not count. We can 
all make our work more useful by making it more 
thorough. The “two blades of grass” theory is all 
right if you let some of the land rest while the bal¬ 
ance is doubling production. It is all wrong to 
advise farmers to double the total production of 
food in order that the handlers may have a double 
chance to absorb the G5 cents of the dollar. 
* 
S OME two years ago a man named Klepner, of 
Allentown, Pa., came out with what he called 
“tree vaccination.” The scheme was to bore a 
hole in the trunk and poke in a capsule containing 
a powder. It was claimed that this medicine made 
the tree immune from all insect attacks and dis¬ 
eases. It is said that Klepner did a large business 
at 50 cents a tree. We showed pictures of such 
trees and did our best to explain the folly of such 
treatment. The fake prospered because some good 
fruit growers actually believed that this stuff would 
cure their trees and they “endorsed” the “medi¬ 
cine.” There are men who must have a “sign” 
before they will believe the plainest statement. 
They have it now. Dr. Surface of Pennsylvania 
finds that this- “dope” contains cyanide of potash, 
a deadly poison, in combination with other chem¬ 
icals. On hundreds of trees which have been “vac¬ 
cinated,” the scale insects are still alive. The chem¬ 
ical, however, is blighting and killing the bark. In 
scores of cases trees have been killed by this treat¬ 
ment. It required one or more years to make sure 
of this thing but the evidence is now clear that 
the treatment is dangerous and should not be used. 
The price of this vaccination has row been reduced 
tc 15 cents and even at this low rate thousands of 
dollars are being taken in by these tree dopers. 
It is astonishing how this old scheme of poking 
chemicals into the trunk of a tree, or driving in a 
rusty nail, has kept right along with the wild fakes 
for curing human diseases. With the clear evidence 
of injury now before us there is no reason whatever 
for any person of common intelligence to have his 
tree vaccinated! 
❖ 
S OME notable dairy meetings have just been held 
in Vermont. There has been so much complaint 
about milk jn’ices that the Boston Chamber of 
Commerce appointed a committee to get down to 
the bottom of the New England milk situation. 
There is no question but that so much loose talk 
about inspection and supply has decreased the fam¬ 
ily consumption of milk. Boston has started a 
strong campaign for the business and backing of 
New England. This committee went right out into 
the milk territory and called upon farmers to state 
their case. They did it. At Rutland over 200 in¬ 
telligent milk producers came forward with figures 
to prove that present prices ai*e too low to admit 
of profit in milk production. The sentiment was 
unanimous that milk which will satisfy the sanitary 
inspectors cannot be made at present prices and 
pay farm owners hired man’s wages! The farmers 
who testified were questioned by skilled lawyers 
and by other farmers, and this only made the truth 
more clear. Such testimony cannot fail to impress 
January 9, 
the Boston Chamber of Commerce—and that is an 
organization which means something—not a per¬ 
functory company as some “Chambers” are. We 
think it will lead to an adjustment and increase of 
milk prices. This farmer’s campaign for a fairer 
share of the dollar has now reached its 
second stage. The first was agitation. This meant 
persistent statement that the farmer receives 
only 35 cents of the consumer’s dollar. At first 
this was laughed at or ignored. We kept at 
it until, one by one, the “thinkers” took up the 
question and were astonished to find that they could 
not possibly disprove the statement. For years they 
had overlooked the great, vital pi’oblem of Ameri¬ 
can national life. That was the first stage of the 
great campaign. Now comes proof and readjust¬ 
ment. But for the old 35-cent-dollar campaign the 
Boston Chamber of Commerce never would have 
gone to these dairymen for facts, nor would New 
York have ever organized the Food and Markets 
Commission or the Land Bank. And this second 
stage of the battle requires more than ever before 
concerted action, true cooperative work and the true 
loyalty of a strong army. 
* 
O NE of our readers sends the following appro¬ 
priate verse, which he dedicates to a certain 
poultry expert who is working overtime trying 
to get people to notice him. We think these lines 
will fit a regiment of people who have grafted a 
grouch upon themselves: 
“Say, what’s the use in taking stock in all the things 
we hear? 
Why rip the lining out of Jones and make Smith look 
so queer? 
You cannot always tell, my boy—pex-haps it’s all a lie— 
Just get around behind a tree and watch yourself go by. 
“You’ll find that things look different; the crooked 
paths are straight; 
That Smith is not the only man that sometimes stays 
out late. 
Perhaps your own wife’s husband sometimes gets all 
awry. 
So get around behind a tree and watch yourself go by.” 
T HE higher courts in Maine have decided that a 
cat is “a domestic animal.” This decision was 
needed to give kitty her legal rights. While 
she had nine lives she had no legal standing. In 
170S Jenner, in Ms essay on vaccination, in showing 
how man in climbing away from his natural place 
in the world had met new diseases, said: 
The wolf disarmed of ferocity is now pillowed in the 
lady’s lap. The cat, the little tiger of our island, whose 
natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and 
caressed. 
A man in Maine owned a valuable fox terrier 
dog, which went upon a neighbor's property and 
chased a cat. While it was doing so the owner of 
the cat. shot the dog and killed it. The dog’s own¬ 
er sued the neighbor for damages and won a ver¬ 
dict on the ground that the cat is not a domestic 
animal and therefore not entitled to legal protection. 
Under such a ruling we do not see that a cat would 
have any more public rights than a squirrel or rab¬ 
bit; not as much, since the law pi’otects game ani¬ 
mals. The cat owner was not satisfied and appealed 
the case—his lawyer making a long argument to 
show that the cat is even more a domestic animal 
than a dog. He succeeded, and the court reversed 
the lower verdict—which means that the cat owner 
was justified in protecting his property. He ap¬ 
parently had as much right to kill a dog which 
chased his cat as he would have in the case of 
dogs found worrying sheep. We find that some peo¬ 
ple regard all cats as nuisances and kill or attack 
them whenever they can. Under this decision they 
would have no more legal right to do this than they 
would have to shoot a farmer’s sheep or cow or 
hog. The cat now has nine lives and a legal stand¬ 
ing for each one! 
BREVITIES. 
Why, yes, when people get too rank they should be 
filed down. 
Plenty to eat, a bed of chaff, sunshine make the 
calf to laugh. 
We prefer a quick-acting finely ground lime if we 
are to use lime at all. 
We believe it will pay to sprout oats for the family 
cow as well as for hens. 
The latest is a six-weeks course or school for janitors 
at the Wisconsin University. 
Our modern Winters are variable. Better make sure 
of your ice while it is here. 
The hen enjoys hc-r bit of green food as well as you 
enjoy canned fruit or lettuce. 
Free speech is all right, but there are times when 
a bridle on the tongue beats it. 
Astonishing how far some folks will walk, to have 
the privilege of hearing themselves talk. 
Nothing finer than “the awakening of a country 
community.” Cannot you be the awakener? 
Just take this bit of wisdom and let it sink in deep. 
The useful man is one of two—he’s busy or asleep. 
