104 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER’S PAPER 
\ National Weekly journal for Country and Suburban Home! 
Establisfied ISSO 
T llilblu-d weekly lir (he Rural Publishing Compnnj, 833 West 30th Street, New Torfc 
Herbert W. Coli.ingwood, President and Editor. 
Jons J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
V.'m. F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Rovle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.01. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
8% marks, or lOkj francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates, 70 cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us ; and casli must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe that every advertisement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible person. We use every possible precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. Rut to make doubly sure, we will make good any loss 
t o paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertisements in our columns, and any 
Mich swindler will be 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 bv the courts. 
Notice of the complaint must be sent to us within one month of the time or 
the transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
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when one of them is a cigarette! 
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♦ 
F rancis f. Lincoln, whose 10 Leghorns won 
first place in the egg-laying contest at Storrs, 
entered a pen of Leghorns at the contest in 
Burnley, England. This seems to he the only Amer¬ 
ican entry. At the last report Lincoln’s pen stood 
sixth in number of eggs and seventh in value of 
product. Four Wyandotte pens and one Leghorn 
led the Americans in value. We all hope the Amer¬ 
icans will go up higher. 
* 
A GANG of smugglers were trying to get a pack¬ 
age of valuable diamonds into this country 
without paying duty. The U. S. authorities 
heard of it and learned that a package was to be 
sent to a New York hotel. They exercised their 
right, seized the package, sealed it, and carried it 
away for examination. Next day they brought it 
back with apologies. It contained only a fine sam¬ 
ple of Alfalfa hay! They had seized the wrong 
package. While Uncle Sam lost the duty on these 
diamonds he may console himself. A few foolish 
women may bedeck themselves with shining stones 
—but they add nothing of character or wealth to 
the nation. When farms or sections bedeck them¬ 
selves with Alfalfa, civilization goes up higher, 
prosperity comes nearer and humanity sees more 
of hope. 
* 
A T least 25 people have written asking what they 
can sow this Spring to obtain clover bay or a 
substitute for it. We know nothing better than 
oats and Canada peas. For small fields using or¬ 
dinary tools we would, as soon as the soil can be 
worked, broadcast five pecks of Canada peas on an 
acre and plow them under with a small plow. Then, 
after a few days, sow three bushels of oats and 
harrow the seed in. The peas grow slowly and are 
kept up, off the ground, by the oats. The crop is 
cut when the peas are soft in the pod. It makes 
fine green fodder or may be cured on about the same 
plan as clover hay. Such hay or fodder is about like 
a “ham sandwich” to a cow—the best thing we 
know of for Spring sowing. It needs good soil and 
manure, or fertilizer will pay, and a good coat of 
lime will help both the peas and oats. 
* 
W E are interested in improved varieties, methods 
and markets, supply and demand. With pres¬ 
ent prices for wheat a few boxes of Washington 
apples, peaches and plums come easy. Most peo¬ 
ple object to being made a “Tommy” of, and the agri¬ 
cultural paper that gives us what we want gets the 
patronage. H * DAVY. 
North Dakota. 
There is the material for an entire sermon on 
agriculture. North Dakota provides a market for 
Washington fruit, Florida oranges, Massachusetts 
shoes and Maine sweet corn when farm, prices are 
pood. It is the amount of money left at home after 
the bushel of wheat is sold which enables the Da¬ 
kota farmer to put cash into circulation and patron¬ 
ize other farmers and working men. When the price 
of wheat goes down the buying capacity of Dakota 
farmers goes with it, and the effect of this is fin¬ 
ally felt in every town and hamlet. There can be 
no such thing as successful agriculture for the peo¬ 
ple at large unless farmers can have fair 
prices which enable them to travel, spend and 
invest to some extent—within the limit of 
their means. When 65 cents of the dollar go to 
the middleman and handlers a great proportion of 
this share finds its way into the vaults of the great 
city banks. When the farmer gets more than 35 
cents that surplus goes to buy necessities. This 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
makes work for all laborers and the money remains 
in circulation. As for making a “Tommy” of a 
man—we rejoice that intelligent people know how 
to classify the agricultural papers into friends, 
fakes and “’faid cats.” They also have the cour¬ 
age to enforce such classification. 
* 
I AM a back-to-the-lander and am harvesting my fifth 
crop. I am just getting even, so you see your 
conservative attitude on this question is supported 
by my experience, even though I had spent the 
first 18 years of life on the farm. H. B. 
Roekport, Mo. 
We can safely appeal to any back-to-the-lander 
who has raised five crops or more for evidence. 
Most of the optimistic evidence comes from those 
who are growing their first crop, and have got to 
.Tune—before July and August bring up their re¬ 
serves of drought and weeds. We realize that our 
advice in this back-to-the-landing business is 
called old-fogy or “cruel,” but we stay by it, and 
perhaps we may as well repeat it here. Do not go 
back to the land unless your women folks know just 
what they arc going to, and are satisfied to go, and 
unless yon can pay for the farm in full and have a 
fair working capital left! 
* 
T HERE may be a few complacent souls left who 
believe that grain prices directly follow the 
law of supply and demand as surely as weigh¬ 
ty objects follow the law of gravitation. Last 
week there was a “selling panic” in wheat in Chi¬ 
cago. Prices had been run up to an extravagant fig¬ 
ure, and then suddenly fell. Did farmers raise 25,- 
000.000 bushels over night and thus change the re¬ 
lations of demand and supply? Hardly. The news¬ 
paper reports state: 
The frenzied scenes in the wheat pit came on the 
heels of a private cablegram that Turkish forts guard¬ 
ing the Dardanelles were under bombardment by the 
Allies and that one was demolished. This was fol¬ 
lowed by a report that the Allied fleets were demanding 
the surrender of all the forts and the strait. Forcing 
of the Dardanelles would release millions of bushels of 
Russian wheat and America would cease to have con¬ 
trol of the world’s wheat situation. 
Thus the aim of the gunners who directed the fire 
from those warships had more to do with the price 
of wheat than all the farmers in Kansas! The men 
engaged in that “panic” were gamblers playing with 
prices as they would with cards. 
* 
W E hope you will read the article on first page. 
This is in line with what we have said about 
the future of dairying on fruit farms. Not 
every locality will afford such an opportunity as is 
here described, but there are thousands of cases 
where dairying as a side line on such farms would 
pay. There must be a herd of choice cows—just 
enough to consume the wastes and roughage on 
the farm and no more. It will be necessary to buy 
grain and some hay, but the silage and the green 
fodder must be produced at home. Very likely if 
this man should double the size of his herd at once 
he would lose money. It means a profit because he 
has adjusted his dairy business to his fruit inter¬ 
ests, so that neither will suffer. So he has manure 
for his fruit and profitable labor the year around. 
Such dairying requires a good silo, efficient barn 
equipment and well-bred cattle. These things will 
come naturally on a farm devoted to intensive cul¬ 
ture of fruit or vegetables, and this system is sure 
to be taken up on thousands of our Eastern farms. 
* 
H UNDREDS of our people are planning to buy 
purebred live stock. Let them profit by the 
experience of a reader in Pennsylvania. This 
man was induced to buy a Holstein heifer from one 
G. M. Lyon, who promised to send the registration 
papers “soon.” The buyer sent his check for $75, 
which Lyon cashed. The heifer came, but no pa¬ 
pers were received. After repeated calls upon Lyon 
for the papers an appeal was made to the secretary 
of the Holstein Breeders’ Association. It then be¬ 
came known that Lyon was expelled from the asso¬ 
ciation in 1911 for false and fraudulent registration 
and no animals of his breeding can be registered or 
transferred. His papers did not fit—they were fit 
only to use in kindling a fire. Our reader has no 
redress except to bring suit against Lyon, though 
he is probably as suit-proof as if he were locked up 
in steel. But what can a man do in such a case to 
know that the cattle he buys are true? The first 
thing of course is to make sure of the character of 
the man back of the cow. In this case a note sent 
to the secretary of the Holstein Association would 
have revealed the tin can of infamy which had been 
tied to Lyon. As further advice take this from F. 
L. Houghton, secretary of the Holstein Breeders’ 
Association. 
There is at least one way in which you can protect 
your readers in purchasing purebred animals. That is 
to urge them to insist on getting in advance a certi¬ 
ficate of registry for each animal that they may pur¬ 
January 23, 
chase and to examine these certificates to see that they 
are correct, especially that the diagrams of color mark¬ 
ings correspond with the actual markings on the ani¬ 
mals purchased. 
We further advise that buyers hold hack at least a 
part of the purchase price until they have received both 
certificates of registry and transfer for animals that 
they may purchase. Those who purchase animals on 
the promise that they are registered or may be regis¬ 
tered are reminded that if registration is complete be¬ 
fore purchase, there is no chance for any misunder¬ 
standing or other trouble. Neglect of this precaution 
is often the source of much annoyance. 
* 
T HE incongruous picture is presented of a natural 
greenhouse, capable of growing almost every or¬ 
dinary edible people can desire, importing nearly 
all of its food from oversea. 
This refers to Honduras and is written by the 
U. S. Consul. There are others. Go to Florida and 
see the great piles of tin cans at every door. Peo¬ 
ple who cannot afford the money are eating canned 
goods while living in an ideal garden section. Go 
into a milk dairy country and see the baker’s wagon 
and butcher’s cart drive from door to door. Every 
housekeeper should make her bread, and every farm 
should provide chicken, mutton and pork in season. 
In fruit growing sections there will be an even 
greater shortage of food produced at home. Here 
is one of the weaknesses of farm life. Most of us 
will do well to get back nearer to the old plan of 
making each farm produce a large share of the 
family food. There probably was a time when 
cheap meat and bread made it good economy to buy 
rather than produce these necessities. We got into 
the habit of buying. Now high prices should drive 
us back to producing. 
* 
I T is with great pleasure indeed that I send my sub¬ 
scription for 1915. I do not really need a general 
farm paper very much, for I am principally inter¬ 
ested in poultry, but I want to show my apprecia¬ 
tion of the splendid stand you take as regards fraudu¬ 
lent advertising, and giving a square deal to your sub¬ 
scribers. For the same reason I have cut off my sub¬ 
scriptions to four poultry journals, having become thor¬ 
oughly disgusted with the manner in which their col¬ 
umns are used to carry dishonest advertising, and to 
foist all kinds of fairy stories about poultry profits on 
their subscribers. The “readers” in those journals, 
printed in most cases so as to appear to the unsophisti¬ 
cated as the editorial opinions of the paper, are full 
of the weirdest claims, month after month, as to the 
wonderful fortunes that can be made with a few hens, 
“even on a 40-foot city lot.” Not only are profits of 
from $7, $16 to $60 per hen promised to people who 
buy “systems” or correspondence courses, or “patented 
henhouses,” but the hen has recently been exploited 
in the realm of high finance “through the promotion of 
a $1,000,000 combination of certain poultry plants.” 
Boston, Mass. J. r. 
Letters of this character are coming to us by the 
dozen. Unquestionably people are reading the riot 
act to a certain class of poultry papers and pulling 
the tail feathers out of various “systems” and ex¬ 
perts. Such treatment is well deserved, and it 
proves that when the public really come to know 
the earmarks of a fake they will give it the proper 
treatment. For years most of the poultry papers 
have been kept alive by bluffers and stuffers who 
worked them to sell fake goods or to boom certain 
fads of breeding. There are a few honest poultry 
papers, but most of them carry a conscience that 
would fit nicely into a crooked breast bone. It is 
a shame too—for with the wonderful future, made 
possible for the hen through the world’s shortage 
of meat, there ought to be honest and brave cham¬ 
pions to fight her cause. At any rate, if the pres¬ 
ent cleaning-out process goes on much longer the 
“crooked will be made straight” by force. 
BREVITIES. 
A compost heap with muck and lime in it is a good 
fertilizer factory. 
' We would not let little children handle fowls afflicted 
with bad cases of roup. 
Carrots fed in Winter give color to the milk and 
character to the horse. 
Home boiled lime-sulphur is said to make a good tree 
wash to repel vermin. 
TnE earlier you get the next year’s fuel supply set¬ 
tled the better. Do it now if you can. 
A concrete beam without “reenforcement” may 
break of its own weight. “Dirty” sand makes a bad 
concrete job. 
What do you find the proportion between the men 
who are willing to draw wages and those who are will¬ 
ing to earn them? 
Let not the housewife’s pride be greatly puffed be¬ 
cause she keeps her folks not fed but stuffed. For na¬ 
ture gives to health this final test—not what we eat 
but what we can digest. 
It is astonishing how many people look with favor 
up on the strip of land through Maryland, west to the 
Ohio River, as a desirable place for homes. It will 
be a great section some day. 
Large quantities of our American corn has been sent 
to Europe to feed the needy. Cooked and stewed in 
popular ways it has met with great favor, and when 
the war is over there will be a new demand for it. 
The story that Europeans are living on' bread made 
of dried tulip bulbs comes down to the fact that a 
baker tried mixing two-thirds flour and one-third pow¬ 
dered bulbs and made a sort of bread. It was not a 
success and has been given up. 
