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The Rural New-Yorker 
THE HU8INESS FARMER’S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Home* * 
Established isso 
I’tiblUhed weekly by the Rural I’liblifchlng Company. 3.13 Weal 30th Street, New VnrR 
Herbert W. Colungwood, President and Editor. 
Jobs' J. DitXOlt, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. Dillon, Secretary. Mits. E. T. Royt.e, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $ 2 . 01 . equal to 8s. 6d., or 
810 marks, or J0!<j francs. Remit in money order, express 
order j personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates. 7.i 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 person. We use every possible precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable bouses 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 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 of 
the transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
F OR years there lias been in this country a brave 
little army of men who put up a good argument 
for willow culture. Most of our willows and 
willow ware have been imported from Europe, but 
now imports have practically closed. The willow 7 
advocates now have their innings. They can put 
up the best argument for a “new 7 crop” that any of 
the boomers can offer. In fact the future for wil- 
low culture is assured. 
* 
W E want several strong articles from fruit 
growers or farmers who have built satisfac¬ 
tory cold storage houses for fruit. They 
should be houses of w r hat we may call farm size—• 
holding 500 barrels or more, in which a fruit grow¬ 
er with an orchard of moderate size can hold the 
best of his fruit until January or later. There is a 
great demand for such a house, and we want to 
know how 7 to build it. We will pay a fair price for 
practical articles describing such houses. 
* 
T HE R. N.-Y. does its best to expose fakes or 
guff starters and to keep out doubtful adver- 
tisements. Among other mild fakes there are 
several "cures” or treatments to put on fruit trees. 
They are said to destroy borers and other insects, 
and to work through the bark to add strength to the 
tree. We have shown up the folly of these claims 
again and again. Now conies the proprietor of one 
of these fakes with the w 7 orst exhibition of “nerve” 
we have seen yet. lie wants to write a series of 
articles telling about his fake remedy and to take 
payment for them in advertising. Here is a man 
with a gall that would fit an elephant and a hide too 
thick for a rhinoceros. The R. N.-Y. never permits 
any man to boom any questionable remedy or meth¬ 
od and never, under any circumstances prints an 
article that would be paid for in advertising! 
* 
A T this season of the year we take great inter¬ 
est in reading the so-called baccalaureate ser¬ 
mons preached to the college graduating class¬ 
es. These seem to contain the last word- to the 
educated young man—a final answer to the question 
—“What is the college education good for?” The 
most thoughtful one w 7 e have read this year was 
preached by Rev. Percy S. Grant before the Col¬ 
lege of the City of New 7 York. Dr. Grant took the 
position that the American college is in danger of 
becoming the foe of true democracy: 
The college too rarely tries to deal with the prob¬ 
lems vital to the existence of the State. The result of 
this system would logically be to create either social 
parasites or industrial banditti. My main contention 
is that those who will be educated men are not being 
educated to serve the community, but to exploit the 
community. 
These brief extracts indicate the line of Dr. 
Grant's thought. He thinks, as w 7 e believe truly: 
The successful man in a democracy is in danger of 
believing that the country belongs to him and that the 
Goddess of Liberty has appointed him her solitary de¬ 
fender. As a matter of fact, the successful man is the 
dangerous man in a democracy, for he is likely to fight 
whatever checks and limits his fortune. 
A democracy is safer in the hands of its proletariat; 
safer in listening to their demands than to the demands 
of its successful class. Success is too often no longer 
young and does not wish to learn new 7 rules for a game 
in which it has been an expert. 
It is understood that this means workingmen, or 
the class which must produce w 7 ealth while denied 
the use of needed capital. We find the country filled 
with middle-aged men and women w r ho have made 
great sacrifices to educate their children. If you 
wish to test the truth of what Dr. Grant has said 
go and get the real point of view of the graduate of 
one of the endowed colleges toward his parents— 
who have given of their life that the boy might be 
educated. It seems to us that these endowed col¬ 
leges must of necessity inherit the personality and 
the business habits of those w 7 ho endow them. Can 
they be free? Can they be truly democratic? Can 
THE RURA.L NEW-YORKER 
they with the pedigree which lies back of their 
money send out men to serve the community rather 
than to exploit it? And we may ask the same ques¬ 
tion of our agricultural colleges. Are any of them 
teaching—w 7 ith any heart and spirit—the plain, un¬ 
popular truth which alone can make farming what 
it should be as an industry? If it be said that the 
courage of the endowed college is as wide as its 
endowment and no more—is it true that the cour¬ 
age of the agricultural college is measured by its 
fear of losing an appropriation? No one doubts the 
great national growth of our system of agricultural 
education, yet is it making equal growth in the true 
democracy of plain farming? 
* 
S UPPOSE a miller or feed dealer came and offered 
to give you 10 or 15 tons of wheat bran. All 
you had to do was to bag it and haul it home 
and the agi*eement. ran for five years! You 
would surely vote for that man if he ran for 
Congress. Why not vote for yourself? You are 
the only man likely to present yourself with a 
dozen tons of wheat bran. You can do it by start¬ 
ing five acres of Alfalfa. The chemists may not 
know how to run your farm, but they know how 
much food value there is in Alfalfa. When they 
say it can be grown so as to equal wheat bran, ton 
for ton. they know what they are talking about, and 
it is time to get busy. The millers, who turn out 
the bran, charge a big toll before you get hold of it. 
The bacteria which work on the Alfalfa roots are 
little millers grinding out a grist for you all Sum¬ 
mer long, and charging nothing for it. You cannot 
name a country, a State, a section, a township or a 
farm where Alfalfa thrives which has not gone 
nearer prosperity; where the soil has not improved, 
or where the men and women and children have not 
seen a vision of better and happier living. No use 
talking, Alfalfa is the agent of prosperity—the mid¬ 
dleman of better farming and it gives a 100-cent 
dollar. Either seeding in the old way or transplant¬ 
ing seedlings of the newer varieties will put the 10 
tons of bran in your barn. 
* 
I T is difficult to see why those women who desire 
equal suffrage have overlooked their opportunity 
to furnish the most convincing argument possible 
in its favor. In no matter of public concern are 
women more interested than in the conduct of our 
schools. No other institution, not even the church, 
touches the home more directly or is of greater 
moment to mothers. Women have shown themselves 
peculiarly adapted to teaching, and form the greater 
proportion of instructors in our public schools. They 
share the burden of taxation for the support of the 
schools, and if competent to form sound judgment 
at all, are certainly able to do so in those things 
which so intimately concern their children. Men 
have recognized these things and for years have 
given women an equal voice with themselves in all 
that pertains to school affairs, yet, in only few in¬ 
stances do women avail themselves of the privilege 
of participating in school district elections. It is' 
true that men are also culpably negligent, the or¬ 
dinary school meeting being hardly able to muster 
a corporal’s guard for the transaction of necessary 
business, but such interest as is shown, is shown 
almost entirely by men. This indifference to the 
ballot where home interests are immediately con¬ 
cerned is a direct challenge to the statements that 
women would generally assume the burden of the 
franchise and equip themselves to exercise it in¬ 
telligently, if given the opportunity. Participation 
in those affairs over which they already have equal 
control with men, and in which they have a very 
personal interest, would do more to convince their 
brothers that women really desire the ballot and 
are prepared to make the right to cast it something 
more than an empty honor than any number of 
street parades with banners or unanswerable argu¬ 
ments from the public platform. 
* 
H ERE we are doing it again— “The vain repeti¬ 
tion of an economic fallacy /” This 35-cent 
dollar must be getting on our nerves as it rat¬ 
tles in the farmer’s pocket. Here is the excuse we 
can offer this week: 
Our strawberry crop is good and so are the berries. 
Today we had over 60 crates of fine Gandy berries. To¬ 
morrow there will be about 100 crates. Rut yields are 
a small item. The price is what counts. Just now 
it is a pretty small count. The highest price paid to¬ 
day for the finest berries was $1 per crate of 32 quarts. 
Poor berries were lower, according to quality. We 
received $1 for ours. After paying the picking there is 
just 52 cents for growing, packing and hauling these 
berries. A man farming on shares would get 26 cents 
a crate as pay for planting, growing, cultivating, fer¬ 
tilizing, mulching, packing and hauling his crop. These 
berries go to Boston in iced cars and will be sold there 
to consumers about Wednesday. It would be inter¬ 
esting to know just what the consumer had to pay per 
quart. tkucker, jr. 
Investigation shows that berries of this quality 
June 26, 11115. 
were retailing in Boston at from 12 to 16 cents per 
quart. We know those berries were high-class Gandy 
and all fruit growers know what that means. Now 
at 12 cents a quart how much of the consumer's 
dollar went to Trucker, Jr., in Southern New Jer¬ 
sey? We make it a 16-cent dollar, but perhaps this 
is another “economic fallacy.” At any rate the repe¬ 
tition will not be in vain. 
* 
T WENTY-FIVE years ago we first printed the 
doggerel now to be found on the first page. 
On the Fourth of July it seems worth while to 
consider how far the farmer has gone “Up head” 
in a quarter of a century. At the time this was 
printed Kansas and other Western States was going 
through a revolution. The Populists had for the 
time swept all before them as a protest against 
their existing financial conditions. These Populists 
were hooted at and denounced, and after a few 
years the movement fell apart and disappeared. 
Yet, today, we see dozens of the things for which 
these desperate farmers contended actually worked 
out in law and accepted by the people without com¬ 
ment. The farmer has gone a long way “Up head” 
and he is going still further. He is learning how to 
think and reason, for it is only in that way that he 
can ever hope to work his way out. For centuries 
the producer known as “the farmer” has been ex¬ 
pected to take off his hat and take a back seat when 
the so-called “learned professions” or “business” 
marched by on parade. This thing has come to be 
a habit, but now the farmers are trying to under- 
stand through thought and reason irhy they should 
carry the butt end. One of the most frequently 
quoted truths of human nature is the following: 
“Men at some time are master of their fates; 
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
But in ourselves that we are underlings.” 
We think the farmer is slowly but surely going 
“up head” because he is thinking out his own prob¬ 
lems in his own way, and learning how to work co¬ 
operatively. The analysis of the 35-cent dollar is 
a course in the higher mathematics of agriculture. 
Twenty-four years ago if some one had called this 
“the vain repetition of an economic fallacy ,” most 
farmers would have believed the statement and 
given up. At that time men marched in political 
processions yelling for “prosperity” while their 
clothes were patched with old grain sacks! Now, 
the great majority of our farmers know perfectly 
well that the 35-cent dollar is a great vital truth. 
This poor little doggerel helped. The Winter after 
it was first printed, T. B. Terry was about the most 
active institute worker in America. He wrote us of 
seeing “The Farmer Goes Up Head” acted at var¬ 
ious country places. .Some young woman would im¬ 
personate “Miss Columbia” and seven boys dressed 
as in the picture would recite the verses and act out 
the parts. 
Brevities. 
That’s right! The trouble is that some folks want 
to put sharp tacks into tact. 
Snubbing a man is called giving him “the marble 
heart”—a sort of chilly sauce. 
t A THICK crop of flax or millet will help greatly to 
kill out a sod. Plow the sod and seed thickly. 
It is again reported that experiments are being made 
in the extraction of rubber from Arizona cactus. 
For the first time in our experience the crows have 
paid little attention to tar, but have pulled out entire 
rows of corn. 
Some farmers say— “I will not raise strawberries be¬ 
cause I can buy them cheaper than I can raise them. ’ 
Did you ever know such a farmer to buy 20 per cent, 
of the fruit his family needed? 
The City of Jerusalem has suffered greatly from the 
war. Business is at a standstill and the tourist trade 
has completely died for the present. Most of the farm 
hands have been called into the army. 
Quantities of obsolete machinery and equipment 
used in constructing the Panama Canal are now of¬ 
fered for sale by the General Purchasing officer at 
Washington. 
“Build me more stately mansions.” says the poet. 
Build them yourself. What you want is a mental sky¬ 
scraper—getting your mind up above the smaller things 
of life. 
We do not hear as much about slate for roofing as 
formerly, yet in 1914 1.019,553 squares were sold for 
$4,160,832. A “square” represents enough pieces of 
slate to cover 100 square feet of roofing. 
Readers often ask us where they can sell deposits 
of mica. There is little chance for such sale. The en¬ 
tire country’s output in 1914 was but $328,746, which 
was a loss of $107,314 from the year before. 
NoRTn Dakota Indians are said to have a real 
grievance, against the government, which is interfering 
with their supply of fresh meat. The Interior De¬ 
partment is waging war against the gophers, and the 
Indians are making complaint because gophers are their 
chief source of fresh meat. 
Last year there was a fierce campaign against the 
surplus rooster started. Some radical reformers want¬ 
ed laws compelling owners to kill all roosters running 
at large after June 1. What’s become of this “swat 
the rooster” campaign? It seems to have petered out. 
The rooster evidently has rights which the public is 
bound to respect. 
