1272 
October 23, 1915. 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Ilomei 
E»tablished isso 
I'nlilisiird weekly by tlie Rural Publishing Company. 883 West 30th Street, .New Vorll 
Herbert W. Colli so wood, President ami Editor. 
Jons .1. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Roylr. Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union. 82.01, equal to 8s. Gd., or 
81$ marks, or 101$ francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates. 75 eonts per opiate 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 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 be publirly 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 conrts 
Notice of the complaint, must he 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. 
The peach situation! 
E want a conference on this subject in view 
of the past season. Too many peaches of 
varieties ripening together were dumped into the 
big markets at once. This knocked prices down and 
they could not fully recover. We must have a dis¬ 
tribution of varieties which will give a succession 
all through the season. Tell us what varieties you 
will plant in the future, from the experience of this 
past season. We need a wider range of ripening, and 
also varieties that will keep and carry better. 
* 
T HE Canadian Agricultural Department is spend¬ 
ing some monej f in advertising the apple. Here 
is one line: 
“Eat plenty of Canadian fruit—loclc the medicine 
chest and lose the key.” 
New York State should take up the same cry, and 
show her people that the finest fruit on earth is 
grown in this State. But what’s the use of having 
any “medicine chest?” A barrel of apples takes the 
place of it. Plant the key beside the apple tree. 
Some folks believe that old iron used in this way 
will act like medicine to the tree, so you get the 
iron hack in the fruit. Whether you do or not, the 
tiling to do is to keep the apple barrel open. It 
ff disease and hoops up health. 
* 
Y farmers have provided farm lighting 
xVl plants and water systems for the farmhouse. 
This adds much to the comfort of the family, and is 
a fine thing to do where it can be afforded. They 
ought to go further and put up icehouses, as the 
comfort of cooling ice in Summer is about as great 
as that of a heating plant in Winter. The advertis¬ 
ing campaigns conducted by dealers in supplies have 
been a source of education for many farmers in pro¬ 
viding home comforts. The same kind of an educa¬ 
tion does not come in providing for the icehouse— 
that is something we have to do ourselves, hut now 
is the time to begin and plan for the ice supply 
next Summer. We are to have some articles on 
the subject, and we want to develop a thorough dis¬ 
cussion based on experience of the best way of 
keeping ice on the farm. 
* 
W E have the following characteristic note from 
J. H. Hale, who knows as much about grow¬ 
ing and selling peaches as any man in the country: 
Bully for Commissioner Dillon. The way fruit trade 
papers are lambasting him shows some one has been 
hit deeply. And yet I much doubt if we are ever going 
to get along successfully without the commission mau, 
unless peddlers do all the buying at auction and then 
distribute to consumers a majority of whom will never 
buy at the auction or anywhere else, except what they 
want from day to day, or meal to meal. 
They are all coming to understand the situation. 
The trade papers cut no figure—they just represent 
the throat of the dog—where the yelp comes from. 
No one expects to cut out all the commission men, 
but it is expected that they will have to play fair 
producer and retailer understand what 
system offers them. For some years 
t_imission men and buyers have concluded 
that they have the produce business in their own 
hands, so they can run it as they see fit, and dom¬ 
inate the entire situation. “The servant is not 
greater than his master,” and there never was any 
good reason why 1,000 commission men should hold 
up 100,000 farmers and undertake to tell them they 
must sell their goods in a certain way. The auction 
system offers the buyer a chance to trade openly 
and economically with less expense and trouble than 
the old plan of chasing after the individual grower. 
In fighting the auction these buyers show that they 
do not want to trade openly and fairly, but would 
rather attempt to frighten or mislead growers into 
selling their fruit for less than it is worth. There 
can be no escape from that conclusion, and there 
never was a more foolish thing done in the produce 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
business than the plan of fighting the auction which 
these buyers have adopted. Men like Hale see clear¬ 
ly what is coming—the fruit will reach the con¬ 
sumer with fewer handlers to take out a slice of the 
price. The consumer will get some of these slices 
and producer will get the rest. These buyers who 
are kicking at the auction are kicking themselves 
right out of line for a share of the business, and 
they do not seem to know they are doing it. All 
the farmers have to do is to pay no attention to 
the trade papers and keep the produce coming to the 
auction. 
♦ 
L ET us go back to the “Kincaid bill” for a mo¬ 
ment. Last Winter J. Leslie Kincaid of Syra¬ 
cuse, a member of the New York Assembly, intro¬ 
duced a bill to wipe out the State Department of 
Foods and Markets. Mr. Kincaid went further, and 
in public interviews boasted of what he had done, 
and sneered at the attempt to improve marketing 
conditions. A storm of protest from fanners arose 
at the “Kincaid bill,” and so many strong letters 
reached the Legislature that the bill was left to 
die in committee. Mr. Kincaid, however, made no 
secret of his desire to kill off the Department before 
it could get started. Now J. Leslie Kincaid has been 
renominated on the Republican ticket in Onondaga 
County for reelection. His district embraces the 
following: Towns of Fabius, Lafayette, Onondaga, 
and Tully, and 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 18th and 
19th wards of Syracuse. Last year in this district 
Mr. Kincaid received 6,802 votes, against 5,472 for 
Geo. M. Haight. It is now up to the farmers in these 
towns and the consumers in these city wards to say 
whether they want j. Leslie Kincaid to represent 
them once more. On his record he is squarely 
against their interests. The farmers of the rest of 
the State took care of him last Winter—will the 
farmers of his own district now stand for him? 
The Department has saved $2,000,000 to the fruit 
growers of the State already, and will benefit other 
classes of farmers in the same way. Do you want 
that—or do you want more of Kincaid? We shall 
give him a chance to speak for himself next week! 
* 
Patrons of the rural delivery routes need to be on 
their guard that in the cutting down of the post office 
expenses their deliveries are not so altered that they 
will be of little account. In this county, where there 
has been an unusually good service, with a chance for 
letters to be received and answered promptly, one man 
has been made to do what three were doing previously 
to Oct. 1, with the result that letters collected after 
nine o’clock are not sent from the office until 7 p. m. 
Formerly they were never later than 3.30. There are 
now 300 boxes to be served, and a runabout auto will 
not shelter the mail and packages. What this carrier 
will do near the holiday time remains to be seen. Had 
some regard been *.uid to ihe needs of the patrons and 
two men tried out first for these 300 boxes it would 
not have been so inconvenient. Persons having import¬ 
ant letters must now go to the office if they wish their 
mail at a reasonable time, as it is far from good busi¬ 
ness to have to wait until long after noon to mail then- 
letters. Is this a move to make the rural routes unpop¬ 
ular and of less value to our farming sections? It 
looks like it to some of us. H. 
Burlington Co., N. J. 
HIS refers to the plan of the Post Office Depart¬ 
ment to reduce expenses by substituting Jong 
auto routes for the present system of rural delivery. 
It is easy to save a dollar in cash, and at the same 
time throw away five dollars in convenience and 
real service. There is a growing conviction that 
much of this so-called economy is organized for 
political purposes in order to make a public show¬ 
ing. The people do not want that sort of economy— 
they want service. There is much serious and de¬ 
served criticism of the parcel post system. Not long 
since the New York post office sent us a load of 
“empty” sacks in which mail was to be shipped. In 
these “empty” sacks we found 11 pieces of mail, in¬ 
cluding one photograph and two packages of butter 
irliich had been sent by parcel post and never taken 
from the bay! It was a clear case of carelessness 
without excuse, and we have no doubt there were 
many like it. The only explanation offered was that 
this bag came from some small station with only 
these few packages in it, and that the clerks hur¬ 
riedly dumped it—probably at the time speculating 
on the outcome of the great baseball championship. 
♦ 
T HE feeding problem is a masterful one at this 
time. The fearful prices of grain and feed 
make it necessary for dairymen and cattle feeders 
to study the theory of a balanced ration as never 
before. No greater mistake can be made than feed¬ 
ing to a cow a lot of expensive food that she does 
not need. Next to that is the mistake of spending 
one dollar for cow food when, if we only knew how, 
we can buy it for 75 cents. Balancing a ration 
means feeding just enough of each element to sup¬ 
ply what the cow needs without wasting through 
overfeeding of some particular part. We might feed 
a cow ou silage and cornmeal, and by feeding enough 
of it finally give her sufficient protein to enable her 
to give a full yield of milk. It would be far more 
economical to feed less cornmeal or none at all, and 
“balance” the silage with bran or cottonseed meal. 
While we were considering how to present this sub¬ 
ject in the most effective way we received a good 
suggestion from Dr. Omar Pancoast of Baltimore. 
Dr. Pan coast says he is a surgeon and does not pre¬ 
tend to be a full farmer, though he owns a farm. 
It is the business of the surgeon to cut right down 
to the heart of things, and the suggestion is to print 
each week a good sample balanced ration, which 
dairymen can easily figure out and understand. So 
we begin this week with a ration suggested by 
Prof. II. H. Wing. Others will follow from the best 
scientists and most practical feeders we can find. 
We shall try to have these rations discussed and 
analyzed both as to their effect upon the animal and 
their cost. We have good suggestions here and all 
can help to work it out. 
* 
A FEW weeks ago we exposed a very slick scheme 
for working off ground feldspar as a “filler” 
for fertilizers. A plant was established in the Con¬ 
necticut Valley where rock containing considerable 
potash was to be crushed. The scheme was to use 
200 pounds or more to the ton of mixed fertilizer 
and then make a claim for “total potash.” This 
ground rock was no more available than ordinary 
soil, but these fertilizer bluffers thought they could 
work the fake. We found there was nothing in the 
fertilizer laws to prevent them from trying it, but 
we did our best to let every one of the New Eng¬ 
land fertilizer chemists know what was up. As a 
result the bottom seems to have fallen out of the 
scheme—the work done thus far not even being 
paid for. Our informant says: 
This slump seems to have come right after your edi¬ 
torial in The R. N.-Y. which called the farmers’ atten¬ 
tion to the scheme that was trying to be put across. 
They seem to have got alarmed at the publicity of the 
matter and quit. 
It is time they did, and we are glad we could ex¬ 
pose the scheme before it got well under way. The 
trouble with most of them is that they have the 
goods made and partly sold before it is possible to 
show them up. 
* 
A LARGE farmer in Monmouth Co., N. J., says 
he has decided to put his farm into corn and 
Alfalfa. In former years he has grown famous 
crops of potatoes, but prices have ruled low for 
several seasons. Another farmer, on Long Island, 
also plans slowly to abandon potato growing and 
put his farm in Alfalfa. No doubt there are many 
others who have such a change in mind. Some of 
them feel that we are at the beginning of a great 
change in potato growing, during which production 
will be shifted away from many sections which have 
long been famous for this crop- We do not believe 
this theory is well founded. The present trouble 
with potato prices is temporary. It will be ad¬ 
justed in time, and old-time conditions will return. 
There are certain sections, like Northern New Jer¬ 
sey, Long Island, Maine and parts of New York and 
Connecticut where the soil and conditions are thor¬ 
oughly suited to potato growing. The crop will al¬ 
ways be well grown in these sections, and it will be 
a mistake to abandon it even with a period of low 
prices. The plan of working more and more into 
Alfalfa and clover is a good one. These crops will 
widen out the business of farming by bringing in 
more live stock or the sale of hay, and Alfalfa im¬ 
proves the soil and leaves it in better shape for any 
crop which may follow it With these new Alfalfa 
varieties the crop will spread into many new sec¬ 
tions, and improve the soil—thus improving all 
lines of farming. 
Brevities. 
“SKINNING the job” refers to doing cement work 
where the operators steal cement out of the mixture and 
put in too much sand. 
Mrs. Geo. E. Monroe sends this: “I notice a sub¬ 
scriber has hens with ‘bumble-foot.’ Once a day plunge 
the diseased foot in a quart can of very hot water, 
which has added to it 5 per cent of carbolic acid.” 
All this talk about irrigation is good, but remember 
drainage too. It is just as important to take the sur¬ 
plus water out as it is to add what is needed. The 
“water cure” may kill as well as thirst. 
A NEW oar ferryboat on Lake Ontario can carry 
1,000 passengers and 30 loaded freight cars. It is 31S 
feet long and 54 feet wide, and runs between Toronto 
and Charlotte. 
A hard grease, like tallow, melted and painted on 
the perches while hot, will get many of the vermin 
which annoy the hens, and will last long. Lice cannot 
stand oil or grease. 
Here is a tip to some of these breeders or sellers of 
Airedale dogs. There is a great demand for this breed, 
and we fear that in their haste to get rich a few people 
are sending half blood Airedales as the real thing! It’s 
a great mistake. If the dog carries other blood say so 
before it is sent. 
