•32 
&Ae RURAL NEW-YORKER 
V 
E 
k 
This Boy of Twelve 
Earned $84.99 
He planted a garden in four rented lots. He 
went at it as hard as he went at his play. It 
wasn t all work. He had lots of time for fun. 
When the summer was over he had taken in 
$107.85. His seed, rent, plowing and other ex¬ 
penses had cost him $22.86. His profit was$84.99. 
Any hustling, ambitious boy can do as well. 
The one thing to be sure of is the quality of 
the seed you buy. 
FerrV’S 
Seeds 
are surer than others because they come from 
pedigreed plants. Pine, vigorous plants are not 
accidental, they usually spring from vigorous an¬ 
cestors; seeds of unknown pedigree are uncertain 
in results. 
Ferry’s Seeds are selected and then tested in 
Ferry’s trial gardens. D. M. Ferry & Co. make 
doubly sure for you before they put their name 
on the packet. 
Doubtful seeds are dear at any price. 
IVe will send you, free. Ferry's Seed 
A nnual if you will send us your address. 
Ferry’s Seeds are sold by dealers 
everywhere. 
D. M. FERRY & CO. 
Detroit, Mich. 
(and Windsor, Ontario) 
Live, vfgorous bacteria, bred under 
adverse conditions, full of pep, and 
guaranteed to inoculate your plants. 
Soy beans, clovers, peas, alfalfa, 
vetch, etc.,yield more,restorenitrogen 
to the soil, and enrich your land only 
when inoculated. 
We guarantee our bacteria as follows: 
Use as many packages as you wish, 
according to directions. If nodules do 
not appear in a satisfactory manner, we 
will refund the entire purchase price. 
Will keep at least a year. Our bac¬ 
teria are field grown, not parlor bred 
on gelatine broth. Postage paid, $1 
per acre; $5 for 6 acres, and for any 
legume. Mention which. 
Get our FREE BOOK. It’s valuable. 
McQUEEN BACTERIA CO. 
BOX 211 BALTIC, OHIO 
Our seeds are selected and cleaned to 
beWEEDLESS and free from dead grains. 
They will go much farther than ordinary 
field seeds, nearly always adding enough to 
the crop to pay for themselves. Samples and 
_ catalog lncluding“How to Know Good Seed!)” tree. 
Write today. 0.M.8C0TT A SONS CO.; 40 Main St.,Marysville,0. 
C ELEBRATED D. B. Brand, 
99.50% Pure or better, average 
analysis 99.70%, northern grown, hardy, 
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prices subject to out famous “ten-day-test- 
money- back -if - you - want -ft” guarantee. 
DIBBLE’S Seeds produce bumper crops. 1,000 
tons hay on our own Farms last year of which 
over 500 tons were Alfalfa. 
Sow DIBBLE’S Seeds and harvest the best 
and cleanest hay you ever grew. Buy direct— 
save money. 
DIBBLE’S Farm Seed Catalog. Dibble’s 
new book—Alfalfa Culture for Eastern 
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Farm Seeds FREE. Address 
Edward F. Dibble Seedgrower 
Box B Honeoye Falls, N. Y. 
DIBBLE’S Seed Farms compris¬ 
ing nearly 2,000 acres are Head¬ 
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Grass Seeds, Oats, Corn and Seed 
Potatoes. Over 100,000 bushels 
in stock. 
TheBestMoneyCanBuy 
Clover Seed 
Our high grades of Grass seeds are the most care¬ 
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Sninples Free if you mention this paper. 
CLICKS SEED FARMS. Smoketown, Lancaster Co., Pa. 
SAMPLE OUR SEED 
Three earliestveirotablcs In cultivation for 10c. One 
packet each. Robinson’s Earliest Tomato. Earliest 
Round Red Radish, Eiarliest Lettuce, 10c to new 
customers. Regular price 30c. CATALOG FREE* 
C. N. Robinson & Bro.i Dept.Sl* Baltimore JMd» 
SWEET CLOVER for PASTURE 
Prices and Circular on request. 
E. BARTON, Box 29, FALMOUTH. PENDLETON CO., KY. 
niTQ SENSATION: Record yielder. Extra fine seed. 
U"l u Also SEED CORN. Samples and catalogue free. 
THEO. BUBT & SONS . Melrose, Ohio 
GRASS SEED LSI! 
Pure Qualities. Wonderful values. Profits divided with 
customers. Clover $8.25 per bu. Timothy $2.25. Alsjke 
Clover and Timothy $4.00. Sweet Clover $3.75. Alfal¬ 
fa $7.00. Other seeds in proportion. ' All sold siibject 
ffovernroent test under an absolute monejr-back ^arantee. We Ma 
epecialists In grraas and field seeds. Send today for pur big profit- 
anaring* money-aaving SEED GUIDE which explains. All free, 
^inerlcan Mutual Seed Co.. Dept. ^60 Chicago, Ul. 
Northern Grown at Rochester 
Bardy, true-to-name fruit trees at low pnees. 
Apple, peach, pear, plum, quince and cherry trees 
for sale. Also grapevines, currants, ornamental 
trees, roses, plants, new 
fruits, etc. Buy them direct 
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Half Agents* Prices 
For more than 85 years we 
have been selling direct. 
Our customers come back 
year after year. 7 /you want 
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GREEN’S NURSERY CO. 
22 Wall St., Rochester, N.T. 
hoose 'A' Roses 
Plant roses grown by specialists 
—backed by 60 years’ experience 
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Easy to select choice kinds marked 
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N A R O & JONES CO. 
ROSES, Box 4 WESTGROVE.Pa. 
Bobt. Pyle, i’res, A.Wintzer,Vicc-Pres. 
The Mechanic in the Country 
(Continued from page 70) 
from trees that we have planted, which 
sold at five cents a quart. Rent received 
from Summer campers amounted to $90. 
That repre.‘ients onr total cash receipts 
from the farm for the eleventh year. It 
almost pays the expense of carrying the 
farm, so from now on we may consider 
the farm more of an asset than a liabil¬ 
ity. We also kept five barrels of apples 
for our own use, and had some to give 
away. 
Elev’en Tear’s Work. —That looks 
like a pretty poor showing for 11 years of 
.sowing, working and planning, and we 
are not proud of it, but it is the truth, 
and we are willing to acknowledge that it 
is the best we could do with our limited 
capita], time and capacity for the work. 
In the light of some of the magazine 
stories it is surprising and almost unbe¬ 
lievable (for a city man) the amount of 
time and money it takes to build up a 
run-down farm or develop a commercial 
orchard on such a farm. And as for mak¬ 
ing an easy living on a farm, I am tempt¬ 
ed to say : ‘’There ain’t no such thing.’’ 
Farm Side Lines. —Surrounding our 
farm within a radius of say three miles, 
there is hardly a farmer who makes his 
entire living from the farm. With 
hardly an exception they cut ice for the 
American Ice Co. in Winter, do teaming 
on the road, carpentering and any odd 
jobs they can get. The Summer boarder 
is also a favorite crop. And then there 
are a number of “back-to-the-landers,” 
and not one of them is making a living 
from the farm. One man of large expe¬ 
rience in business who has been farming 
six or seven years and has spent over 
,$10,000 on what is considered a good 
farm in the neigiil)oi-hood, told me last 
Summer that he cannot make .50 cents a 
day for himself. He is a man of un¬ 
usual mental attainments, a hard worker, 
economical, and with progi-essive ideas. 
Another has managed to make a living 
buying vegetables and peddling Ihem. A 
high official in the Grange, with up-to- 
date ideas, a good farm, and a farmer all 
his life, told me he did not know how he 
could get along without the ice-cutting 
job in the Winter. If lifelong farmers 
have hard work to make a living, how can 
we “baok-to-the-lauders,” with no expe¬ 
rience and little capital expect to beat 
them at’their own game? 
CoxcLirsioxs Reached. —Probably no 
one loves the country more than we do, 
yet we are not willing to sacrifice our 
health by long, hard work at tasks we are 
not fitted for, nor do we care to risk the 
""loss of all our little accumulation until 
I the farm has demonstrated lu’ctty thor- 
I oughly that it can be made to support us 
at a reasonable expenditure of our 
.strength. Throughout this article the 
pronoun “we” is used to indicate my 
wife and myself. Our one seas()u on the 
farm demoiistrjited pi'etty clearly our lim¬ 
itations, and we shall be guided by that 
experience. The 1L X.-Y. has fre¬ 
quently advised ‘‘back-to-the-landers” to 
work a season on a farm as a laborer, be¬ 
fore buying. The advice seems good al¬ 
though a trifle severe, for pi-obably 99 out 
of 100 men of middle age would give it up 
in disgust before the season was over. 
As for the women, God bless them, the 
proportion who would stick would be 
much smaller. To us the next best way 
to try it out, and not quite so discourag¬ 
ing, is to rent a place near enough to 
your place of business to hold your job, 
and stick to your job until you can dem¬ 
onstrate your ability to make a living 
from the soil. The easy way to farm is 
to have an income independent of your 
labor. R. A. YOUNG. 
Saving Through Large Buying 
The Boston market gardeners talked 
cooperative buying at their meeting, Jan, 
6. I’rof. E. F. Damon told how the 
proposition had worked out successfully 
among western producers. lie reckoned 
that the gardeners of the Boston district 
were buying a million dollars worth of 
supplies every year and that they could 
save from 15 to 30 per cent, through a 
central purchasing agency-’ The audience 
soon began to ask questions, and most of 
the points were brought out in that way. 
Would they need to organize? Prob¬ 
ably, yes; with shares and capital stock. 
A bill is proposed that does not require 
capital stock. But such a plan needs 
capital anyhow, to succeed. In this sec¬ 
tion they usually had $10,000 capital in 
■’anuary 20, lUlT. 
$5 shares and of that amount anywhere 
from $100 to $5,090 is paid in. How 
pay for big orders? If cash were paid 
in advance the greatest possible saving 
would be made. But the banks would 
no doubt discount notes with signatures 
known to be good. The manager and 
the executive committee w-ould have to 
look out for that. In the West over $17,- 
000,000 of business had been done with¬ 
out losing a cent. They could pay a 
first class man a large salary and still 
net a big saving. Could anything be 
saved on coal? The speaker bad been 
talking with coal men and they told him 
a substantial saving could be made on 
an order of say 10,000 tons. Quite a 
number of gardeners bought 500 to 1,000 
tons, and a large order could be made 
up. It would be a further gain if they 
could agree to use only one or two kinds 
of the coal thus concentrating the buy¬ 
ing. It was- true that most of the cost 
is the freight which is absolutely fixed, 
but still there is some margin for reduc¬ 
tion at the mines. The manager or buy¬ 
ing committee wmuld study out such 
points. The gardeners probably use 40,- 
000 tons a year. They should buy also 
grain, fertilizer, sprays, glass, hardware, 
mnnure, etc. The speaker had talked 
with various large dealers and found 
them apparently willing to meet the far¬ 
mers half way. 
Might there not he some difficulty in 
placing the orders, like the trouble with 
the grain wholesalers as described in The 
Rural Xeav-Yorker recently, asked 
Pres. H. F. Arnold. Xo: the grain or¬ 
ders alluded to were small matters and 
the big dealers had preferred to stand 
by their regular customers. But the 
gardeners’ orders w'ould be too important 
to be treated that way. Dealers would 
be anxious to get them. If there is a 
combination in any line, there is always 
a chance to get outside and find com¬ 
petition for a big order. What was al¬ 
ready being done along cooperative 
lines? There were .30 such enterprises 
in Mas.saehusetts alone, each doing from 
$.5,000 to $40,000 a yeai% about $200,- 
000 together. The Abiiigton strawberry 
growers thought their commis.sion men 
were playing into each other’s hands. 
They decided to concentrate' and hire one 
man to truck the berries into market. 
They received more money last year than 
before. The Marshfield growers are buy¬ 
ing crates, boxes and fertilizers together. 
Benefits of cooperative societies are not 
limitc’d to members, but one-half their 
profits are sometimes retained until the 
accumulation is enough to make the out¬ 
side buyer a shareholder. Could a cen¬ 
tral warehouse he successful in a ter¬ 
ritory with distances of 25 miles? Yes; 
some of the western cooperative ware¬ 
houses sei’ved a teritory of 400 miles, 
.\n auto truck could be used. Much of 
the stuff could be shipped direct. If A 
and B in any town wanted half a car of 
fertil.’zer each they could telephone to 
the central office which could_ have it 
shipped to their station. The price would 
be low on the strength of the society’s 
large buying. 
The numerous questions showed inter¬ 
est in the subject but it is too soon to 
conclude that the gardeners will organ¬ 
ize in this way. They have already 
weathered several meetings of this kind 
in the past few years without lasting 
results. They are cooperative enough in 
a friendly way too, but likewise very 
fond of business independence. “They 
will never come to it,” declared one of 
them after the meeting, “until they are 
forced to it by hard times or competi¬ 
tion. They have plenty of money to pay 
their bills now.” However, they took 
action to the extent of appointing^ a com¬ 
mittee of five to study the question and 
to report later. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK 
DOMESTIC.—Between 15 and 20 
children are believed to have been killed 
in a tornado that destroyed a school 
house near Blocker, Okla., Jan. 7. 
Attorney-General Gregory took over, 
.Tail. 4, the yield of the Federal^ Trade 
('ommission’s inquiry into the print pa¬ 
per market with a view to determining 
whether there is a paper trust and to 
instituting civil and criminal proceed¬ 
ings against manufacturers or others 
who may have violated the anti-trust 
laws. 
I’liree survivors of the five-masted 
schooner Marcus L. Urann reached Xew 
York, Jan. 5, on a British steamship, 
their vessel, loaded with lumber from 
Florida for Italy, having been wrecked 
during X^ovember, with the loss of 12 
lives, including one woman. For 17 
days the dismantled vessel was tossed 
about by terrific storms, the crew half 
starved, but cheered by the courageous 
stewardess until she was swept over¬ 
board and lost. 
Jan. 7 an automobile accident caused 
the death of Cornelius Spencer, a fruit 
grower of Greenport, N. Y., and his 
young son, his wife and another child 
being seriously hurt. The motor-car had 
skidded on a sharp down grade being 
capsized and set on fire. 
In the most sweeping of all decisions 
unholding prohibition laws the Supreme 
(^burt, Jan. 8, upheld as constitutional 
and valid the Webb-Kenyon law prohi¬ 
biting shipments of liquor from “wet” to 
“dry” States. It also sustained West 
Virginia’s recent amendment to her law 
prohibiting importation in interstate 
(Continued on page 74) 
