■Uhe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
831 
This particular crop happens to be bush Limas, 
which are being grown for canning piirposes. When 
the pods are well filled out, the vines are gathered 
and hauled to the can house, where they are run 
through a machine which separates the beans from 
the vines and pods. The vines are then returned to 
the soil as manure. 
CULTURE REQUIRED.—Beans require very lit¬ 
tle fertilizer, because they are a legume, and take 
nitrogen from the air, thereby .saving fertilizers and 
eni’iching the soil. Grain following beans invariably 
produces a .splendid crop. Many of the best bean 
growers use approximately 300 lbs. of acid phos¬ 
phate per acre. The crop appi’eciates a good soil 
and frequent cultivation. The rows are usually 28 
or 30 inches apart for the kidney and navy or pea 
beans. For the foi’mer a bushel of seed is required 
per acre while for the pea beans 20 quarts is plenty. 
For fine development the individual plants should 
stand fi’om turn to four inches apart in the row, 
as is nicely shown in the illustration. Fig. .335. The 
seed can be .sown by hand in open rows, but a more 
even stand can be secured by the use of a seed drill 
of almost any description; the little garden seed 
drill, the one-horse planter or the turn-horse corn 
planter are all good when properly adjusted. The 
most practical way, however, is drilling with a 
grain drill which has 11 bottoms each seven inches 
apart. Then the seed can be made to drill out of 
bottoms number 2-6-10 and fertilizer can be made 
to feed through numbers 1-3-5-7-9-11. Thus, three 
rows of beans may be sown exactly 28 inches apart 
and the fertilizer will be drilled alongside of each 
row, but seven inches from it, so that the fertilizer 
will not bother germination. 
TROUBLES AFFECTING BEANS.—Diseases of 
the beans seem to come to the field on infected seed, 
therefore, the best growers take every precaution 
against infected seed. Sometimes they watch the 
development of their crop, then if no diseases are 
present they use their own seed. Never cultivate 
the beans when the foliage is wet, because this 
distributes the disease if it is present. 
HARROWING.—In gathering the crop a two- 
horse harvester is used which has two steel blades 
about three feet long and four inches wide. These 
are adjusted so that one of them slides along un¬ 
der each row, cutting off the roots and pushing two 
rows together. The illustration. Fig. 336, shows 
.such a machine in operation in Cumberland Co., N. 
.1., where bu.sh Limas are also grown for the can 
houses. Ilowevei’, exactly the same machine is used 
in harvesting dry .shell beans, when the pods are 
quite dry and the beans themselves can yet be 
dented with the pressure of the finger nail. After 
the vines are pulled they may be thrown into small 
heaps with small bottoms, so that as few beans as 
possible will lie on the ground during the few days 
while they are drying. Then the morning they are 
to be hauled in these little heaps should be care¬ 
fully turned over .so that the bottom of the heap 
will have an opportunity to dry out. Use a tight- 
bottom hay wagon for hauling, or else .spread a 
canvas over it so that those beans which rattle out 
will be caught. 
►STORING.—When placing the crop under .shelter, 
every precaution should be taken to provide air and 
ventilation, because this crop quickly deteriorates 
when the vines are piled up if they are the least 
bit damp. Thrashing can be done with a flail or 
by adjusting a grain thrasher, but usually a regu¬ 
lar bean thrasher is u.sed. The beans can be blown 
out in a windmill or in the wind to separate them 
from the chaff and rubbish. Hand picking is neces¬ 
sary in picking out the poor beans. 
CROP RESULTS.—The yields per acre should be 
anywhere from 10 to 30 bushels, with an average 
at about 16 bushels where beans have not been 
grown excessively. Prices will sui'ely remain high 
because the demand for the crop is far in excess 
of the supply. Furthermore there is no more work 
to the crop than there would be to a crop of field 
corn, and the soil Avould be left in better .shape for 
grain, because beaus are a legume and enrich the 
soil. R. W. UE BAUN. 
Farm Shadows 
OxE of our milch cows drowned in the ditch last 
week. She was three years old, and her hide brought 
.$7.30. I spent $3.65 of it for a bushel of potatoes. 
HAT is from one of our women readers in 
Michigan. It Avill seem like a small thing to 
.voii, no doubt, but to this woman it seems like the 
shadow of death. We hear of the well-to-do and 
complacent women who are going about telling far¬ 
mers and their wives what to do. The most we wish 
for these advisers is knowledge and the power of 
sympathy. We would have them get o\it on a lone¬ 
ly farm without capital, a biting mortgage, a dis¬ 
couraged husband, and half a dozen lively children 
who cannot see the true philosophy of a state of 
society wdiich denies them the right to a happy 
childhood. Then -when these women, under such 
conditions, had. raised a nice three-year-old cow 
which was to pay the morttgage interest and buy 
shoes for the children, the cow would die. Her hide 
would bring ,$7.30, or not quite two bushels of pota¬ 
toes while the shoes made from it would cost her 
nearly $40. Now if we could put some of the.se 
comfortable and complacent women through that 
experience and make them feel every inch of the 
way, would they come back and give more of this 
Eighty-acre Bean Field Monmouth Co., N. J. Fig. 334 
comfortable advice? We would travel a long way 
to see them in action again.st the speculators and 
the powers which have made such things possible! 
The Old 35-cent Dollar 
Your thoughts on “Farmers and the War,” page 671, 
hit the nail square on the head. If this war finally 
brings the world to see the farmer in the right light, 
and awakens the farmer to demand his just rights—it 
will be worth all it costs. Many times have I said: 
“How long will the farmer continue to vote for a set 
of lawyers and politicians who when elected to ofiice 
pay no attention to the farmers’ needs, but work con¬ 
tinually for schemes to make the non-producer richer, 
Bean Field in Union Co., N. J. Fig. 335 
while the producer receives but a pittance of the value 
of his products?” Now a sense of fear seems to have 
come over our officers and legislators, and they are 
shouting from the housetops to the farmers to increase 
their products—before we all starve. The farmer will 
go on the even tenor of his way, and produce all he can, 
with more capital and more help he may increase his 
products, but he should first by all means do as other 
producers do, demand a minimum i)rice so that he will 
be assured compensation for his labor. The time has 
come, the hour is here when the farmer should make his 
voice heard. 
I have not forgotten the 28 years my wife and I put 
in on a little farm in New Jersey in a struggle for ex- 
Harvesting Beans in Cnmberland Co., N. J. Fig. 336 
istence. I have not forgotten an acre of .str.-wberries I 
was once plowing under. The rows were red with fine- 
big, ripe berries. It makes my heart ache now to think 
of them rolling under before the plow. Some friends 
came to visit us from Philadelphia and walked over to 
the field where I was plowing. In great surprise they 
asked what I was doing. I explained that I could not 
get enough for the fruit to pay for picking them, when 
they said : “Why, we have to pay 12 cents a quart for 
berries no better than those.” And that was only 32 
miles away. This is only one instance of what hap¬ 
pened nearly every year, and yet there are some who 
say there is no such thing as a 35-ceut-dollar. 
Santa Clara Co., Cal. F. S. N. 
Why Boys Leave the Farm 
[You may not think the following statement is based 
on the soundest sense, but you must admit it is close 
to the truth.] 
Why do boys leave the farm? The answer to me 
seems easy, for when mehanics in the cities are receiv¬ 
ing $5 per day of eight hours, and common laborers .$.3 
or more, the wages on the farm do not go much over $.30 
or $35 per month and board, which without board 
would be about $60 or $70 per month, while the city 
laborer is making about $80, and the mechanic $1.30 
per month. And now forget the pay and look at the 
difference in hours. As a general rule the farmer starts 
in the morning from 4 ;30 to 5 o’clock, and does not 
finish until after six, while in the city you start at eight 
and at 4 :.30 your day is done. I did not leave the farm 
because I disliked it, but I concluded that so long as I 
worked for wages my object would be the most money 
and the shortest hours, and then when I acquired money 
enough to buy a farm I would return to farm life. Then 
if I worked 14 hours a day the profit would be mine, 
and as I am yet only 23 years cf age I hope some time 
to fulfill my desires. Of course, it must be admitte<l 
that the places to spend money are more numerous in 
the city than in the country, so that even now I could 
well affoi’d to consider farm offers of $45 or more a 
month with board. I believe you will find the above to 
be the reason for many boys leaving farms, as I know of 
others of my acquaintance who left the farm for prac- 
tially the same reasons, w. b. 
How Speculators Debase Money 
With all the talk of high cost of living, and the¬ 
orists talking about the cost of high living, I figured 
out roughly how much food a dollar would buy as 
compared with about a year, or a little over, ago, 
when prices were high on most things. 
When you go to the store with a dollar to spend for 
food, you can buy for this dollar, or rather you i)ay a 
dollar for the privilege of buying, 5()c worth of lard, 
32c worth of flour, 60c of butter, 56c of sugar, 20c 
worth of potatoes, 83c milk, beaus 47c, .siilt meat 50c, 
canned vegetables 60c, fresh fish 80c, coal 65c, ice 60c. 
Coffee and tea are about normal in price, and rice you 
get about 50c worth for a dollar. 
After the Civil War Confederate money was worth 
about one-half cent a pound, and U. S. currency, I be¬ 
lieve about 50 cents on the dollar. At present our 
gold dollar only buys about 50 cents worth of goods, so 
our currency is surely more debased than after a long 
and exhausting war. Does the government realize tlmt 
they are allowing a small group of- brigands to debase 
their money? _ si. A. P. 
Mobile, Ala. 
R. N.-Y.—From the consumer’s standpoint that is 
a strong way of putting it. Hardly a day passes with¬ 
out newspaper reports of several carloads of vegetables 
and fruit being dumped on the New .ler-sey meadows 
as “condemned.” In most cases people go and pick 
out a good share of this condemned stuff as good food ! 
While this is going on consumers are held up for ex¬ 
tortionate prices. Unless the new “food bill” gives 
the government power to shut off the speculators and 
unless that power is exercised, there will be fierce 
trouble. 
Country-bred Hired Men 
There is a tendency of farmers to scorn farm labor 
from the city. This is often based on unhappy ex¬ 
perience with city^bred farmers. But this year the 
demands for help are going to be more insistent than 
usual, which should make us more patient with what 
we can get, and there will be a large amount of bet¬ 
ter help available this year. Because of the war, there 
is a patriotic movement on foot to release from the city, 
country-bred men to go for a month or more to the 
country from shop and mill to help gather the crops. 
Now it is up to the farmers to be lively and take 
steps to get such help—^be encouraging to the idea, and 
help it along. This is for two reasons. Fir.st, the 
extra help to gather the crops must come from the 
city this yeai’, and then, country-bred men now living 
in the city, of course with exceptions, make pretty 
good farm help. I speak froni abundant experience in 
the mattei-, and that is why I am writing this. For 
many years I have used such help as this on my farm 
in North Dakota, country-bred men, attracted to the 
country by the higher wages and a genuine desire for 
a month or two is the country. It is hardly too much 
to say that one-quarter of all the grain in North Da¬ 
kota (which includes one-tenth of the wheat of the 
United States) is shocked and the bundles pitched for 
the thrashing by just such labor. Some of them are good 
teamsters, but few of them get teams, because they are 
given to the men who are on the farm during the 
season. 
As a great and abiding rule, the aim should be to 
get country-bred men. The sincere “would-be farmer” 
who has never seen a farm may well be encouraged, es¬ 
pecially this year, but with everything to be shown 
him and the necessity of “picking work” for him, such 
men are not worth the cost of a good farm hand and 
should never be paid as much. The county agents and 
the agents of the Food Supply Commission in e^jeh 
county in the State of New York will, I believe, help 
any farmer to get help from the city. If I may sug¬ 
gest a word further, I would say this help should be 
sought now, and some kind of work found for them on 
the farm, so far as practicable, rather than to wait 
till just before it is needed, DATUS c. smith. 
Columbia Co,, N. Y. 
