858 
Z^he RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE nUfsiyESS farmer's rarer 
A Nntional Weekly Joiirnul for Coiiiitry »n<l Suliiirban Ilomcs 
Established isso 
I'nbilihrd weekly by the Rtiral rnblishln^ Company, S8S We«t SOtb Street, Xew fork 
nEiiBERT W. CObMNOWooD, President aiui Editor. 
.loiiH J. DfbixJN, Tre.'«urer and General .Manager. 
Wm. F. Dii,i.o.n, Secretary. Mii.s. E. T. Kovlk, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.04, equal to 8s. 6d., or 
8>4 marks, or lOij francs. Keinit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post OITice as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates. 75 cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us j and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We liellcvc that every adverti-sement in this paper is backed by a respon¬ 
sible peiaon. We use every jKtssible i)rccaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. Rut to make doubly sure, we will make good anv loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleatiing 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, w'hether advertisers or not. We willingly use our good 
ottices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we wiil not bo 
responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts sjinctioned by the courts, 
Notice of the complaint must be sent to us within one month ot the time of 
the transaction, and to identify it. you should mention Thk Kukai. New- 
y ORKEK wlien writing the advertiser. 
Which Way Are You Headed? 
.7list clip this bit of wisdom now, 
And put it in your poucli. 
At (iO years you'll surely be 
Philo.sojiher or groueh. 
The fir.st bring.s water from youth’s spring 
And makes the roses sprout. 
The groueh throws water on the tire 
. ()f hope—and puts it <iut. 
* 
A Part of the Contract 
Mu. J. is a tenant on one of the farms I have charge 
of. and in all the farm contracts I have, the tenant 
agrees at his own expense to subscribe for and take 
and read during the continuance of said term two 
agricultural publications known as The Kihial Xew- 
Yorkku and Hoard's Dairyman. F. Ii. THO.mson. 
W IO hoar from older reader.s who say they have 
made provision in their Avills that The K. 
X.-Y. shall ever come into the homes of all their 
children. There is nothing finer in all journalism 
tlian this thought that a paper may be part of a 
contract or a treasured heirloom. 
* 
A MoXG the many letters about city boys and 
country work we have the following from an 
old friend: 
A boy of 70 gets a week’s vacation in July, and 
ought to get out in the country, but can scarcely af¬ 
ford to board. Do you know of a wholesome farm 
place within 50 miles of X^ew York, where they would 
let a bright, capable, willing, clean young fellow work 
enough to pay for his board for a week and get a 
chance to fish or go swimming sometimes? 
It is not likely that any practical farmer would 
care to make any such arrangement. Some kind- 
hearted back-to-the-lander might try it. Ruch a 
young man would he of veiy little use on a farm 
in July. There would be a great difference of opin¬ 
ion regarding the value of his services in relation 
to his board. Suppose we reverse the case a lit¬ 
tle. A country boy has a vacation around Christ- 
ma.s. He proposes to come at this busy city time 
and work a few hours in a .store or office for his 
full expenses and have a chance to go about and 
see the city. How many city business men would 
take a young man under such conditions? Is there 
any good reason why a farmer .should be expected 
to do such a thing as a business proposition? Does 
anyone want to do it? 
* 
L AWES and Gilbert found that the loss of ni¬ 
trogen “in the drainage water from one acre” 
from harvest to Spring .sowing reached CO pounds 
one .season and 75 pounds the next. This means that 
when the soil was left bare, with no living crop 
through Fall and Winter, there was an average lo.ss 
of 07 pounds of nitrogen. At iiresent this would 
cost a farmer about 20 cents a pound. That means 
more than the jirotit figured on an acre of wheat 
selling at .$1.50 a hu.shel. The more manure you 
put on an acre of corn the more nitrogen you lose 
in the drainage water after the corn is harvested. 
The nitrogen is lost through nitrification, which 
is the chemical jiroeess through which the nitrogen 
i.s made .soluble. This goes on all through the Fall 
and Winter except when the soil is frozen solid. 
There is only one way to save this valuable nitro¬ 
gen. and that i.s to have some living crop growing 
in the .soil .after the Summer crop has been har¬ 
vested. This is called a cover crop, and on many 
farms it is one of the most valuable crops that 
can be grown. All agree that a crop of -\lfalfa is 
valuable, because it may bring $10 or more of 
nitrogen out of the air to the farm. Y’et if a crop 
of rye, vetch, clover or turnips will save that 
amount of nitrogen from being washed away it is 
just as good a friend as the Alfalfa. Somehow the 
one who brings us $10 receives far more credit 
than the one who saves a like amount for us. The 
cover crop is a saver, because it makes the farm a 
true hank of fertility. There is much talk about 
increasing the corn crop. That is good, but it is 
just as important for the future to seed a cover 
crop in the corn and save the nitrogen. 
♦ 
W E have heard of poisoning people by putting 
the deadly dope into candy o)‘ soup. That 
is bad enough, but when it comes to putting i)rus- 
sic acid into the bean pot the time has come for a 
strong antidote. The farmer is being made the 
goat. Tie needs to provide a good anti-goat I What 
we growl about now is the importation of the.se 
Burma or Rangoon beans—described on page 852. 
Who brought these pellets of ])oison over hei'e? 
lie .should be put up in the war zone as a target. 
The Department of Agriculture has acted rpiickly 
for once, and will hold up all further shipments. 
Gatch the imiiorter and make him eat the.'^e beans 
—or bake him with them! 
* 
T he Xew Y’ork .State Food Comnii.ssiou has 
about 40 tractors at work in some 20 counties 
of the State. These machines are not .sent to in¬ 
dividuals but there must be a group of farmer.s— 
reiiresenting at least 150 acres of land to be 
plowed—before the tractors can ho had. The Farm 
Bureaus usually have charge of the work. IMany 
of the tractors were delivered too late to be of 
much service in jjreparing land for Spring iilanting, 
but they will do their full share in making read.v 
for Fall grain, filling silos and similar work. There 
are throe types of tractors at work, and they will 
bo tried under various conditions—large and small 
fields, wet land and baked soil, level fields and bilks, 
smooth soil and rocky. The plan is to u.se them if 
liossible wherever horses go and make full records 
of their behavior. If this work is well done we 
shall have, by Fall, ju.st the information our far¬ 
mers need about buying a tractor. It is only 
through such careful work that the facts can be 
brought out. XT doubt about it—we have come to 
a time when the Eastern farmer must make use of 
all the aids w’hich modern power can give him. He 
nuist know what he is doing before he invests his 
money in expensive machinery. There would not be 
much excuse now for a man who invested heavily in 
the wrong breed of dairy cows because the facts 
1 ‘egarding the different breeds have been well 
worked out. The facts about tractors and their 
woi-k ought to be made just as clear. 
J? 
S ()!ME fai’uiers who tided to borrow luone.v 
through the Patriotic Farm Loan were disap¬ 
pointed, and have come to us Avith their trouhle.s. 
The newspapers as usual got this matter all wrong. 
They .stated that a fund of $10.00(».(K10 was avail¬ 
able, and that anyone could borrow what he needed 
without security. There was less than half a mil¬ 
lion available, and of conr.se no one could exjiect 
to borrow Avithout .some soi-t of ]u-operty or per¬ 
sonal security. .8ome farmers, however, tided to 
borrow $100, more or les.s. and were refused. Xat- 
ufally they feel di.sappointed and “sore.’’ and we 
have tried to find the rea.son for the refusal. In 
most cases the reiiort is that the applicant could 
not .secure personal endorsement as a careful spend-' 
er or good farmer. In one ease the local bank re- 
])ort.s: “We find that he has never made a success 
of farming, and there is no prospect that he ever 
will.” Therefore, this man got nothing. Thus it 
would seem that this hanking and loaning business " 
is I'un strictl.v upon Scriptural lines: 
“For he that hath, to him .shall he yiven: and 
he that hath not, from him shall he taken even that 
H'hieh he hath 
At least that is the way it looks to those who 
failed to get their loan. On the other hand, these 
men will admit that if they had money they would 
demand full security before they loaned it. ’riius 
now as ever the hardest problem in financing farm¬ 
ing is what is to become of the man Avho needs cap¬ 
ital but cannot satisfy the demands of the money 
lender! We Avould like to know Avhat proportion 
of the people Avho apply for these loans could ob¬ 
tain private accommodation at banks or from in¬ 
dividuals ! 
On page 774 you printed an article on hay .selling 
in England for $20 per ton. That doesn’t beat us 
much ; hay is selling from $20 to $25 jier ton here, and 
mostly sage grass and weeds at that. I saw in a 
recent issue of The R. X". Y. where some X'orthern 
man had 10 tons of good hay he was going to use for 
mulch. I would advise him to ship it south, as South¬ 
ern farmers are in great need of good hay. j. u. w. 
Tennessee. 
ET, every now and then, someone comes with 
a good story of profit in growing grass aiid 
clover and making milk at the South. What does 
it mean? We have never been able to understand 
why the Southern States should neglect the hay 
.Tuly 7, 1017. 
crop and play into the hands of the oleo makers, as 
they .surely do when they use butter substitute.s. 
There is no section on earth where the soil and the 
farmers have greater need of the ble.ssings which 
grass culture and dairying bring. The Southern soil 
needs organic matter and the Southern people are 
being taxed to the limit by their fertilizer bills. A 
large proportion of the fertilizer which they buy 
fails to giA’e results because the soil is lacking in 
humus. Dairying would build up tbe soil and iiro- 
vide a cash crop surer and better than cotton. 
When we see a Southern farmer driving hack to 
his farm with a bale of XTrthern-grown ha.v be 
looks as if his wagon wei’e a hearse canning the 
soul of his farm. 
* 
I AM looking for a fly-trap that I saw in publication 
some few years back, and as most of the good things 
.seem to be published by you people. I naturally ac¬ 
cuse yoii. To the be.st of my recollections, there was 
a prize awarded for the greatest number of flies caught. 
This prize was won by a boy with a cheap clock 
motor attached to squirrel cage drum, the outside of 
this drum baited with old fi.sh paste. This contri¬ 
vance caught something like two tons. w. ir. s. 
Bhiladelphia, Ra. 
E shall have to plead “not guilty” in regard 
to this wonderful fly-ti’ap. Of coui-se we 
try to publish the good things, hut we are hardly 
enough of “a good thing'’ to believe that any fly¬ 
trap can catch two tons of flies in one season. 
Surely the boy Avho can evolve .such a trap deserves 
a pi'ize. If we could find him. we Avould set him at 
work devising ,a sure remGd.y for the submai'ine 
pei-il. He would certainly get it. Seriously, there 
are a number of homemade fly traps which have 
woi-ked out well. We printed plans of two or three 
of them, hut Avould like to have others. The fly 
season is now at hand. There is no use chasing 
them down one by one, and Avhilo Ave cannot catch 
them by the ton. many of the fl.A’-traps get them by 
the hundred. Let's haA’e a fl.A’-trapper's conA'ention. 
Send us any homemade device for catching flies 
Avhich you have tried .suces.sfully. Here is a Avay 
to help out the food problem, by getting rid of the 
fly- 
♦ 
S OME one has asked us to name the most coav- 
iii-dly type of citizen Ave knoAV of. It is a hard 
question, and has not much to do Avith farming or 
country living, but. after .some thought, Ave nomin¬ 
ate the folloAving person: He starts as a poor boy 
and man. During his poverty and hard struggles 
he has ideal.s, and is independent and radical. If 
he ever gets a little property he Avill show them hOAv 
to sympathize Avith the unfortunate and hoAV to 
topple OA-er the seats of the mighty. He prospers 
and Anally secures a foAv thou.sand dollars. The 
lion at once gi-ows a coat of wool. He becomes so 
afraid that his little iiiA'estments will fail that he 
has serious doubts that his .soul is his own. Very 
likely he iiiA’ests his money in some of the things 
AA’hich ai'e controlled by “big business,” and there is 
an end of him so far as any moral poAA’er in public 
affairs go. The man's AA'hole life becomes a poor 
mean effort to hold his paltry dollars together at 
almost any .sacrifice to self-respect. We have 
Avatched this development from the hold courage of 
poverty to the coAvardice of moderate Avealth in 
many lives, and Ave think Ave have sti-uck the right 
answer. 
Brevities 
True sympathy is not always cheaper than charity. 
The Avay to make a layer out of the surplus rooster 
is to lay him on the table—roasted! 
Who can tell the difference between a notion and 
an emotion? 
Can you beat it? The State and nation calling for 
the production of food and then hiring men to prevent 
the killing of u-seless game? 
Ordinara' duck eggs— with the duck left to pick her 
oAvn food— do not preserve as well as hens’ eggs-. They 
Avill keep better Avhen the ducks are fed on clean grain. 
The territory you cover in this world is deteimiined 
not by the size but by the quality of your feet. 
ITsualt.y when a coav “giuiAVS boards” or rails she 
is not satisfied Avith her board—railing at it in fact. 
She craves lime and phosphates. Give her a hand¬ 
ful of fine ground bone in bran every day. 
There have been many questions of late about the 
use of poAvdered sulphur in driving rats and mice from 
rooms or bins. It is said that the sulphur .scattered 
where the rats or mice run Avill drive them aAvay. 
Has anyone tried it? 
Evera' year Ave have letters from people Avho ask if 
shredded corn fodder, baled, can be sold to advantage. 
A feAv carloads seem to be worked off each year but 
thus far there is little demand for such stalks except 
in local markets. 
A NEAV one is reported from Long Island, where 
some rich men’s sons have cla.ssed themselves as biied 
men in order to aA’oid the draft. In turns out that 
the.se slackers are paying board to farmers in order 
to make it apiiear that they are “Avorkiug.” First 
line in the trenches for them! 
