650 
Oic RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 4, 1918 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FABMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban llomea 
Established iSSO 
I'nbUsfapd wretly by the Rnral I*nbli«blne Company, 333 West 30th Street, New Torb 
Herbert W. Collingwood, President and Editor. 
.John J. Dh.IjON, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. R 11 .LON, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Hoyle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.(M, equal to 8 s. 6 d., or 
8 J 4 marks, or lOJj francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class JIatter. 
Advertising rates, 75 cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
atlvertisers unknown to us ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE HEAL” 
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 hotises only. But to make doubly sure, we will make good any loss 
to paid subfroribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or mislea<ling advertisements in our columns, and an.v 
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 advertisei’s or not. We willingly use our good 
offices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishone.st 
transactions. We protect Subscribers against rogues, but we will not be 
responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts sanctioned 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 The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
Milk Wanted 
W l> liiive :i rosponsihlo city on.stonier wlio wislie.«! 
to contract for the output of a farm-owned 
milk ])lant of about 200 cans pasteurized milk daily, 
Thi.s i.s an o])portuuity for a co-operative plant which 
ma.v not he at iireseut under contract. Application 
may he made to The R. N.-T. office. 
* 
I N every country communit.v where The R. N.-Y. 
is read there has been a good sale of Liberty 
bonds. Hundreds of country towns have exceeded 
their quota, and in proportion to capital and business 
ii-ssets the country has done better than the city on 
This thii’d loan. From the very nature of their busi¬ 
ness and their lifelong habits the country people are 
less emotional than town and cit.v residents. They 
take tinle for solid thought and reason, but their 
jiatriotism and sacrifice has nothing of the nature 
of froth. It is solid and enduring, and while less 
inclined to shout aboTit it our country jieople are loyal 
to the core. We stand on record as saying that the 
farmers of the country help themselves as well as 
the government when they become bondholders and 
creditors of the nation. 
* 
.Tust read your editoilal on page .588 about the dairy¬ 
men who have to sell their cows and have empty 
jiastures becau.se they have no help. Now that 
hits the nail on the head as far as I am concerned, only 
my situation is different. I have plenty of pasture and 
ludp to take care of 2.5 dairy cows, but no capital to get 
them, and I would be pleased if some one would furnish 
the cows and take the milk check to pay for them. I 
would pay 10% interest on the money, or if some of 
those that have to sell their cows, would rent them to me. 
1 Mease see if you can do anything to help this situation. 
Also, I have 7.5 to 100 acres that could be put into 
buckwheat, plenty of help and tractor to do it with, but 
no money to buy seed or gas. .s. s. o. 
Pennsylvania. 
11 can easily find thousands of farmers who 
are in just this condition. They have the 
land and some of them have the labor, but they lack 
caintal, and that lack prevents them from running 
the faiTU to ca]Jacity. The Federal Land Banks can¬ 
not help in siich cases. In some localities the local 
Ijanks have helped, making it a community affair, 
but in a section where there is not first-class com¬ 
munit.v spirit or strong desire to build Tip and im- 
ju-ove farming there is not much chance of raising 
oipital. Here should be an opportunity for some 
man who grew up in a country neighborhood and 
has now grown rich in the city. He might finance 
a few loans like the one here mentioned, and help 
tarry prosperity hack to his old home. 
•!< 
T here are in this country today thou,sands of 
young men and ivoinen who ought to become 
and who are fitted to become, in the future, as fine 
a race of farmers as this country has ever known. 
After this war is over there will be man.v thousands 
more. Many of these young people live in the coun¬ 
try ; others ivei’e born and brought up on farms, but 
have moved to town, seeking what they called larger 
op)Jortunity. They all, men and women, wmuld like 
to go to the land and live there as independent farm¬ 
ers. These young people are unlike any class of 
jiioneers we have ever had in the nation before. 
Many of them have attended an agricultural college 
and are well read, educated and capable of clear, 
hard thinking. MTiey are industrious, honest, am¬ 
bitious, patriotic and hopeful. They could carry to 
the country just the qualities of high-class citizen¬ 
ship which ai’e now supremely needed to settle this 
.35-cent dollar question and the incidents to it which 
will follow the war. Unless men and women of this 
type can go to the country and become freeholders 
of land, the future of our rural districts is not bright. 
5Vhy then, if these young people are so well fitted for 
the work, and if they love the life, do they not go 
to the country and take farms? The answer is easy : 
Thct/ cannot ohfain the necessary land and equip¬ 
ment. Where can these men and women go to obtain 
credit with which to buy land, equip a farm and 
provide working capital? The old-time farmer will 
tell what he did ;50 years or more ago. but he for¬ 
gets that this world war has upset all conditions. 
A5'hen this older man went out with his young wife 
and won a farm by sheer muscle there was no real 
land problem in the countr.v. We now have the 
hardest land jjroblem of an.Y nation on earth. Our 
agricultural education has made farming more ex- 
Iiensive. To farm by modern methods requires moi’e 
ex])ensive eriuipment, larger working capital and 
credit and different social conditions. The country 
must in some way keep u]) with the town in business 
methods and social life, or it will .surely fall behind, 
(live them the chance and the men and women we 
speak of Avill go to the farms, but theif have no land 
and no place to horroir the needed money or to oh- 
tain eredit. Here then we have one of the greatest 
of farm problems. After the war it will be greater 
than ever. This nation has .spent neaiMy one billion 
dollars on agricultural education, research and regu¬ 
lation. Its effect has been to make farming more 
expensive and put a farm further and further out 
of reach of the landless man. This nation must in 
some way make it easier for men and women to oh- 
tain land and farm capital. Unless that is done, the 
small freeholder will become less and less a factor 
in agricultui-e, and that means more and more of 
absent landlordism. We are going to discuss this 
furthei*. 
«= 
Bullets for the Bo;i. ' 
Bonds for Father. 
Bisenits for Mother. 
Bandayes for the Girl. 
HI.S awful world war has now reached the point 
whei’e no member of an.y American family can 
escape the duty of service. Everyone must do some¬ 
thing .showing service and sacrifice, or feel in his 
heait that he is .something of a slacker. As the days 
go by and our boys are rushing up to strengthen that 
human wall against which the Kaiser and his sol¬ 
diers are battei-ing. it comes to us clearer than ever 
before what will hajqjen to the world if through our 
indifference or failure that line is broken. It does 
not seem possible that any true-bloode<l Amei-ican 
can now desire any compromise or “German peace.” 
America must now fight this wai- through, or foi-ever 
take a back seat among the nation.s. MMie only way 
to prevent .slaughter and save these frightful ex¬ 
penses is for all of us to get right back of the Gov¬ 
ernment and push the war to its end. It is not our 
privilege to stand on the fighting line—though men 
of middle age may he forced to it, as the Fi’ench and 
English have been, if we stand back and let this war 
drag on for lack of moral and financial support. The 
Amei'ican people must finance this wai-. and pour 
out their money as evidence of sincerity. In the set¬ 
tlement of great questions which will follow this 
war, the safety for America will lie in the fact that 
we are a nation of bondholders. MMie obligations of 
this countiy must not be held by a few thousands of 
rich men, hut by millions of men and women of 
niodei’atc means. This is now the last chance to 
invest in the Third lAberty loan. Our farmei’s have 
responded nobly, and have shut off the talk about 
“misers and slackers.” If you have money laid 
aside for the futTire. we ask you to invest at least a 
part of it in Liberty bonds. 
K: 
A S you see, we begin this week, on page 64.3, a 
series of articles from our old friend .1. Grant 
ISforse. He is going to tell us, in a simple, familiar 
way, what a man of middle age does with a new 
farm. You cannot call Morse a “back-to-the-lander,” 
because he has been back to the land all his life, but 
anyone who takes up a new piece of land can learn 
something from these articles. We are safe in .say¬ 
ing that they will be the real thing. Very likely as 
these articles go on some questions about crops or 
methods will occur to you. You might want to 
know more about it, and no doubt Mr. Morse will be 
able to make it deal-. Let's all go back to the old 
farm—on paper I 
A READER insists that when a plum tree fails 
to bear he can always bring it back to fruit by 
boring a hole into the trunk and poking in a quan¬ 
tity of sulphur. Now the usual reason for these 
barren trees is that the flowers are sterile and thus 
rarely if ever fertilize. The remedy is to plant 
trees of another variety near bj% or graft wood of 
that variety into the barren tree. Then the flowers 
are fertilized and fruit is formed. How can tlib 
sulphur, poked into the trunk of the tree, make a 
sterile flower fertile? This is a good illustration of 
the way some of us mix up cause with effect. A 
certain thing happens, and without hunting out the 
true cause of it. we observe that another thing 
seems to change the first one. It may be an acci¬ 
dent. but we jump to the conclusion that it is a true 
remedyr You never can have n true remedy until 
you find the true cause. The politicians ai’o always 
strong at mixing up cause and effect by claiming 
that the party is above the peoijle. 
O NE of our people, living in a large town, has 
ordered The R. N.-Y. sent during ^la.v. .lune, 
.Tuly and August to his boy. who is getting “farm 
practice” during the Summer on a good farm where 
general farming is followed : Dur friend says this 
about the hoy: 
He plans to get this every year upon farms of differ¬ 
ent character, to be followed b.v a foui'-year course in 
.agriculture at Cornell. He is due to start third year 
high school in September. Can you suggest a better 
plan ? 
For a boy situated as this one is we think it is 
an admirable plan. It is far better than .sending 
the boy right from the high school to college without 
any practical training. By working during the 8um- 
jner on dairy, fruit and general or grain farms, this 
boy will acquire a knowledge of farm operations 
which will enable him to get far more out of the 
college course than he otherwise could. The point 
will be to put him on a farm where he will be re¬ 
garded as a worker and not as a visitor. 
Immediate curtailment of the use of print paper is 
necessary. 
The Federal Trade Commission announces from Wash¬ 
ington that this is a patriotic duty. 
“During iVIarch newspaper publishers continued to 
consume paper faster than it was produced,” says the 
commission. 
NE! We are saving da.ylight and wheat; now 
for saving paper. Where shall we hegin? The 
eye falls uiion a gi'eat mass of printed matter out 
of the morning's mail. There are, this morning, 27 
lai’ge envelojjes containing circulars and pamidilets 
of advice. The whole thing totals about .56.000 
words. It comes from .^tate and National depart- 
rnejits day after day—just advice, nio.st of it so dull 
and fussy that no one will I'ead moi’c than one of a 
kind. We never see any of this stuff in the papers 
Tinless, as is too often the case, it contains some 
sneer or ill-concealed contempt for farmers. Then 
the dail.v papers u.se some of it! It has come to be 
8 waste of good ink and jiaper. It does no good, and 
does not help fanning or food saving. It means at 
least .$.5,000,(KK) wasted on “pTiblicity” which is not 
public or popular. What is the matter Avith having 
the Federal Trade Commission .start right in on this 
“publicity” bTisinesss? 
♦ 
O N page 640 a reader Avants to know hoAv to 
raise shiners for bait! M'hat gives you an idea 
of\he size and A’aried social conditions of this coun¬ 
try. Otti* ^Massachusetts friend can, in his small 
pond, get good returns for “shiners.” He can prob- 
alily make more out of this pond hole than many a 
farmer, in the Far West can make on 100 acres rais¬ 
ing food for a distant middleman to handle. That 
is because the “shiner farmer” lives in a community 
so old and prosperous that hundreds of men can 
afford to buy “shiner.s” for the fun of fishing. The 
Western farmer liA'es in a neAV country where there 
is no local market. Thus avc see Iioav farming is 
influenced, not so much from within as Irv’ Ibe in¬ 
herited money aaMhcIi settles doAvn around the farm 
demanding service and also drawing young people 
UAvay. The R. N.-Y. seems to he about the only farm 
paper Avhich can intei’est all these A-arioTis types of 
farmers. Perhaps that is because Ave realize that 
aboTTt all they hav'e in common is the elemental 
(juality of human nature, which holds the woiMd 
together. 
Brevities 
SoAiE men fill the bill—other.s only file a bill. 
“Organizeu lying” is a good name for most of the 
world’s “diplomacy.” 
The farmer Avho would beat the Kaiser has got to be 
an early riser. 
Another wretched quality of rats is that they carry 
human fleas. 
Put the best men and Avomen in your district on the 
school board. 
In 1917 72.276 tons of abrasives, valued at ,$S..32.5.- 
.312 Avere produced in this country. This Avas mostly 
emery and carborundum. 
Sthnt is a grea.sy product found in wool. It contains 
considerable potasli which has never been fully saved. 
English authorities say that the waste in the Bradford 
woollen district would provide all the potash needed by 
English farmers! 
The Pribilof Islands lie off the^ coast of Alaska. The 
natives have subscribed for .$1,500 worth of I.iberty 
bonds, and have collected 300 tons of bones for fertilizer. 
That means money for Uncle Sam and phosphorus f<jr 
his wheat. , 
