122 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK 
DOMESTIC.—Herman G. Scheffaner, 
a native of San Francisco, where he was 
a member of the Bohemian Club, and 
who wrote verse and magazine articles 
while living at the University Settlement 
in this city, was indicted Jan. S by a 
Federal Grand Jury, charged with trea¬ 
son, a capital offense. He is alleged to 
have served Germany in Berlin throughout 
the war by contributing articles denounc¬ 
ing the United States and allied countries 
to the Continental Times, a subsidized 
English language newspaper that was 
dropped behind the lines of the Allies 
from airplanes and distributed among al¬ 
lied prisoners in German camps. The 
indictment charges Scheffaner with re¬ 
sponsibility for a traitorous article in the 
Continental Times of July 13 entitled 
“The Serfdom of America.” and with a 
similar article on June 19. 191S, called 
“Speak Out, Germany.” He is said to 
be in Berlin. 
Victor L. Berger of Milwaukee, one of 
the five Socialist leaders found guilty 
Jan. 9 of conspiracy under the espionage 
act to obstruct the Government war pro¬ 
gramme. plans to fight to obtain a seat 
in Congress. Complaint to bar him as 
disloyal already has been filed by J. P. 
Carney, Democrat, whom Berger defeated 
in the November election by 3.000 votes. 
Baron Allardt von dem Muench, ne¬ 
phew of the former German Ambassador, 
Count von Bernstorff, was sentenced at 
San Francisco Jan. 9 to three months in 
the county jail for perpetrating a fraud 
upon the Government by attempting to 
enter the country with a forged passport. 
Leonard A. Snitkin. who until May 
was a Justice of the Municipal Court of 
New York City, and who in June was 
convicted in Indianapolis of participa¬ 
tion in a plot to obstruct the draft law, 
was disbarred by the Appellate Division* 
of the Supreme Court Jan. 10 upon the 
recommendation of the New York Bar 
Association. Snitkin was sentenced in 
Indianapolis to serve five years at At¬ 
lanta. but was released on bail pending 
an appeal. 
The National Prohibition Amendment 
was ratified Jan. 10 by the Senate in 
California and North Carolina, and by 
six other States Jan. 14—Alabama, Ar¬ 
kansas, Illinois, Indiana. Kansas and 
North Carolina. In addition the Ne¬ 
braska Senate, the Oregon House and the 
Utah house voted for ratification. Action 
by Nebraska, Missouri and Wyoming Jan. 
16 carried the amendrrtent. and made the 
whole United States dry, 38 States hav¬ 
ing now voted for prohibition. 
Twenty-one persons were killed and 
others seriously injured Jan. 12 near 
South Byron. N. Y., as the result of a 
rear-end collision between the New York 
Central-Michigan Central trair known as 
the Wolverine and the New i ork Cen¬ 
tral-Big Four train, the Southwestern 
Limited. 
Nine persons were killed and more 
than a score injured Jan 13 when the 
Scranton flier on the Philadelphia and 
Reading railway crashed into the rear 
end of a Doylestown local train, while 
the latter was standing a quarter of a 
mile below Fort Washington Station, 15 
miles north of Philadelphia. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—The Mont¬ 
gomery County (Pa.) Court is petitioned 
for the dissolution of the corporation 
known as the “Skippack Society for the 
Recovery of Stolen Horses and Other 
Property and the Apprehension of 
Thieves.” The reason assigned is “that 
because of the advent of the automobile 
and the more efficient police service there 
is no longer occasion for the existence of 
said corporation.” 
Senator Gronna (North Dakota), Re¬ 
publican, in the Senate Jan. 9 urged the 
fulfillment of the Government guaranteed 
price for wheat in 1919 and asked that 
the farmer be dealt with justly. The 
Senator said statements credited to the 
Food Administration and others giving 
estimates of the losses which the Govern¬ 
ment will sustain because of the wheat 
guarantee may have a damaging effect 
upon wheat production this year. He 
said everything possible should be done 
to encourage the industry, and added: 
“All the farmers ask is that the. same 
standard of justice shall be applied to 
them and their industry that is applied 
to labor and to those who are engaged 
in the business of manufacture.”. 
An era of extreme profiteering in meat 
prices after the Food Administration 
ceases to function unless control of pri¬ 
vate cars, stockyards and terminal re¬ 
frigerating plants is taken from the 
packers was predicted Jan. 9 by Walter 
L. Fisher, counsel for the marketing com¬ 
mittee of the American National Live¬ 
stock Association, and former Secretary 
of the Interior. Mr. Fisher was testify¬ 
ing before the Senate Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission at hearings on the 
pending bill providing for government of 
these marketing facilities. 
The Hudson River meeting of the New 
York State Horticultural Society will be 
held at Poughkeepsie Feb. 19-21. 
E. Jeknovorian and J. Tayian. new¬ 
comers to Sutter County, Cal., will grow 
tobacco. The land purchased comprises 
120 acres, and is situated in an ideal 
location for tobacco culture, according to 
the new owners. Several aei'es will be 
The RURAL N 
used for seeding, it was said, and the re¬ 
mainder of the ranch is to be devoted to 
growing the leaf, with a few acres planted 
to vegetables for personal consumption 
of the owners. This will be the first 
tobacco ever grown in Sutter County. 
Farmers’ representatives complained 
Jan. 10 to the Senate Interstate Com¬ 
merce Committee that co-operative or¬ 
ganizations are subjected to unfair dis¬ 
crimination by livestock exchanges and 
' s* 
Winter Sports 
packing interests in the marketing of 
livestock. They asked enactment of the 
pending bill providing Government con¬ 
trol of packing plants, stockyards, re¬ 
frigerator and stock cars. C. H. Gustaf¬ 
son, president of the Nebraska State Far¬ 
mers’ Union and chairman of the far¬ 
mers’ national committee on packing 
plants, testified that the farmers’ union, 
doing about $25,000,000 worth of live¬ 
stock business co-operatively, was denied 
EW-YORKER 
membership in livestock exchanges at 
Omaha, Sioux City and St. Joseph, Mo , 
on account of the union’s patronage divi¬ 
dend plan of operation. The union, which 
also does business with organized farmers 
of Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and Mis¬ 
souri. now plans construction of a pack¬ 
ing plant which, to succeed, requires en¬ 
actment of the pending bill, Mr. Gustaf¬ 
son said, to place competition with pack¬ 
ing interests on a fair basis. 
Representatives selected at the Far¬ 
mers’ National Reconstruction Confer¬ 
ence at Washington to attend the peace 
conference in Versailles were announced 
•Tan. 12. They are C. II. Gustafson of 
Nebraska, H. A. Fuller of Minnesota, 
Grant Slocum of Michigan, II. O. Alex¬ 
ander of North Carolina, Dr. E. F. Ladd 
of North Dakota, Arthur Le Sueur of 
Minnesota and George P. Hampton of 
Washington, D. C. 
Agricultural agents of railroads have 
been instructed to gather all available in¬ 
formation concerning farm lands along 
their lines open for lease or occupation 
by returning soldiers, it was disclosed 
Jan. 10 in the report of the Railroad Ad¬ 
ministration’s division of traffic, headed 
by Edward Chambers, covering the year 
1918. This is in furtherance of Secre¬ 
tary Lane’s plan for encouraging the re¬ 
clamation of lands by discharged soldiers. 
INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS. — A 
“blue sky” law to curb the activities of 
dishonest brokers and promoters of wild¬ 
cat corporations is a possibility for New 
York State as a result of investigations 
by District Attorney Swann into the 
activities of crooked brokers in forcing 
down the price of Liberty Bonds. Such 
a bill will be introduced in the Legisla¬ 
ture by State Senator Loring M. Black. 
The Senate Commerce Committee Jan. 
9 resumed its investigation of the build¬ 
ing of the Hog Island Shipyard and of 
the Shipping Board, with A. II. Taylor, 
manager of the passenger transportation 
and housing division of the board, as the 
principal witness. For enlarging power 
and traffic facilities used by the shipyard 
workers, Mr. Taylor said, $12,000,000 
had been advanced to private utility cor¬ 
porations, loaned at five per cent interest 
and with a maximum allowance of 25 
per cent for depreciation. In addition, 
he said, hundreds of thousands of dollars 
January 25, 1919 
had been advanced, under rulings of the 
Government labor boards, to railroad, ship 
and ferry companies to transport ship¬ 
yard workers. 
Restrictions upon the importation of 
tanning materials and tanning extracts 
were removed .Tan. 10 by the War Trade 
Board. The chief sources of the Ameri¬ 
can supply of these materials are South 
America, the East Indies and India and 
the West Indies. 
The United States has cancelled orders 
for war munitions worth $40,000,000 
placed with Spanish manufacturers, who 
have suffered a great loss in money on 
account of the large amount of raw 
material they acquired iu order to carry 
out their contracts. The Spanish Gov¬ 
ernment has opened official negotiations 
with Washington for compensation for 
these manufacturers. 
Dynamite in Horticulture 
In April, 1915, we bought a lot of 
things which we needed for planting. 
Among this lot were a few Lombardy pop¬ 
lars. We needed a few of these spiral 
trees to get a variation and to set off the 
large spreading trees which were already 
on the property. These poplars were just 
the usual slim trees which you ordinarily 
get from a nursery for setting out, and 
were from seven to eight feet tall, with 
about a one-inch diameter at the base. 
When the lot reached me I took home 
several sticks of a low-grade dynamite, 
which we use for blasting salt. This pow¬ 
der is, I think, only about 17 per cent. I 
took a crowbar, punched holes about two 
feet deep, took one stick of the powder, 
tamped into each hole, filled the holes 
with mud and water and fired the charge 
with an electric detonator, using a dry 
battery for firing. 
In three years these trees have at¬ 
tained a height of ab^ut 30 feet, and are 
six to seven inches in diameter at the 
base. Those planted by dynamiting the 
holes show a most marvelous growth. 
Two trees of thi6 lot were not planted 
with dynamite, as I did not take home 
enough to plant them all. These two 
trees, planted in holes dug with pick and 
shovel, have grown, but are weaklings 
alongside of those planted in blasted holes. 
W. S. DOOLITTLE. 
Livingston Co., N. Y. 
Mining Nitrate of Soda in Chile. 
Fertility Recovered at Slaughter-Houses. 
T HE fertilizer industry is, we feel, 
the greatest reclamation service in 
all the world. We reclaim fertil¬ 
ity—recover lost plant-foods upon which 
the world’s supply of human food depends. 
The earth is searched 
•to find where Nature 
has stored these plant- 
foods, and they are 
shipped thousands of 
miles to be balanced 
with other ingredients 
and sent back to Amer¬ 
ica’s farms. The am¬ 
nion i at es and phos¬ 
phates that went to 
make the blood and 
bone of animals are re¬ 
covered, and much of the supply shipped 
back in V-C bags. Even the bones of 
animals of by-gone centuries are mined 
and put into forms upon which the crops 
can feed. 
Fertilizers 
Other chemicals which have gone into 
the formation of coal and other mineral 
deposits are now recovered from the coke 
ovens, gas plants and cement factories 
and sent back to the soil. Most of the 
fertilizer that goes to 
make the cotton crop is 
reclaimed. 
Still other elements 
that are washed out 
of the soil are saved. 
From both the sea and 
air plant-foods are re¬ 
covered. Agricultural 
wealth is produced 
from waste. The labo¬ 
ratory is now the great¬ 
est ally of the land. 
To be sure of your supply, order now 
and put the fertilizer in your barn. Peace 
will not to any extent improve labor 
and transportation conditions. Write for 
names of V-C dealers near you. (17-3c) 
Bones of Animals of Ages Past Yield Rich 
Supplies of Phosphates. 
VIRGINIA-CAROLINA CHEMICAL CO. 
INCORPORATED 
V-C SALES OFFICES 
New York City. 
Baltimore, Md. 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Fort Wayne, Ind. 
Shreveport, La. 
Richmond, Va. 
Norfolk, Va. 
Alexandria, Va. 
Durham, N. C. 
Winston-Salem, N. C. 
Charleston, S. C. 
Columbia, S. C. 
Atlanta, Ga. 
Columbus, Ga. 
Savannah, Ga. 
Gainesville, Fla. 
Jacksonville, Fla. 
Sanford, Fla. 
Birmingham, Ala. 
Montgomery, Ala. 
Mobile, Ala. 
Memphis, Tenn. 
Mt. Pleasant, Tenn. 
