996 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S rAFER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Homes 
Established is JO 
roblishtd weekly by the Rnral Publishing Company. 833 Vest 30th Street. New York 
Herbert W. Colijs'gwood, President and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wb. F. Dillon. Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Hoyle, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION: ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2.01. equal to 8s. 6d, or 
Sf* * marks, or lOVs francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising t tites, 75 cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us , and cash must accompany transient orders. 
•‘A SQUARE DEAL” 
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 houses only. But to make doubly sure, we will make pood any loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleadinp 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, whether advertisers or not. We willingly use our pood 
offices to this end. but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers apainst ropues. but we will not be 
responsible for the debts of honest banknipts sanctioned by the courts. 
Notice of the complaint must be sent to us within one month of the time of 
the transaction, and to identify it, you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
O UR advice to farmers this year is to plant what 
they can cultivate well and seed the rest of the 
land. We are doing that ourselves, and we can see 
no reason why a farmer should overwork his entire 
family trying to do the impossible. Now comes a city 
man belaboring us for giving such advice. lie says 
farmers should he urged to work harder and produce 
more food. Any other advice is “uneconomic.’’ Now 
this man advocates “daylight saving” because he says 
it gives city workmen more chance to play or “enjoy 
life.” There can be no question that this same “day¬ 
light saving” causes the farmers more work and 
worry. It evidently reduces the efficiency of farm 
labor. The result of this will surely be a loss in the 
production of food. That will mean an increase in 
its cost We all understand that an eight-hour day 
at increased wages for city labor has forced us to 
pay more for manufactured goods. The same rule 
will apply to anything which interferes with a day’s 
work on a farm. Apparently SO per cent of the town 
people are using “daylight saving” for pleasure or 
rest. They must be prepared to pay for it through 
increased prices of food. 
* 
W E have received many letters about those trans¬ 
planted Alfalfa roots. Apparently hundreds 
of our readers want to try the plan. It is late to 
use the plants this year, but our advice is to obtain a 
quantity of the seed and start it in drills about as 
you would celery seed. Give it fair culture and put 
it in good soil. Mulch with straw or coarse manure 
this Fall, and next Spring use the seedling roots for 
transplanting. For pasture work we advise Serui- 
palatinsk. This is very hardly and makes a heavy 
growth, but is not of great value as hay, since it 
sprawls over the ground like a vine. For hay or 
seed, Cossack or Grimm will do well when trans¬ 
planted. and a new hybrid produced by Prof. N. E. 
Hansen of South Dakota is well recommended. Be¬ 
fore you undertake to spend much money and time on 
transplanted Alfalfa be sure you realize the limita¬ 
tions of this plan. It cannot take the place of seed¬ 
ing on large areas. It means considerable hand 
work, and we think it best suited to poultrymen or 
people with small farms who must make every rod 
do something. While we think this plan can be used 
to improve pasture, we have no big stories or fairy 
tales to relate about it. 
* 
W ITH hay retailing at two cents and more per 
pound, hay-making becomes about as impor¬ 
tant a business as picking up gold pieces. We must 
get it all, with as little loss as possible. Thus the 
long-continued rains have made a good many farmers 
think of the silo as a good place for the clover. 
Clover hay, soaked again and again by rain, is poor 
stuff, and if it can be put into the silo to make a fair 
quality of silage there would be a saving of worry 
end work. Will it pay? As good an answer as we 
can find comes in the following note from F. H. Moul¬ 
ton, manager of the Cleveland (O.) city farms: 
1 will say first of all that I do not consider it advis¬ 
able to put clover into silo except where it is absolutely 
necessary on account of the weather. In this case I 
should let it get about as ripe as advisable for good bay. 
in the hope that the weather might become favorable for 
mowing hay; then if it did not. I should cut it very fine, 
pack it tight as possible, having at least three men in the 
silo. I should also add salt as it is put in, and put it in 
the silo immediately after mowing it. 
When there is any reasonable chance of drying the 
clover we think it is far better made into hay. We 
think this is true of all or most of the legume plants, 
like Soy beans, cow peas or Alfalfa, which are high 
in nitrogen. Such crops are better as dry fodder. 
We think such crops as corn or millet are better for 
the silo. 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
OR several months past the average housewife 
has been reading, day by day, about the im¬ 
mense crop of wheat in sight. She is told that there 
will be so much wheat that no one can tell what to do 
with it. That sounds good, for she can tell without 
any trouble what to do with several barrels of flour. 
Yet even while she is reading about this coming 
blessing the grocer delivers a bag of flour and says 
"The price has gone up to $1.94.” This actually hap¬ 
pened to one housewife we know. That price means 
$15.52 per barrel! Now, suppose this woman to be a 
voter, and with a limited income, if she reads lit¬ 
tle besides the daily papers she concludes that the 
farmer is robbing her by charging an extortionate 
price for his wheat. She does not know, or perhaps 
care, that the farmer’s price is regulated for him, 
and that he can have nothing to do with changes in 
retail prices. The retailers bounce these prices up 
on the most flimsy excuse—or no excuse at all. The 
secretary of the United States Grain Corporation 
writes us that the retailer is now charging about one 
dollar more than he ought to for flour. Several re¬ 
tailers advanced their prices right under the noses 
of the Grain Corporation, even when its own reports 
showed that prices had been reduced. It is a shame¬ 
ful condition of affairs. It is unjust to honest con¬ 
sumers, and malicious in its effect of causing them 
to blame the farmers for these cut-throat prices. 
* 
W E find some enthusiastic people who think that 
with the coming of woman suffrage most of 
the political troubles will vanish and public evil will 
fade away. While personally we believe in suffrage, 
we have no thought that it will ever change human 
nature, or make any great immediate change in poli¬ 
tics. The women will for the most part vote as their 
men folks do. There will be an increase in the num¬ 
ber of votes cast, but the proportion between the 
various parties will be much the same. As a rule 
the members of a family usually vote much alike. 
Now and then someone breaks away. but. generally 
speaking, families vote as units. The results from 
suffrage will come in more indirect ways. The poli¬ 
tician and the people who “run” things are going to 
have great respect for the ballot which women will 
carry as a weapon, and they will study to find out 
what she needs. That co-operative laundry in Min¬ 
nesota (page 1011) is probably the outcome of some 
such feeling. So long as woman was not a full citi¬ 
zen her labor or convenience was not considered in 
terms of cash. It was just “women's work.” You 
stir that work up with a long-handled ballot and you 
soon put cash value into it. This thing of insisting 
that woman’s work must be figured on a cash basis 
will be one of the best tilings possible for farmers, 
because the cost of such labor must go into the cost 
of producing food. For some years now many farm¬ 
ers have been able to exist only through the unpaid 
labor of women and children. When woman’s work 
is given a fair cash value the cost of farm products 
must include it—as has not been the case in the past. 
It is along such lines that the great benefits from 
woman suffrage will come, and we believe they will 
be of peculiar value to country people. 
* 
New York and Standard Time 
There seems to be quite a mix-up of opinion as to 
whether New York State is legally under the new 
time. Many seem to think that daylight saving rep¬ 
resents a Federal law which has nothing to do with a 
State law. These people claim that state and county 
offices may or should operate under the old law. In 
order to make sure about this we asked the Attorney 
General of New York for an opinion. lie says that 
for many years the standard time in the State of 
New York, so far as can be regulated by the act of 
the State, has been established by Section 52 of the 
General Construction Law. This reads as follows: 
The standard time throughout this State is that of the 
75th meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, and 
all courts and public officers, and legal and official pro¬ 
ceedings. shall be regulated thereby. 
The law states that any act required to be per¬ 
formed at or within a prescribed time shall be per¬ 
formed according to standard time. Now this 75tli 
medidian of longitude is the same fixed by the United 
States for the first zone, which is the zone in which 
New York State is located. The Federal law re¬ 
quired that on the last Sunday in March of each year 
the standard time of each zone shall be advanced one 
hour. When this law was passed by Congress, the 
New York Legislature amended its State law, so as 
to provide that the standard time should be ad¬ 
vanced one hour in March, and retarded one hour in 
October. This was done in order to prevent con¬ 
fusion between the State qnd the Federal law. The 
June 21, 1910 
standard time proposed by the State affects all State 
agencies, just as the Federal standard time affects all 
Federal agencies. Thus all State and local officials 
are obliged to recognize the new standard time, and 
all contracts, insurance policies and negotiable in¬ 
struments which fix any time for the performance of 
an act. or for the limitation of any liability, are 
assumed to recognize this standard time. There is 
nothing to prevent individuals, as such, from stat¬ 
ing any time they see fit in their agreements, and of 
course any private citizen may run his clock to suit 
himself. Thus New York has by State legislation 
fallen in with the daylight saving law, and should 
the Federal law he repealed, it would also he neces¬ 
sary for the New York Legislature to make new 
legislation in order to agree with Federal time. 
* 
In Saturday Evening Post it says Department of Ag¬ 
riculture reports advance in farm plow lands in three 
years in whole United State to $74.°>1 from $58.29 per 
acre; also that Iowa is highest, $169; Illinois second, 
$144 per acre. It does not state in words that New 
York has remained stationary, but the inference is plain. 
Why is it, when New York raises more corn per acre on 
the average (10 years, 1908 to 1917, both inclusive, see 
Year Book for 1917, page 609), than either of the others, 
that her lands did not advance in proportion? New 
York’s average, 36.1; Iowa. 34.9; Illinois. 38.9 bushels 
per acre for that 10-year period. What is the matter 
with the honest farmers in New York State? Can’t you 
wake them up with an editorial more expansive than 
anything I have written above? f. av. 
Ballston Spa. N. Y. 
N the first place, we have our doubts about some 
of these figures. There are a number of counties 
in New York State where land sells at a higher figure 
than in any Western State. Acre for acre, the New 
York land is more productive and gives returns 50 
per cent larger. Compare these favored sections 
alone and the advantage would be all with New 
York, both in productive power and in markets. A 
very large part of New York farm lands are rough 
and hilly—not well suited to intensive farming. 
They are mostly pasture lands and naturally low in 
price. Of course the average of these hill lands will 
not equal the value of land in the prairie States, but 
in many cases they offer ^ better bargain at the 
price than the Western land. One great reason for 
the difference in price lies in what we may call the 
spirit of farming. For example, Iowa is an agri¬ 
cultural State. Farming is and ever has been the 
dominant industry. The capital or money in the 
State is largely invested in land. The farms are 
the factories and the farmers are the manufacturers. 
As they control the State, farming becomes the dom¬ 
inant business, and good land becomes the best se¬ 
curity for money. In New York manufacturing, 
money lending and transportation have become the 
dominant industries, and farming for a time lost 
some of its old-time spirit and power. The price of 
farm land declined for many reasons, but largely be¬ 
cause other forms of property were regarded as bet¬ 
ter investments. Thus many of the rougher New 
York farms, in the face of Western competition and 
lack of working capital, lost much of their selling 
value. They were and are still productive and 
capable of turning off a crop value per acre just as 
large as or even larger than the Western lands. 
What is needed more than anything else is the old 
spirit of confidence and contentment which the old- 
time farmers knew. For years our farmers have 
waited, expecting this to be earned and brought back 
to them by the colleges or departments or the poli¬ 
ticians. Now they have learned that all these ele¬ 
ments of power may be made to serve, but that none 
of them, separately or combined, will get very far 
until the farmers themselves boss their own job and 
dominate the situation. They are learning how to 
do this, and have already begun. When they get to¬ 
gether and add 10 cents to the 35-cent dollar, prices 
of New York farm lands will equal those in Iowa 
and Illinois, because good land will then be once 
more the most attractive security for investment. 
Brevities 
Does it pay to harrow the Alfalfa after cutting? 
The trade in grindstones for 1918 amounted to $1,- 
262.602. 
That milk drinker on page 999 proves that a milk 
diet promotes high color. 
How far do you go with Mr. Reynolds (page 998) in 
his idea of farm investments? 
Illinois was the first State to ratify woman suffrage 
—Michigan and Wisconsin following closely. 
Very few hired men know how to swing a hand 
scythe right, and yet $37,125 worth of scythe stones were 
sold last year. 
The Federal migratory bird act has been upheld in 
the courts. A man in Tennessee killed a robin as it flew 
north or south with the season and was convicted under 
the Federal act which protects migratory birds. 
