1708 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER ' 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S TAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Hornet 
Established tsso 
Published weekly by the Knral Publishing Company, 833 Vest 30th Street. New York 
• Herbert W. Colling wood, President and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wjl F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Royle. Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION • ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, $2 M. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
Sts marks, or 10l£ francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post CKTiee as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates; QJ cents per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to us j and cash must accompany transient order's. 
“A SQUARE DEAL" 
We believe that every advertisement in this papol is hacked by a respon¬ 
sible person. We use every possible precaution and admit the advertising of 
reliable houses only. But’to make doubly sure, wo will make good any loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertisements in ou' 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 good 
offices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we will not lie 
responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts 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. 
I enclose an advertisement which may be of interest 
to you. Fifty years is a long stretch; the puff the paper 
got theu it still deserves and some more, because it has 
improved in these years. J. Alvin rereh. 
Doylestown, I’a. 
T HIS advertisement was printed in the old 
Moore's Rural New-York-er oil July 0. INTO. 
It is pleasant to think that many of our readers 
WeW ajo vni i 1 
1 ARUKNT I —BE vr 1riTEAl*J»T IJ! 
A Enterprise. Industry, To fit, Liberality. stmt 
I lie li>m I'v'eot, ifsvc for over twenty years been 
ireely used upon 
MOORE'S RURAL NfcW YORKER 
and as a resitlt it P- now. pm ojniHOPliy. ’ho 
largest. U qa ! a mt cheapest ' 1-m iVer'-.tJ Kv-ra\,J.it- 
crary a.ufT%aV}t wWek’.y in the woild. Tea* of 
thonsauds ol V tdfwawnke j'Oui.kbHU over ihe 
Uoutln cut-, fille and iMimlre the. lit rju. for Its 
superior «I»iifly, salue, lllifstmtluas, style, Ac. 
TOE I’KJ35S AND PEOPLE FRAME IT! 
For example.an erchange si-o'*; ..“Tn«j Rural 
Is the most elegantly ptinLst, ably entued. 
j widely circulated and heartily wrleouw-U pa- 
I per, as n whole, wham nowrlinos Us m<y among 
the pc.onle.” 
« 9 "Yol. XXIri,-b.:g 1 ni .Tuiy 2 . Try It! o n l/ 
.• *150 per volume of VO numbers, or per 3 o.tr. 
; Ler-s ir* duhs. subscribe now. Addx’ess 
D. r*. T. MOORE, 
July ->I nr. Ijf Q * » Ft* rk Kow, N. V. 
remember it. and will now say after half a century 
that it was true then and .is true now. The paper 
then cost -%‘l per year. The dollar in that day hud 
about twice the purchasing power of today. Accord¬ 
ing to that figure we might say that the present 
R. N.-Y. gives six times the old value. 
You have expressed yourself frankly as to those dairy¬ 
men who use oleo. T have made milk for local market 
about all my life. We use milk freely. Also we use 
nut oleomargarine. We shall continue to use it while 
present conditions prevail. K. 1 ,. s. 
K certainly have expressed our opinion of 
dairymen who sell milk or hatter and buy 
oleo for (heir own use. We think they are morally 
wrong and business-blind. While some of tin* butter 
substitutes are sold.for what they arc. the greater 
part, of the trade is a fraud at some point fir place. 
Through this fraud oleo has come to he a menace to 
the dairy industry. And think of the business folly 
of a man who openly strikes at his own industry by 
patronizing a counterfeit. Here is a man who strug¬ 
gles to keep up the price of milk because I 10 knows 
the cost of producing it. He finds the price falling 
because there is a surplus. This “surplus" would 
not be possible if. instead of eating a mixture of 
cotton oil, suet and lard, farmers and country people 
would insist on using pure butterfat. The so-called 
surplus would he used up in supplying butter. Has 
any dairyman the moral right to act in that way? 
We say no. If we are to organize to protect our in¬ 
terests we must be prepared to sacrifice something 
and stand by the business in every detail. The great 
majority of dairymen are doing this. It is hard to 
see a few of them lining up with the enemy—oleo. 
* 
HOFSANDS of our readers are now thrashing 
out the seed of annual Sweet clover from their 
little patch. Prof. Hughes, of the Iowa Foliage, sent 
out over 40.000 little packets of this seed, and many 
of our people were among the number. In our own 
eas'e we let the plants mature well and then beat 
out the seed on a sheet. From these small lots of 
seed there will be a considerable acreage next sea¬ 
son. and this wonderful plant will lx* in general cul¬ 
tivation before many years. The more we sis* of 
this plant and the more we study reports of its be¬ 
havior, the clearer it becomes that this clover is to 
prove a great blessing to farmers on the Atlantic 
slope. Its greatest value with us will be as a ma¬ 
norial plant rather than pasture or hay. The dis¬ 
covery of this new annual clover ranks in impor¬ 
tance with some of the great chemical discoveries 
which have revolutionized industry. 
* 
OST people who come to middle age can remem¬ 
ber the time in their youth when potatoes 
were cooked “with their jackets on.” They were 
not pared before cooking, and in many cases the 
skins, were eaten with the tuber. The modern 
“mashed potato”—a thick paring taken from the 
tuber before it is boiled—has always seemed to us 
about as fiat and unsatisfactory as a mass of paste. 
The thrifty old housekeepers used to say that the 
best part of the potato is wasted when the tuber is 
pared before boiling. These old-timers never 
claimed to be scientists, hut the latest development 
of science shows that they were right. Prof. E. V. 
McCollum, in his new book, shows that the skin of 
the potato and a thin layer of flesh immediately 
under it contain most of the vitamines which are 
found in the tuber. When a potato is pared and 
that paring thrown away, there is a great, loss in 
dietary value, since this “rind” or skin removes the 
vitamines or elements of growth. We should say 
that plain mashed potato makes poor food for a 
growing child. Much the same thing seems to be 
true of the apple. The skin is a necessary part 
and should he beaten. Someone has said that if he 
could have the sugar which the American people 
leave in their coffee cups-through a lack of stirring, 
he would pay a good slice of the interest on the 
national debt ! Give us. the food value thrown away 
in potato parings and we will abolish hunger in 
many a great city. 
* 
T seems to us that the teacher who is forced to 
rely almost entirely upon the text-hook never can 
make the highest type of educator. Text-book edu¬ 
cation is often mechanical. It docs not give the stu¬ 
dent imagination or vision, both of which are needed 
in every human life. Tt is not likely that the best 
teacher can “pass" the best written examination, for 
personality and character count far more than a 
parrot-lilte ability to remember dates or figures. 
(Jen. F, S. Grant was something of a soldier, yet lie 
tells in his “Personal Memoirs" of his inability to 
remember the proper orders for marching his first 
regiment off the parade ground. Although a gradu¬ 
ate of West Point he had forgotten all about tactics, 
and had to relearn the simplest orders for marching 
troops, lie ranked among the great captains in the 
world’s history, yet he could not possibly have passed 
a civil service examination for drill master! There 
are too many cut-and-dried teachers—mostly dried. 
* 
F1MNG the past six weeks we have had no less 
than ."0 letters from men and women asking 
advice about obtaining a divorce. During the year 
we have about 150 of such letters. Some of them 
are pathetic beyond description. They reveal sad 
tragedies in human lift*—incidents which might well 
inspire tin* pen of a novelist. Others are openly au<^ 
brazenly vulgar and shallow. It is evident that 
some of those who write us are nervous and over¬ 
wrought. They have brooded over their troubles 
until imagination magnifies them. It seems evident 
that many of these eases have developed from the 
hasty and ill-advised marriages of soldiers during 
llu* war. Having married in haste and repented at 
leisure, these people now hasten to separate. Some 
of our correspondents seem to have no trusted friend 
in whom they can confide, and so they come to us. 
We appreciate and respect such confidence, but. it 
is next to impossible to give advice. There is no one 
here who believes in divorce—no one who can pose 
as authority on tin* laws governing it. We believe 
that marriage is a sacred and lifelong obligation, 
not to be entered hastily, and not to be broken 
through any whim or desire. We advise our friends 
to do their full duty ami make every reasonable 
sacrifice if need be rather than break the marriage 
tie. If it is necessary to obtain legal advice go to 
some responsible lawyer, and be guided by his 
counsel. 
A S we write this the election is several days off. 
No one knows how it will result, though there 
is a general belief that it is likely to he one-sided in 
most of tin* States. We have seldom had an election 
with less real enthusiasm or national issues in which 
the majority of the people took any particular in¬ 
terest. Neither candidate of,the big parties could 
ever have been nominated in a popular primary 
election. Doth were disappointments to the rank 
and lib* of party men and women. Doth illustrated 
the power of small political groups to dictate nomi¬ 
nations. The fact that they both wore so generally 
supported by the members of their parties shows the 
discipline auU inherent prejudice of the average 
November G, 1920 
member of a political party. Personally, we think 
the Republican party would have split, with the 
stronger half going back to the Progressive party, 
had it not been for a deep-seated feeling against the 
present Administration. All through the campaign 
we found that the dominant sentiment with most of 
the people we met. That was why it was next to 
impossible to fight out the campaign on high moral 
or reform Issues, It is hard to find a parallel in 
American history for this past campaign and tbe 
inferior and subordinate issues which decided it. 
Tt was impossible to get either great party to give 
anything beyond a perfunctory attention to the 
world’s greatest question—the production and dis 
tribution of food and clothing products. There are 
no greater enemies of humanity today than the great 
commercial profiteers who are robbing the producer 
and consumer. Y T et no one has been big or strong 
enough to recognize the fact and make the public 
understand it. We meet those who think this cam¬ 
paign shows that the American people are losing 
their independence and desire for progressive re¬ 
form. We do not think so; in fact, we believe the 
reverse is true. A peculiar combination of circum¬ 
stances growing out of the war enabled the politi¬ 
cians to dictate candidates and policies this year so 
that the average voter had no chance to express his 
true sentiments with his ballot. The people simply 
did the first job that occurred to them. Now they 
will be more than ready for the next one. We are 
in favor of beginning at once to organize a new 
movement for the purpose of forcing newer issues 
in public life. We should begin to do this at once. 
Most reforms fail because they are delayed until the 
politicians have all their plans laid. Right now is 
the time to begin. The people are ready for it. 
:J< 
T HE great chemical show recently held in New 
York was a wonderful display of progress. Com¬ 
paratively few of us realize how much this modern 
generation owes to chemistry, or how much the great 
world war stimulated the industry. In fact the war 
was largely won in tin* laboratories by men who 
could not reach the front line of battle. Germany 
felt strong enough to hold off the world not only be¬ 
cause of her great army, but because she felt that 
her chemists were able to produce new and hideous 
forms of death and destruction. When she first let 
loose her clouds of poison gas the Allied soldiers 
were utterly unprepared for it. The gas could not he 
fought with ordinary weapons. Chemists and in¬ 
ventors were required instantly to devise gas masks 
and new chemicals. The very latest, of these devices 
were shown at this great exhibition. This is only 
one instance of what chemistry did during the war. 
The development of explosives has been little short 
of frightful. The most remarkable progress has been 
made in the manufacture of dyes. Refore the war 
Germany had practically a monopoly of this indus¬ 
try. Now the Americans have mastered it, and the 
German monopoly has gone forever. Factories for 
making dyes are springing up in Ibis country, and 
so closely are these dyes connected with explosives 
that in case of war but a few days would be needed 
to switch from the making of these colors to tbe 
production of explosives. As one walks through this 
great exhibition he is forced to wonder what will 
happen when these great chemists turn their atten¬ 
tion to the production of artificial food! "Will it bo 
possible to feed the human being of the future ou 
synthetic forms of food, or upon forms now indiges¬ 
tible made available by chemistry? The wiser chem¬ 
ists appear to think there are few possibilities in 
that line. The soil will still feed mankind, through 
the labor of the farmer. Chemistry will help him 
with new methods and materials, but we must still 
look to the earth for food. 
Brevities 
TnE biting dog never barks, lie does not waste en¬ 
ergy on sound. 
Many of us would do well to eat more cornmcal dur¬ 
ing cold weather. 
And never forget that you can safely spread ground 
limestone ou top of the ground. 
We have found a shoemaker named John Sole ami a 
cornet player named James Solo. 
You people who go on long auto trips through lonely 
places, do you need to carry pistols or other weapons? 
Many a boy has been made more or less worthless by 
a doting aunt. What i-s the antidote for the doting 
aunty? 
Many an old pasture too rough and stony- to plow 
can be brought into better grass by using acid phosphate 
iind ground limestone, right on top of tin* ground. 
The Ohio Experiment Station says that this past sea¬ 
son has 'been very favorable for germ diseases of plants. 
Where soil is used for hothouse crops it should l>e hilly 
sterilized before using. Otherwise there will be trouble. 
