1732 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
November 13, 1920 
To Bed, Warm and Happy 
Warm bedrooms for the children! All the rooms, 
floors and halls warm and comfortable all winter long! 
Today, thousands have these great comforts in their 
homes at so little cost that many write us saying 
they wonder why they didn’t put in their Inter¬ 
national Onepipe sooner. The Onepipe’s triple 
inner casing keeps their cellars cool. 
Scientific construction gives it great fuel econ¬ 
omy. Three-quarters of a century experience mak¬ 
ing Boilers and Furnaces under the trade name 
International, which are recognized to be of 
the highest grade in design and workmanship, as¬ 
sures you in the International Onepipe the greatest 
volume of heat from the least fuel of any kind. 
Send for catalog, chart and 
question blank and get free, 
unbiased heating advice from 
our experienced engineers. 
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AIR 
ASCENDING 
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UTICA, N. Y. 
COLD 
AIR 
DESCENDING 
V 7 A 
TRIPLE INNER 
CASING 
GALVANIZEO IRON 
ASBESTOS PARER 
CORRUGATED TIN 
HUMIDIFIER 
Earn Pin Money at Home 
by crocheting bootees, sacques, ladies’ 
vests and shawls- Steady homework. We 
pay parcel post charges both ways. 
SIMON ASCHER & CO., Inc. 
134th St. and 3rd Ave. NEW YORK CITY 
HISS 
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JOIN THE 
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See Page 1753 
F Anil STATIONERY PRINTED for Poultrymen, Stockmen, 
h II K Nl etc. It pays 'o make your letters look businesslike. 
K Mil III Samples printed Envelopes and Letter Heads for any 
IniBlneas, postpaid, free. R. N. Howie, Printer, Beebe Plain,Vt. 
a gents w anted 
Active, reliable, on salary, to 
take subscriptions for Rural 
New-Yorker in New Eng¬ 
land. Prefer men who have 
horse or auto. 
Address :— 
The Rural New-Yorker 
333 W. 30th Street New York City 
When you write advertisers mention 
The Rural New-Yorker and you’ll act 
a quick reply and a “square deal.” See 
guarantee editorial page. : : : 
f -MR. FARMER 
IT’S WORTH YOUR WHILE TO GET 
SOME INFORMATION ABOUT 
BARIUM- 
PHOSPHATE 
AN* ALKALINE FERTILIZER 
Containing 
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7% BARIUM SULPHIDE 
and 
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Headquarter, also for all 
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Nitrate ot Soda, Potash Salts 
GROUND PHOSPHATE ROCK 
Witherbee, Sherman & Company 
2 Rector Street, New York City 
I 
j&t the hair do with the hic& 
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repaired and made like new. 
We mount large and •mall game, buck 
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[ESTER. PUR DRESSING CO, 
655 WEST AVE. 
^ROCHESTER TT . V. 
Things To Think About 
The object of this department is to give readers a chance to express themselves on farm 
matters. Not lonp articles can be used—just short, pointed opinions or suggestions. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER does not always endorse what is printed here. You might 
call this a mental safety valve 
A Genuine Farm Woman Talks 
After spending 32 years as a farm wife 
and mother, and filling to the best of my 
ability the place of cook, washerwoman, 
scrubber, milkmaid, poultry-keeper, gar¬ 
den-tender, baby-minder, turkey-raiser, 
quilt-piecer, patcher, doctor, nurse, school- 
marm. and other positions too numerous 
to mention, I find the clouds more num¬ 
erous than sunshine. The tasks of the 
average housewife are no doubt like my 
own. and willingly we shoulder the wheel 
and push on, but where does it lead us 
or our children? 
When my firtft baby, a girl. w*>s born, 
as I looked at her big owl-like brown 
eyes, I dreamed dreams of how I should 
educate her and mold her life. When 
she was two a- sister came along, and 
every two, three or four years there was 
an addition, until they numbered seven. 
We might have managed to give two or 
even three some advantages, but the in¬ 
come was ever less than the outgo, and 
with school three miles distant it’s pre¬ 
cious little educational advantage they 
have ever had. The two oldest are mar¬ 
ried and following in my footsteps. Praise 
God the next four are hoys, and are able 
to find a bit of enjoyment, in life, beyond 
that of working like a galley slave 16 
hours a day. 
We were renters when the older chil¬ 
dren were smaller, and they had better 
school facilities than the ones now at 
home. We purchased a poor, run-down 
farm, not far from a school building. 
The trustees got busy and tore down 
four school buildings and built a con- 
solid^ed school. As to how it was 
worked is of local interest, only, but 
1 many poor children were left without 
school facilities. At the present we are 
paying 65 cents school tax and no school, 
and never a year but what from three 
to half a dozen children sicken and die 
from the long walks and exposures to the 
biting co’d. Think of a little fellow fac¬ 
ing the biting winds and freezing snow 
on a long three-mile walk, after four 
o’clock on a Winter day. and you can 
imagine why Tennessee had such a high 
per cent of illiterates. 
I don’t mind the work, for I have 
worked ever since I was large enough to 
drive the cows to pasture, and stand on 
a chair to wash dishes, or reach the 
churn handle. I’ve never known any¬ 
thing else but work, hut I do mind paying 
for something T don’t receive. You say 
you don’t want advice or guesswork. 
I’ve only this to say: We mothers at 
last are given the privilege of the ballot 
box. If head-work, heart-work and team¬ 
work can accomplish anything I want, 
first, more schools and better ones: sec¬ 
ond. the mavragenble age raised to 21 for 
girls and 25 for boys, and should like to 
see some remedy to regulate children to 
incomes, and the % ability of parents to 
make instead of marring the human be¬ 
ings intrusted to their care. 
TENNESSEE READER. 
Honey and Abandoned Hillside 
I have just been reading your advice 
to a “New England Raek-to-the-lrmder.” 
I happen to own a farm in a hilly sec¬ 
tion of Maine, and it is a puzzle to me 
to know what to do with it T am firmly 
convinced that fully .two-thirds of the 
farrt] area is not adapted to farming. 
About one-third is woodlot and another 
third should be. I think, as I believe it 
would pay a bigger dividend to reforest 
it than to try to farm it. Even as pas¬ 
ture it doesn’t amount to anytb'ng, be¬ 
cause the stock pastured usually eat 
their heads ofT during the Winter and 
let their Summer hoard bill go unpaid. 
So T believe that, everything considered, 
the only practical thing to do with thrae- 
ouarters of the area of the three Northern 
New England States is to let them go 
back to the forest. 
Now the question comes : “What kinds 
of timber shall we reforest with?" To 
the average farmer reforestation does not 
appeal at all if done solely with the ob¬ 
ject of producing timber. He has to wait 
too long for his money as a rule. So 
that brings us to another great question : 
“Could we not find forest trees to raise 
which would produce food?" After mak¬ 
ing a study of the subject I have come to 
the conclusion that we might possibly 
do so. The maples of Northern New 
England have not only produced fine tim¬ 
ber, but also great quantities of the 
finest maple sugar and syrup in the 
world. Tint of course it. takes a long 
time to grow a tree to size large enough 
to tap, so- the idea of reforestation with 
sugar maples would probably not appeal 
to the average farmer. But there is one 
tree left, however, which is a very rapid 
grower, and which produces sweets of 
the finest kind, and begins to produce 
them at a very young age. I mean the 
basswood, which is one of the most pro¬ 
lific sources of honey in the North. A. I. 
Root, the great authority on bees, set 
out several thousand basswoods for his 
bees, and believes the scheme a good one. 
He said that five years after planting 
they began to yield blossoms, lie tells 
some rather fish-like stories about the 
records some single swarms of bees made 
gathering basswood honey. H<> tel's of 
• me swarm that gathered in <500 pounds 
of it in about 30 days. (See his “A B C 
of Beekeeping”). The basswood is a very 
rapid grower, and a very valuable tim¬ 
ber when grown. Why would it not bo 
feasible to reforest with basswood and 
keep bees? If the rough New England 
hillsides could be set to maples and bas- 
wood, and bees kept (as those little 
slaves could gather honey off those steep 
hillsides a good deal easier than man or 
beast could gather anything else off 
them), then those rough hillsides might, 
become « great source of supply of the 
finest sweets used in the United States 
As they are to day they are not much 
account to anybody. Let me hear your 
opinion on the subject. g. f. \v. 
Maine. 
A Labor Man on Prices 
I have been much interested in the 
“Hired Man’s Wages in Farm Products,” 
page 1633 I would like to see a com¬ 
parison with 1908. Wages at $40 per 
month, $9 23 per week. If my memory 
serves me right it would be something 
like the following: 
1920 
I ton hay, $3 50 baling. $21.50 
150-lh. hog at. 16c... 24.00 
Small calf. 130 lbs. at 17c. 2240 
II bu. wheat at $2.15. 23.05 
225 qts. milk at 10c. 22.50 
93 doz. corn at 23c. 21 30 
350 eggs at 6c. 2+00 
3 crates strawberries at 10.5c qt. 21.00 
1908 
I ton hay, 8—$1.50 baling. .$7.50+$1.73 
150-lb. hog at 5c. 7.50-j- 173 
Small calf. 8.00 1.23 
II bu. wheat at 80c. 8.80+ .43 
225 qts. milk at 3%c. 8 87+ 1.36 
93 doz. corn at 10c.. 9 30— .07 
350 eggs at 20c doz. 5.76+ 3.47 
3 crates-strawberries, 108 qts. 
at 5c qt.•-5.40+ 3.83 
As to peaches and’ apples, he says bas¬ 
kets. I do not know how much said bn ,- 
kets contain; all I know is that peach's 
and apples on fruit stauds are 2 lbs. for 
25c, or 26 quarters per bu., or $6.50. Of 
course I know the farmer does not get 
this and won’t “until he does it himself” 
Now compare the above with high 
wages of a skilled laborer who is doing 
twice what was done in 1908. Mv age is 
p°st 60 in 1920, the man or men in 1908, 
-5 to 30, same place, same work, same 
machines. My pay in 1908 was 35c per 
hour; in 1920, 66c per hour. Below is a 
comparison of what I could buy with one 
hour’s work : 
In 1 908 one hours’ work would buy: 
3 llis. bacon at 12e, 36c; 6 qts. beans at 
6c. 36c; 3 lbs. corned beef at 12c, 36c; 
12 lbs. cabbage at 3c. 36c; 18 lbs. turnips 
at 2c. 36c ; 3 lbs. salt fish. 36c; 31 eggs 
at 20c doz., 35.2c; 1 pair overalls for 2 
hours’ work, 75e; 1 bed sheet for 2 hours’ 
work ; 1 pair suspenders. 35c. 
In 1920 one hour’s work would buy: 
1 lb. of bacon. 2 qts. beans. 2 lbs. corned 
beef. 70c; 5 lbs. cabbage, 75c; 5 lbs. tur¬ 
nips. 75c; 2 lbs. salt fish. 70c; 1 doz eggs, 
84c; 1 pair overalls, $2.97; 1 bed sheet, 
$2 85 ; 1 pair suspenders, $1 35. 
Same way with everything else except 
salt and plain water, and one can hardly 
live on these. 
Now I don’t blame the farmer for these 
prices, or for my lessened buying power 
p.er hour, or lessened standard of living, 
with an increased cost of family expense, 
as my children are larger now and cost 
more, even at 1908 prices. What I blame 
the farmer for is his constant talk about 
labor and labor cost, when labor (even if 
it. has been increased two or even three 
times its former rate), has to lower his 
pre-war standard of living, even his 1908 
standard of living, because his increased 
pay trill not buy as much now or in 1919 
as his low wages in 1908. A man’s real 
pay is what he gets in things to eat, drink 
and wear, and his house in which to live, 
and not in dollar marks or numbers. 
On the other hand, the farmer (and I 
am in sympathy with him and know be 
does not get what belongs to him) gets 
more of almost everything he buys, even 
labor, for the same amount of produce 
now as in 1908. 
Labor is willing to meet you more than 
half way. Mr. Farmer; you have “Let 
George do it” too long, and George now 
thinks he has you by the heels. And 
George is an expensive man, both for 
you and the consumer. Now, when you 
discharge George and try to do it yourself, 
labor and the consumer toill meet, you and 
help. Help? Who? What? Help you 
to put your product in the consumer’s 
hands without the one, two, three or four 
or five Georges through whose hands it 
now passes, who take a nibble at it be¬ 
sides their toll. c. M. T. 
Massachusetts. 
“Brakeman, are you positive this tram 
will stop at Gary?” Fully half a dozen 
times the fussy old lady had asked the 
question, and the man began to lose pa¬ 
tience “Now, look here, madam,” he re¬ 
plied finally, “this is an express to Gary, 
and if we*don’t stop there then you’ll be 
in the biggest smash-up you ever heard 
,.f!” New York Globe. 
