568 
7ht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BUSINESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban llometi 
Established 1850 
Fubllrlitd ttcrlly by the Knral Pnbliiblnff Company. 333 West 30lh Strret, Sf» York 
Herbert W. CollikgwoOD, Pic-Kident and Editor. 
John J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. K. I>n.T.os'. Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Koyi.e. Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION : ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, 82.01. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
81$ marks, or 101$ francs. Jieinit in money order, express 
order, personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates. 11.00 per agate line—7 words. References required for 
advertisers unknown to ns ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“ A SQUARE DEAL” 
We lielieve 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 wiJl make good any loss 
to paid subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading 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 good 
offices to this end, but such cases should not be confused with dishonest 
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 ns within one month o t the time of 
the transaction, and to identify it. you should mention The Rural New- 
Yorker when writing the advertiser. 
T IIE season starts with a threatened calamity for 
the farmers and fruit growers on the Atlantic 
coast, south of New York. Late March was much 
l : ke May. and with the mild and balmy air the buds 
opened until peach and apple were well out, while 
strawberries were advanced. Then like a sudden 
flash of steel came the dry blizzard of March 20, the 
temperature falling over 50 degrees in 80 hours. We 
cannot tell, for a week or so. just how much damage 
was done, but the loss will be heavy all through the 
fruit and gardening sections. The loss from the 
strawberry crop will he severe, as many growers had 
what seemed like sure prospects with this crop to 
offset some of the losses from last year. As the 
season opens it does not seem possible that the heavy 
crops of the last few years can ever be realized this 
season. 
* 
T HE American Farm Bureau Federation has a 
committee on marketing, known as the Comuiit- 
tee of Seventeen. This committee is studying the 
tricks and turns of the grain market, as they have 
not been turned inside out before. Here is one 
story: 
Two years ago some corn started from South America 
to the United States. The market price of corn in Chi¬ 
cago was. at that, time, approximately .$1.50 a bushel. 
The report of corn being imported was circulated broad¬ 
cast, and farmers were advised on every hand to sell. 
The price of corn declined to approximately $1 a bushel. 
Then, before the next crop of corn was produced, that 
same corn went to approximately $2 a bushel. Without 
another bushel of corn being produced in the entire 
world, we have the price of corn changing from $1.50 
down to $1 and then up to $2 a bushei. We farmers 
have come to believe that there is something funda¬ 
mentally wrong with a price determining machine that 
will function in that manner; when farmers must take 
a loss on a market that pays only $1 a bushel and con¬ 
sumers must pay for food products on the basis of that 
grain costing $2 a bushel. 
Many of the imports of foreign food products into 
this country are not large enough of themselves to 
prove any great damage to the market. They are 
often small shipments, but they give speculators ami 
dealers a chance to frighten the trade. The imports 
are magnified by newspaper reports, with the result 
that prices for American goods are driven down. 
Farmers lose money while, later, prices to consumers 
are boosted. That trick was played last Fall with 
small shipments of Danish potatoes. It has been 
played with imported eggs and butter. No one bene¬ 
fits except the speculators, for the government lias 
received no revenue from such shipments, which have 
only made trouble and expense. Aside from the rev¬ 
enue it will bring, a tariff will regulate such ship¬ 
ments, and shut off most of this speculative game. 
* 
M ANY of us consider the revival of the rural 
church one of the most important needs of 
modern farm life. Many of the brighter and stronger 
clergymen prefer a pastorate in town. The car and 
improved roads have made it easy for country people 
to drive to town for church services, and in time 
they come to think that church worship is about all 
there is to religion. Then in many back country 
neighborhoods the younger people have left and the 
change of business conditions has reduced financial 
incomes. All these things have contributed to the 
decay of the rural church. Tn many localities it has 
dropped much of the fine, beautiful spirit and neigh¬ 
borhood work which in older days did so much for 
the country. Many efforts to improve the rural 
church seem to start in the wrong way. What the 
uplifters seem to have in mind does not seem to he a 
country church at all. but a city church very loosely 
fastened to the rural foundation. The rural com¬ 
munity does not need eloquent preaching and up-to- 
date service half as much as it needs patient, kindly 
and practical Christianity among the people. We 
think that the price of potatoes or milk or chickens 
or wheat should and will have an influence upon the 
neighborhood religion, so that men and women may 
rejoice in the size of the gift they are permitted to 
curry to the altar. Those who read Mr. Hilbert's 
“Pastoral Parson",letters know that he serves sev¬ 
eral churches in a lonely and somewhat discouraging 
land. It is not unusual for him to reach the church 
early and cut the hair of a few of his hearers before 
service, and then boil a kettle of clam chowder or 
stow on the church stove as part of a hot dinner. 
Some of our readers seem to think this is rather un¬ 
dignified. hut our observation is that there may he 
more true religion in a hair-cut or a plate of hot 
slew than in many a sermon containing more flowers 
than faith. 
tk 
HE Lackawanna Railroad lies reduced its freight 
rates on milk from the North Jersey territory 
to Hoboken. Newark. Paterson. Montclair and inter¬ 
mediate points. They became effective March 22, 
and range from 2% to 7 cents a can. W. F. Grif¬ 
fiths. traffic manager of the railroad, states that the 
reductions will affect the Sussex branch, the Passaic 
and Delaware branch, the Kenvil-Ohester branch and 
the Hampton-Changewater branch. For 40-quart 
cans carried from one to 40 miles, the rate will drop 
from 80% to 84 cents. For those carried from 40 to 
100 miles, the rate will drop from 41 to 84 cents. It 
would seem that producers are entitled to the bene¬ 
fits from this reduction in the cost of delivery, since 
it is admitted that the price is far below the cost 
of production. But it is a pretty safe guess that the 
benefit will go to the distributor. 
* 
OW comes another new hook on vitamines by 
Benjamin Hamm, who describes what he calls 
a new weapon in the war against disease. The vita- 
mines are the essential growth elements in our food, 
without which even a full supply of protein and fat 
could not long maintain normal life. Dr. I-Iarron, 
like the other investigators, shows that milk and its 
products contain these vitamines. and thus become 
the most necessary of all our foods. For example, in 
one hospital there were many cases of pellagra 
among the patients, hut not one among tin* * nurses or 
doctors. Tt was found that the latter used milk in 
their diet, while the patients had little or none. 
When milk was supplied to them the pellagra magic¬ 
ally disappeared. It has now been demonstrated be¬ 
yond any doubt that milk is the greatest of all pro¬ 
tective foods. It ranks-with sunshine, air and pure 
wa“er as the essential elements in developing human 
life. For it is safe to say that air. sunshine and 
water, used in all abundance, would he unable to 
promote the life of a child or maintain the life of an 
invalid without the aid of a pure milk supply. Thus 
of all the nation’s producers the dairyman becomes 
the most important. His product is most essential. 
Now is the time for dairymen to organize and ad¬ 
vertise their goods so as to make the public swallow 
three glasses of milk where one is swallowed now. 
There is greater need than ever for milk, because as 
rice and grains are “purified” or cleaned, more and 
more of the vitamines are taken out of them, and 
more and more of milk must be consumed with them. 
Who can put these facts before the public better than* 
the dairymen themselves? 
* 
EW YORK farmers who grow crops for the can¬ 
ning factories have a State association. They 
have agreed upon what they consider a fair price 
for their crops, and refuse to sign contracts until 
the canners meet them. The canners; or at least 
some of them, refuse to deal with the association, 
but offer an unsatisfactory contract to individuals. 
These canners claim that the law under which the 
Dairymen’s League, the fruit packers and other co¬ 
operative associations were formed, is unconstitu¬ 
tional. and that therefore these organizations are 
illegal. This would include the wool association and 
the Grange Exchange. Our opinion is that this is a 
cheap and noisy bluff’ put up by these canners in a 
desperate effort to break up the growers’ association 
by frightening the weak-kneed members and getting 
them to sign individual contracts. With that done, 
they figure that the association would break apart, 
lose its identity and thus its power to enforce a fair 
contract. We cannot imagine that the men who have 
stood up so bravely for the past few years, and de¬ 
veloped their organization, will now run before the 
storm. Stand together. The tempest will he more 
like a rain of dried peas—there may he thunder in 
it. hut the growers can provide the lightning. 
sk 
N EW JERSEY farmers demand a law prohibiting 
the use of substitute fats in making ice cream. 
Why not? What is ice cream supposed- fo he but a 
April 0, 1021 
frozen mixture of milk or cream, sugar and “flavor¬ 
ing?" No matter what it is supposed to he, we all 
know uli.it it often tastes like—a frozen pudding 
mad? of a l'ttle milk, much vegetable oil. cornstarch 
and chemical coloring. Such a compound* has no 
more right to he called "ice cream" than one o-f the 
draped wire frames in a milliner's store has to the 
name of woman. The bogus ice cream is a greater 
fraud than oieo brazenly parading under the name 
of butter. Frost, like fire, wipes out a multitude of 
sins, and almost anything that will hold together 
goes as “ice cream" on a hot day. Tt is time this 
fraud was taken off the ice and well aired. It is an 
outrage on the good old cow—the only producer of 
the cream—to sell coeoamit oil and cornstarch as 
“ice cream.” 
* 
D URING the past year many readers have asked 
about using glazed tile in place of metal pipe 
for carrying water to the house. The tiles are 
cleaner, hut will they stand the strain? We have 
not been able to find the figures showing how much 
pressure file of this sort will stand. The water will 
be cleaner so long as the tile remains whole, but 
several cases are reported where typhoid fever was 
traced to a break in the line. The glazed tiie is far 
more likely to break than the metal, and while the 
danger from a break in a farm line would he less 
serious than on a line through a town, there is 
always possibility of trouble. Gan anyone tell us 
how much pressure ordinary tile will stand? 
5k 
O NE of our Florida readers sends us a plant of 
the new “Hubam” clover in full bloom. This 
seed was started November 1. and we judge the 
plant to he at least 5 feet high. This clover can be 
seeded in Florida about September 1. give fine pas¬ 
ture through the Winter, and then he plowed under 
as green manure, or three manorial crops may be 
grown in one year! It. is rare to find a plant which 
succeeds over such a wide range of territory, for we 
have reports of great success with it from Nova 
Scotia. We have thought that this clover would 
prove most valuable on the North Atlantic slope, 
where it can he planted in early Spring in time to 
] rovide humus for a late crop the same season. If 
it will grow as reported in Florida and other Gulf 
States it will prove even more useful there. But 
while we are waiting for seed of this new clover let 
us not forget our old friend the biennial clover, 
whi^ch has served us so long. 
5k 
Tn a recent paragraph about New York’s new ve¬ 
hicular tunnel the engineers who are building it estimate 
that by 1040 there will be no horse-drawn vehicles in 
New York City. I would appreciate your opinion. 
s. j. E. 
O F It opinion as to what is to occur 20 years hence 
is worth no more than yours or of 10,000.000 
other citizens. One thing is sure—the horse can 
never lie eliminated from farm work. We think 
there will he a greater demand than ever for big 
work horses. The car has not driven the driving 
and running'horses off the earth. Both trotters and 
runners are making new records, and if anything 
there is a movement back into trotting horse breed¬ 
ing. As to city work there is a desire to get rid of 
horses on account of cleanliness, hut they are still a 
necessity at certain times. We have seen many days 
when in the snowy and sloppy streets not a gas- 
driven wheel could turn, and all transportation de¬ 
pended on the faithful horse. Man cannot control 
the weather, and if the horse is driven from this city 
there will be times in every Winter when all street 
transportation will stand still. No one can tell what 
is to happen, hut our guess is that our friend the 
horse will remain on deck. 
Brevities 
The Connecticut Legislature has voted to permit no 
legal change in standard time. Massachusetts will 
probably retain daylight saving- the only Eastern State 
to do so. 
New Jersey farmers have run upon a State law 
which prohibits them from insuring their crops as is done 
in other States. They are after new legislation to 
remedy this. 
Some Western farmers claim good success in seeding 
Dwarf Essex rape with oats. The oats make fodder or 
grain in due season and the rape comes on to make good 
late pasture for poultry or hogs. 
It is not generally known that (he United States Gov¬ 
ernment is in the fur business. These furs are secured 
in Alaska, chiefly seal and fox. At a recent sale the 
government furs brought $4,398,255.50. 
Ants often carry aphis or plant lice up into trees and 
set them at work breeding and feeding on the leaves. 
The ants are after the honeydew which the plant lice 
secrete. One way of protecting a few trees is to bin! 
strips of cotton batting around the trunk of the tree. 
This catches the ants as they try to cross it. They are 
tangledlin the cotton and can be killed. 
