762 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE BV SIX ESS FARMER'S RAVER 
A NiUlonnl Weekly Journal for Country and Suburban Home* 
Established I860 
Pobliibcd nrrkly by the Rnr»l I’libllibinr Company, 338 Wnl SOili Slr-pt. r«rk 
Herbert W. Cou.i.vowoon, PreKiilent ami Editor. 
John - J. Dii.ixin, Treasurer and General Manager. 
Wm. F. DnxoN. Secretary. .Mrs. E. T. Royle. Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION < ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries in the Universal Postal Union, *2.04. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
f'.'A marks, or lOtfe francs. Remit in money order, express 
orders personal check or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates, *1.00 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 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. Wo arc 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 eases should not lie confused with dishonest 
transactions. We protect subscribers against rogues, but we will not be 
responsible for the debts of honest bankrupts sanctioned bv 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. 
It lias been my custom ever since my son began farm¬ 
ing for himself some years ago to forward bis subscrip¬ 
tion to The It. N.-Y. as a New Year’s present. I regret 
to say that our boy is now lying at a city hospital 
following a more than usually serious operation, where 
he will be obliged to remain for some time yet. The 
nurses have just told him that he can how read some to 
pass the time, and the first thing he asked for was The 
Rural New-Yorker. I confess that request touched 
me in a tender spot; all kinds of magazines at hand, 
but that The R. N.-Y. came first shows what a true 
friend it is. WILLIAM A. WEIGIITMAN. 
Illinois. 
T HAT does ns more good Ilian anything we have 
heard in a long time. It is evidence of that 
enduring friendship which is the finest thing in life. 
* 
I N several sections of Maine there is trouble be¬ 
tween the farmers and the sweet corn canners. 
Sweet corn grows well in Maine, and is a popular 
canning crop. This year the canners are closing 
some of their factories on the claim that the market 
is filled with unsold goods. We were curious to see 
what farmers would do when deprived of this mar¬ 
ket for sweet corn. Here is one typical report from 
a farmer: 
The farmers bore in Maine raise sweet corn for can¬ 
ning factories and take the money they get for it and 
buy yellow corn to feed their stock. Now they can 
raise yellow corn just as easily as they can the sweet, 
and will have the fodder for their silos, for there is 
nothing in fodder in the sweet corn. Then they would 
bo saving tin' freight rate, which is so high, all the way 
from Illinois and Kansas. The great trouble with most 
of our farmers is they have got into a rut of buying 
stuff that they can just as well raise themselves. 
It would be hard for anyone to state an economic 
truth more concisely than this man has done. Many 
of us have fallen into a roundabout way of doing 
business, which is well illustrated by this case. The 
chief business of these farmers is dairying or live 
stock keeping, and the basis of that is grain feeding. 
They raise sweet corn as a cash crop, and then turn 
around and pay that cash out for cornmeal and other 
feed. In that way they pay tribute to half a dozen 
middlemen, like the feed dealer, railroad man, job¬ 
ber, and all the rest. When they raise the yellow or 
field corn they cut these middlemen out and have 
more feed. They do not. handle so much cash per¬ 
haps, but what is the advantage in handling cash if 
none of it sticks to the fingers? The fact is we have 
built up a system of farming which means paying 
tribute to a host of middlemen who merely perform 
a service which we can perform just as well our¬ 
selves. Sometimes it needs a so-called calamity to 
make us see the point. 
* 
T HERE is one thing about American agriculture 
which the politicians and the city men do not 
seem able to grasp. You cannot permanently in¬ 
crease farm production until you make it profitable. 
And you have got to make the profit a natural one— 
not built up by any bonus or Government presents 
to farmers. Make the conditions of trade and dis¬ 
tribution fair, so that all may have a chance, and 
production will take care of itself. Under our pres¬ 
ent system population is crowded into trie cities and 
towns. Owners of real estate and those who cater 
to the wants and pleasures of the people want to 
keep up or increase this immense city population. 
That, means a great income from rents and service. 
In order to keep all this up it is necessary to take 
05 cents or more of the consumer’s dollar for the 
city, sending 35 cents back to the farmer. So long 
as that goes on the problem of food production will 
remain a nightmare. It will never he settled until 
at least half the consumer’s dollar gets hack to the 
farm producer. 
* 
When I first began farming, in 1904, I had a dream 
that sometime we would have a small tractor which 
could be used for plowing and harrowing. {Saturday 
we plowed a six-acre field and disked it once over in 
IOV 2 hours. I am wondering what improvements the 
next 20 years will bring forth. B. 
Illwas on a farm where in old pioneer times 
the crudest implements were probably used. It 
is a long jump from oxen and a wooden harrow to 
the job of fitting six acres in one day,!. As for what 
is coming during the next 20 years, we think the 
tendency will he toward more careful culture rather 
than larger operations. We have in the past 10 
years made great advances in the act or art of pro¬ 
ducing crops. Now we think progress is more likely 
to run along the lines of selling and distribution. 
On the whole, that is needed more now than increase 
of production. We have always produced more than 
the public needed, but through faulty distribution 
millions have not been properly fed or clothed, while 
fine class has grown rich at the expense of another. 
Take a case where a man grows string beans for a 
canning factory. He is paid two cents a pound— 
one pound furnishing the material for a can of fin¬ 
ished product. These cans -el 1 at, say $1.25 per 
dozen. That means a 20-ecnt dollar, the canner, of 
course, paying for the cans. It does not seem likely 
that any great improvement in methods or process 
of cultivation will he of great, future benefit to that 
grower. The thing that will help him most is the 
business improvement that will give him more of 
that final 10 cents a can without, robbing some one 
else of any legitimate share. It is along that line, 
we think, that future improvement will be made. 
* 
OME of the neglected cemeteries in the country 
are sad enough in their appearance. Many of 
them are private or farm burial places. They were 
started when the country was new and unsettled— 
each farm family using a corner for their dead. We 
know of such private grounds where there are now 
50 or more graves. The old families die out or move 
away, and strangers take the place—strangers who 
often have little respect or reverence for such things. 
One of *mr readers, an elderly woman, tells us how 
she made a long journey hack to her girlhood home, 
chiefly to see the old cemetery where her parents are 
buried. .She found a shocking state of affairs. A 
new owner had knocked many of the gravestones 
over so as to make a better pasture for his cows and 
sheep. He proposed to take out all the stones later, 
plow the ground and plant corn. In this case it was 
found that right to the cemetery had been reserved 
in the original deed. That will he found true of 
many, but even if some vandal he denied the right 
to desecrate such hallowed spots, if left alone they 
will soon grow up to a tangle of weeds and briers. 
“Arc ire so soon forgotten when icc are gone ?” 
That sad question rises in mind whenever we view 
these poor neglected specimens of “God’s Acre.” 
Here is good work for the Grange or for some public 
spirited organization in keeping those old places 
reasonably neat. 
T HE daily papers in New York City have given 
much space lately to a long list of questions 
which Thomas A. Edison is said to offer whenever 
men present themselves for employment in his com¬ 
pany. There were some 150 of rhe questions, cover¬ 
ing history, geography, chemistry, mathematics and 
various other branches of education. It is not at all 
likely that Mr. Edison could have answered 25 per 
cent of them when he started—as the men he employs 
are starting. The average mail of 50 who would be 
considered reasonably successful could not answer 
half of them to save his life. As a memory test to 
prove a wide course of reading they might have 
value, but if a man expects to be an expert workman 
in any particular line he could not afford to charge 
his memory fully with all this matter. We do not 
think it wise to develop a child’s mind into an ency¬ 
clopedia of all knowledge. It is better to make it an 
index and to encourage the “dictionary habit,” so 
that the child or man may know where to go for 
such information, and not try to carry it all in his 
head. We would rather teach the child to lead a 
life of investigation, and not try to “know it all’ 
at once. 
* 
N a book entitled “Roman Farm Management” we 
find the following foot note: 
Cato was a strong advocate of the cabbage; ho called 
it the best of the vegetables and urged that it be planted 
in every garden for health and happiness. Horace 
records'(Odes, 111, 21, 11) that old Cato’s virtue was 
frequently wanned with wine, and Cato himself explains 
(CLVI.) how this could be accomplished without loss 
of dignity, for, he says, if after you have dined well, 
you will eat five cabbage leaves they will make you feel 
as if you had had nothing to drink, so that you can 
drink as much more as you wish. 
If that be so, our Prohibition friends will hardly 
accept the cabbage as our national flower, We cer- 
May 28, 1921 
lainly have seen people who can consume immense 
quantities of beer and sauerkraut. Perhaps this 
practice advocated by Cato will explain it. 
I T becomes evident that certain city interests have 
developed a plan for holding farmers in their 
place. “Class legislation” is to be the slogan. When¬ 
ever any plan is proposed to benefit agriculture, we 
shall have it denounced as “class legislation.” Fed¬ 
eral land hanks, agricultural education, agricultural 
departments, any of the plans for improving farm 
life, will he bitterly attacked. The very men who do 
this will belong to groups which have benefited more 
from class legislation than any other people in the 
country. The unequal distribution of wealth and 
power in this country is due to class legislation of 
the most vicious type. So long as farmers were un¬ 
organized the men who control things were willing 
to let them have education in exchange for “business 
legislation.” It was expected that farmers would 
be “good” and remain satisfied with what they were 
getting. Now, however, the farmers are learning 
something of their power through organization, and 
they want 15 cents added to the 35-cent dollar. This 
15 cents belongs to them, and they are out to get it. 
The interests in town and city which have been steal¬ 
ing the 15 cents realize that if the farmer can organ¬ 
ize so as to protect himself the present robbers will 
be forced to disgorge. Their line of battle will be to 
claim that all legislation designed to give the farmer 
a square deal is “class legislation.” As a matter of 
fact they know, as everyone else does, that it is im¬ 
possible to benefit our farmers without benefiting the 
entire country. Agriculture is now so completely our 
foundation industry that you cannot give it legisla¬ 
tive help without helping every industry in the nation 
except the “industry” which robs the farmer. 
* 
D URING the past Winter we have had at least 
50 calls for help in cases like the following. 
This is one actual ease: Father and mother are 
old and rather feeble, and they ask one of their 
children to come and live with them. The children 
talk it over and agree that one daughter and her 
husband and family shall live with the old folks. 
The parents have some little property which they 
hold in their own name. The daughter and her hus¬ 
band leave their own home, and at some little sacri¬ 
fice live with their parents and give them good care. 
They pay part of the bills, but make no charge 
for service. After some years they discover that the 
father is selling off his property at foolishly low 
prices and giving or lending the money (it amounts 
to the same thing) to relatives or others. The other 
children appreciate what the daughter has done and 
will give up any claim on the property, but father 
is squandering it. He is mentally competent, but 
very stubborn. Now what shall this daughter do 
under such circumstances? She has given up her 
own home and, with her husband, has lost money 
by remaining where she is. Morally it would seem 
that the money which father is squandering belongs 
to her. What shall she do about it? Day after day 
such stories, with variations, come to us for settle¬ 
ment or advice. And we confess that we do not 
know what to advise. They are personal problems, 
and no outsider is competent to step into the family 
circle and attempt to adjust them. Of course, most 
of them result from a failure to have a clear under¬ 
standing iit, the beginning. The place for an out¬ 
sider to Help is in thinking out a good agreement 
before the matter starts. He cannot come in after 
the trouble begins without antagonizing one side or 
the other. The only advice we can give is for the 
members of the family to get together in fair spirit 
and try to work out the principles of the Golden 
Rule. 
Brevities 
The “June drop” comes in May this year, and it is a 
heavy one. 
Many a man works out a good balanced ration for 
his cattle while his family will consume unbalanced food. 
The Connecticut Experiment Station calls attention 
to a disease of tobacco plants known as “wild fire.” It 
is not serious in dry seasons, but dangerous in wet ones. 
The best treatment is spraying the plants in the bed 
with Bordeaux mixture. 4 lbs. lime, 4 lbs. sulphate of 
copper and 50 gallons of water. 
Grubs or warbles on the backs of cattle. We have 
at least 100 letters each year about what to do for these 
“lumps.” The usual method is to squeeze them out. 
The latest remedy is a mixture of one part iodoform 
and five parte vaseline. It is said that this paste 
smeared over the cow’s back will destroy the grubs. 
