008 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The Rural New-Yorker 
THE ISCSIS ESS FARMER'S PAPER 
A National Weekly Journal lor Country and Suburban llouiex 
Established /sao 
I'ulilbhrd nrceMy by the Rural Ibiblialiifig Company, 3311 IVest SOtb Strrot. Now 1'ork 
Herbert W. Colling wood, President and Editor. 
Jons J. Dillon, Treasurer and General Manager. 
W». F. Dillon, Secretary. Mrs. E. T. Kotik, Associate Editor. 
SUBSCRIPTION : ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
To foreign countries In tbe Universal Postal Union, $3.01. equal to 8s. 6d., or 
8 !a marks, or lO'-s francs. Remit in money order, express 
order, personal cheek or bank draft. 
Entered at New York Post OTice as Second Class Matter. 
Advertising rates, tl.00 per agate line—T words. References required for 
advert isers unknown to us ; and cash must accompany transient orders. 
“A SQUARE DEAL” 
We believe (hat every advertisement in this paper is backed hv 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 I'.aiil subscribers sustained by trusting any deliberate swindler, irrespon¬ 
sible advertisers or misleading advertisements in our columns, and anv 
such swindler will be publicly exposed. We are also often called upon 
to adjust differences or mistakes between our subscribers ami honest, 
responsible houses, whether advertisers or not. We w illingly use our good 
others to this end, but such eases 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 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. 
On a recent railroad trip I noticed with interest that 
the conductor on the Wabash Railroad train was read¬ 
ing' The Rubai, New-Yorker between stations; ho read 
flu 1 pages from cover to cover. I was anxious to gel a 
chance to look over the pages. At the end of m.v trip I 
asked for The R. X.-Y. With pleasure he gave it to me 
and said : ‘ s It is oik 1 of the best papers published, and 
1 have taken it for 40 years.” So you can see that the 
employes on the railroad take as much interest as the 
farmers. .t. e. bartelson. 
Illinois. 
HERE is one clement in which all are interested 
from the king on his throne to the man who 
cleans out the palace—that is human nature. Sci¬ 
ence, art, learning—all are mighty, but unless they 
can be inoculated with the sweetening power of 
humanity they will not get very far. Our great am¬ 
bition is to make The R. N.-Y\ a human document. 
% 
Those five points in education by the Hope Farm man 
on page 856 should he as famous as the fourteen points 
of Wilson, and more effective, longer lived. Broadly 
considered, they are as applicable to all elementary edu¬ 
cation as they are to rural. English and a voice, two 
chiefest tools that every man has, that every man must 
use to rise. Arithmetic, symbolically exact methods for 
Hie study of the workings of whatever the job may he. 
The dictionary habit, symbolically the general informa¬ 
tion on other and all tilings, as well as the job. that 
makes a man interested, and interesting 
Joy in the job. joy in the job—it should he printed in 
big letters and hung over the breakfast table. Let us 
teach joy in the job. If joy is not. let’s get another job 
or another teacher. W. c. DEMING. 
Connecticut. 
T HOSE “five points” represent the condensed, 
boiled down experience of a good many years, 
of people who fully realize that they did not have 
full school opportunity in their youth. You might 
just about as well try to move the earth as to change 
the fixed rules of teaching as laid down by the pro¬ 
fessional educators. Probably these “five points” 
must be pricked in at home. Too many people make 
the mistake of supposing that the school teacher is 
the only one to take charge of a child's education. 
That is nonsense—and worse. We must all help in 
the home. 
& 
W ESTERN farmers intend to make a lively 
fight over the next tariff bill. The “emer¬ 
gency tariff.” now in operation, places higher duties 
on farm products, from wheat to eggs, but farmers 
are not to be satisfied with that. They now demand 
free lumber, or a very low tariff. They claim that 
lumber is peculiarly a necessity for the Western 
farmers, many of whom live in treeless sections. 
They also claim that the lumber bus’ness is now in 
such shape that a tariff will benefit only a few very 
rich operators. Some schedules of a tariff affect a 
very large number of people, but when an industry is 
concentrated and monopolized like the lumber busi¬ 
ness only a small class would be benefited, while 
great numbers would be heavily taxed by higher 
prices. We shall have tbe same old contest between 
“industry” and farming before a tariff bill can be 
made up. But tlie farmers are better prepared than 
ever before to hold their own. There can be no good 
reason advanced for a high tariff on oil. In some of 
its forms oil ranks with water as a necessity to 
most Americans. Our own supply is disappearing 
and there seems no good reason why Mexico, Rus¬ 
sia or the corners of the earth, should not contrib¬ 
ute freely to our use. 
•"i' 
T HE latest virtue claimed for clover and Alfalfa 
is that the green juices are used in treatment 
of tuberculosis. These juices are said to destroy the 
disease germ in many cases. Tbe scientists have 
found that Alfalfa and clover contain vitamines, 
which partly accounts for their great value in feed¬ 
ing animals. That is an additional reason why every 
farmer should grow some of these crops. From Alfalfa 
on limestone land to Alsike clover on a sour, thin 
soil, they are all more than useful We fully believe 
that within 25 years Alfalfa will be largely used as 
human food. A good many people already use it 
now—boiled as “greens.” Those who scoff at this 
must remember that men are still living who can re¬ 
member when tomatoes were considered poisonous. 
Now they are admitted to bp among the most use¬ 
ful of all vegetables. There are thousands who make 
a full meal of bread and butter and sliced tomatoes. 
& 
I’WS comes from China that owing to abundant 
rains and an early harvest the backbone of the 
terrible famine has been broken. While there is stiil 
need of help, the worst is over, and China will, be¬ 
fore long, be in a position to feed her people. Thou¬ 
sands of our readers have contributed their money 
and goods in the great effort to save human beings 
from starvation. There has been no question about 
(lie need. America, the richest nation in the world, 
lias given freely of food and money to this great 
cause. It may be said that we have but little in 
common with the Chinese, and that they should pro¬ 
vide for themselves, but our people who helped in 
this great charity did not stop to consider that. 
Human beings were starving. Human lives were in 
agony, and tbe great heart of the nation rushed 
to help. As a matter of plain, cold-blooded business, 
the expenditure of all this money could not be called 
an investment, and yet it will bring wonderful re¬ 
turns in that best of all a nation’s assets—humanity. 
With a nation, as with a man. one great object in 
life is to accumulate property and become financially 
independent. A far more important thing, however, 
is to learn how to use the income from that property 
so it will yield something more than money interest. 
kb 
T the recent meeting of the American Ilolstein- 
Friesian Association a small group of forceful 
men were able to control. They secured a large 
number of proxies and thus held a majority of votes, 
although they had but a minority of those members 
who were actually present. Judge F. M. Peasley, 
who led this faction, objects to part of our recent 
statement about tbe action on tlie “Charlie Cole” 
case. He says the use of the proxy vote was fully 
justified, and cites tbe meeting of 1919. He says that 
at that meeting President Aitken and Ms friends 
held control through proxies and by means of this 
power increased the number of the directors from 
nine to 16, voted a high salary to Mr. Aitken and 
increased the transfer fee to one dollar. Judge 
Peasley also says that there was a scheme proposed 
to give the board of directors ‘and president too 
much power. He says that tlie fight was made 
against these abuses, and won through the only 
means possible. As for the Cabana resolution, Judge 
Peasley says it was tied up vvitli high praise of 
President, Aitken and the directors in order to obtain 
some political advantage. The It. N.-Y. is not con¬ 
cerned with any of these factional quarrels or con¬ 
troversies. What we say is that this great associa¬ 
tion failed to take strong ground on tlie most impor¬ 
tant matter now before tlie breeders of America. Tf. 
as Judge Peasley says, bis friends were actuated by 
a sincere and honest desire to prevent an auto¬ 
cratic government of the association, they must re¬ 
member that they had the power to stamp hard on 
this “Charlie Cole” outrage. If they felt that they 
must defeat the resolution because it was tied up 
with other matters, why did they not separate it. 
make a clear-cut declaration about this fraud, and 
put the association on record? That is what thou¬ 
sands of cattle breeders want to know. 
* 
M ANY ice cream dealers are profiteering. The 
prices of milk, sugar and other ingredients have 
come down, yet ice cream figures are kept up. In 
New Jersey the wholesale price of plain ice cream 
is about 30 cents a quart, while many retailers are 
charging 65 cents or more. And some of this “ice 
cream” is as far from real cream as a cocoanut tree 
is from a churn. This form of profiteering is about 
as mean as anything we know of, and in addition to 
it all. much of the ice cream is adulterated with 
cocoanut oil. 
* 
O NE of the questions asked by the American 
Farm Bureau Federation is whether farmers 
favor a constitutional amendment prohibiting the 
issuing of all tax-free securities. Bonds of the Farm 
Loan system are exempt, and some farmers think 
that such an amendment would injure the sale of 
these bonds. It is stated that there are now at lea-t 
twenty billion of these tax-exempt securities issued 
bj State. Federal and other governments. This vast 
amount of investment escapes taxation. The total 
value of farm property (land and buildings), figured 
July 9, 1921 
in the last census, was about thirty-five billion dol¬ 
lars. Thus these exempt securities run to nearly 
two-thirds of tbe total value of farm property, suen 
as is usually mortgaged. Of course no farmer can 
obtain a mortgage for two-thirds the value of his 
real estate. And these tax-exempt bonds are increas¬ 
ing in number. They will, before long, equal in value 
all the farm property in the country. These bonds 
represent property, and their exemption is sure to 
throw heavier burdens upon other forms or classes, 
until finally every acre of farm land will be carrying 
a double burden. If all these exemptions were re¬ 
moved the Farm Loan bonds would still he a good 
investment, since they would stand equally with 
other securities. 
* 
Last Sunday morning dogs entered onr chicken yards 
and killed over 400 chickens, besides crippling and in¬ 
juring many more, a large number of which have since 
died. I notified the town officials, but was informed that 
they could only pay for damage done to sheep, the State 
allowing nothing for chickens at all. Are they right in 
this? These chickens are nearly three months old. and 
it means a loss of more than $100 to ns just on those 
killed, to say nothing of the damage to the others, which 
is equally as much. I fail to see why we should not 
have pay for them, just as much as if it had been sheep 
that were killed. Can you tell me why we should not? 
J. L. R. 
T HE only reason we can give is that the State of 
New York has willed otherwise. Under the dog 
law as first passed damages were awarded for poultry 
killed by dogs. Then this law was amended so that 
this just and fair damage was eliminated. The law 
now states: 
139. Damages for Injuries Caused by Dogs.—The 
owner of a dog which shall attack, worry, injure or 
kill domestic animals or fowls shall be liable for double 
the damage< caused thereby to the owner of such domestic 
animals or fowls. Such damages shall equal the value 
of the animals or fowls killed, or if not killed, the 
amount of damages caused by the injury of such animals 
or fowls. 
That seems to relieve the county or State of 
responsibility. The law states that when horses, 
cattle, sheep or swine are “attacked, chased, worried, 
injured or killed by dogs” tbe owner may collect 
damages from the county. This thing of leaving the 
poultry keeper out in payment for dog damage is all 
wrong, and tlie next Legislature should change back 
to tbe original law. 
S OME weeks ago tbe Hope Farm man spoke of tlie 
local dealer or middleman. This man usually 
acts as local banker, money lender, lawyer and gen¬ 
eral accommodator, as well as storekeeper. Long 
use has bred into most of the people a strong habit 
of dealing with this storekeeper on a credit basis. 
Perhaps 30 per cent, of the people in the local terri¬ 
tory have the money and business activity to work 
through a co-operative society; the others have never 
been trained to do so. Now, what we all want to 
know is. what will lie substituted for the service 
which this local dealer renders the community if lie 
is driven out of business? Habit has made his ser¬ 
vice necessary. He charges more than the service is 
worth, but habit is the most expensive thing to 
maintain, and the hardest thing to get rid of. We 
easily understand the merits and possibilities of co¬ 
operative work, but we want to know who or what is 
to supply the service now given by tlie local store¬ 
keeper if he is driven out of business! We are not 
defending him or bis methods. Economically the 
system which he represents is out of date—but who 
or what will take Ms place? 
Brevities 
Plant lice on potatoes spread the germs of disease. 
If you would keep as fine as silk be sure and drink 
your share of milk. 
Many aij old man will make a great success as 
guardian of a garden. 
You probably never saw any variety of corn carrying 
a very small cob that gave a heavy yield. 
We think it pays to mix Red and Alsike clover seed 
together, and also put a little Alfalfa seed with it. 
It has been shown that by using an abundance of 
lime we may grow crops containing a higher proportion 
of nitrogen. 
Yes, we do believe that there is to be a good future 
in the chicken business. It will have to be changed in 
some respects. 
Not che least of the virtues of the new Hubam clover 
is its great*value as a bee pasture. Why do not farm¬ 
ers keep more bees? 
A New Jersey farmer—a tenant on a new farm— 
shot himself last week, lie saw his crops burning up 
in the drought, and realized what it would mean in loss 
and misery. So he took his own life. Three hours 
later the rain came, and they found his dead body in a 
pool of water! 
W it at is known as a “pony blimp” is a small airship 
capable of carrying three or four passengers. They are 
to be used in the Far AVest in fighting forest fires. 
This is probably tlie first use of the airship in agricul¬ 
ture. We think they will be used for spraying orchards 
before many years. 
