‘Ibe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
poem. I could imagine this Pipp saying, 
as he waved his bat: 
“And if thou thought to fan me out, 
Lord Douglas, thou hast lied.’’ 
Douglas seemed to put more than the 
usual amount of saliva on the ball, and 
as he put his full power into the throw I 
could imagine him saying: 
“And hopest thou hence unscathed to go? 
No. by Saint Bride of Botliwell, no!” 
Marmion Pipp made a mighty swing and 
caught that ball right on the seam. It 
went like a bollet straight at Douglas. 
He stopped it with his gloved hand, but 
it bounded away. It did not seem pos¬ 
sible that this awkward, gangling man 
could move those great feet, but like a 
panther, he sprang with inconceivable 
rapidity, caught up the ball and threw it 
to first base, where “Long” George Kelly 
scooped it out of the dirt ahead of the 
runner. Then it was that my friend on 
the left proposed to kill the umpire. 
* * * * * 
Out came the Yankees to the field. 
Where they picked up the name I cannot 
see, for out of 25 players only three seem 
to have Yankee names. Another great 
yell went up as a stout, well-built man 
walked into the pitcher’s box, and a fan 
screamed: 
“Knock their heads off, Mays!" 
It was the great “submarine” pitcher, 
Carl Mays—“the human iceberg.” This 
man wasted no time in spitting on the 
ball. lie held both hands at the back of 
his head—like a woman doing up her back 
hair. Then bending over lie threw the 
ball “underhand”—that is, from below his 
knee. The ball came up to the plate like 
a young cyclone twisting and hopping. It 
almost seemed to spit sparks like an elec¬ 
tric wire. Through an error the “Giants” 
got a man on first. Then came a batter 
who caught one of these dodging balls on 
the end of his bat and sent a high fly to 
left field. It looked like an easy out, but 
it proved a case of too many cooks spoil¬ 
ing the broth. Three men ran after it. 
and between them they lost the ball until 
the “Giant” on first base ran in with the 
winning run. The game was won and 
lost on an error, but it was a great per¬ 
formance. It is now a part of history 
that the “Giants” finally won the series, 
five games to three. I thought the “Yan¬ 
kees” had the better club by a shade, but 
the “Giants” surely had most of the 
“breaks” or luck. The crowd interested 
me more than the game. There is evi¬ 
dently a wonderful power for good or evil 
in a disciplined and yet excited crowd. 
What can we do to introduce something 
of this inob psychology into some great 
farm question ? u. w. c. 
The Man Across the Fence 
The young potato grower and the man 
over the fence were discussing ways and 
means. Their farms ran nearly parallel, 
and might at first glance have seemed to 
be identical strips of laud, although one 
had been cover-cropped and the other lay 
in stubble, yet the soil of the former con¬ 
tained a larger percentage of sand. From 
where the older man sat on the top rail 
of the fence lie could see that a variety of 
cover crops had been planted, a white- 
dotted field indicating late buckwheat un- 
cauglit by frost, a darker blackish sort 
of green that he had been told was the 
Italian rye grass, and near by the brighter 
glowing green of rye with a strong body 
of upstart weeds threatening to take 
things into their own hands. 
“Are you going to put it all into pota¬ 
toes again next year?” asked lie seriously. 
“I hope you don’t think I am being too 
curious? Well, of course, I have won¬ 
dered. but I wanted to say was this: I’m 
afraid you’re making a big mistake. Of 
course, you can grow one crop of potatoes 
after another for two or three years, but 
after that it’s common experience that the 
soil gets sort of potatoed out—you can’t 
get the yield, and diseases get in. It don’t 
pay.” 
“That’s what they tell me.” The young 
potato grower spoke hesitantly, then 
dropped to his knees and pulled up a large 
handful of the rye roots, with the soil 
clinging to them. “This is the only an¬ 
swer I can make, unless next year’s crop 
speaks for me. Look at the network of 
s~mall roots in this handful of dirt; some 
are this year's potato roots, others belong 
to weeds, no doubt, and this rye has come 
on to lap up the remaining fertilizer and 
turn it also into vegetable matter and 
later humus. It's the fresh root forces 
that keep out disease bacteria.” 
“You mean to say that your cover crop 
will count as an actual rotation, aside 
from manurial value? What makes you 
think so?” 
The younger man looked over across the 
fields of his neighbor to where a lately 
dug patch of brown earth lay bare in 
the October sun. “You planted your po¬ 
tato field in June, didn’t you?” he re¬ 
marked. “And they have just been dug, 
so that means that they have been in the 
ground for four months. Now you will 
let that ground lie fallow until Spring— 
xiothing there but the Summer’s root 
stock. I’d figure that a very benevolent 
way of treating bacteria if present, or of 
inviting them if possible. I wonder if 
you have overlooked one of nature’s pro¬ 
cesses for rejuvenation of the soil, the 
heavy growth of certain alien plants 
called weeds. Next Spring your soil will 
be bound to lack in plant food, for this 
can be produced only by decaying veg¬ 
etable matter, whether in stable manure 
or green matter.” 
“Hold on there a minute, young man. 
Don’t put good stable manure in the same 
class as your grass over there. Perhaps 
nature did that way; it sounds probable 
< nough. but her ways are apt to be too 
slow- for your length of life. Look here, 
when I want to raise a crop of potatoes 
I can get the plant food by drawing on 
from eight to twelve loads of barnyard 
manure to the acx-e; no fertilizer to sow— 
just go ahead and plant. When I sow r a 
crop of rye or wheat I let it mature and 
sell the grain, but the straw, of course, 
going for bedding, makes the best kind of 
a cover crop. Then my corn, as you 
know, goes for silage, the hay and oats 
also are fed to the cows. Everything 
taken off the farm, except the potatoes 
and wheat, goes back again. The reason, 
it is said, that soil cannot be kept up 
without some stock is that it is the only 
way green matter can be converted into 
plant food. Rotation, I suppose, is but 
man’s way of carrying out nature’s meth¬ 
ods.” 
The young potato grow'er smiled quizzi¬ 
cally, and made some figures on a smooth 
place in the fence rail. “You’ve got a 
hundred acres over there, haven’t you?” 
he asked. “Good, smooth, workable land. 
You keep 20 head of stock. Forty acres 
go for pasture, 10 go to corn, 15 to oats, 
25 to hay, four to potatoes and six to 
wheat. That’s near enough for my prop¬ 
osition. According to what you have just 
told me, all but 10 acres of this land must 
be devoted to keeping the stock. Now 
what I want to know is. how far will you 
be able to cover your farm with this con¬ 
verted plant food at the rate of eight or 
12 tons to the acre? From 10 to 15 acres, 
isn’t it so? This means that every year 
the other S5 goes begging—you took what 
grew' and put nothing back except per¬ 
haps a very light allowance of fertilizer, 
man-made and therefore a speculation. 
True, you had the crop roots, but they 
had been all Summer gathering plant 
food to put into the stalk of your plant— 
and you took the plant. Where does 
your 85 acres derive its great benefit from 
stock raising that could not be obtained 
without? 
“Well,” said the older man thought¬ 
fully, “it doesn’t sound as if there could 
be much when you put it that way. But 
the fact remains that stock farms are 
rather addicted to fertility.” He smiled 
wryly. “Perhaps in the long series of ro¬ 
1277 
tations the plant food is better distributed 
than you’d think. When a 25-acre field 
of clover is plowed under every two years 
it would be strange if the ground were not 
fertile.” 
“I believe it.” said his young neighbor 
earnestly. “That’s my idea exactly. You 
see my potatoes are in the ground by the 
middle of April, and that means taking 
them out the last two weeks of July. This 
cover crop goes in as fast as the ground is 
cleared. It has had nearly three months’ 
growth up to date, or in other words, the 
fresh root colony will have had just as 
long possession as the potato crop when 
I plow in November. 
“If you will compare this with your 
own methods you’ll find that the actual 
time seyved in rotation is about the same. 
All I need now is Ilubaru, that new, fast¬ 
growing clover; I’ll admit I’m short on 
legumes, but I have been making it up 
out of the fertilizer sack. In fact, that is 
the secret of getting action from green 
manure, and the more generous you are 
with the fertilizer the heavier your cover 
crop after the main crop is harvested.’ 
The older man still looked skeptical. 
“I never seemed to get much good from 
fertilizer myself.” he answered. “Lime 
for me. It makes heavy clover, and clover 
turned under produces rich land. I’ve 
heard you say that you can tell to the 
inch right wheie the fertilizer gives out. 
I've tried it, but it doesn’t work the same 
on this farm. Perhaps the difference in 
soil would account for that. Anyhow, I 
know I couldn’t raise potatoes year after 
year, as you propose, for in order to keep 
up the soil I’d be obliged to use lime with 
the clover, and the potatoes would show 
the effect of it. No. the old-fashioned 
way is good enough for me. The cows 
monopolize the greater part of my farm, 
but the profits come back in milk.” 
“While we are talking about profits, 
suppose we figure out just how you would 
come out if you had no cows and kept up 
the farm with lime and clover, the whole 
hundred acres. One hundred dollars an 
acre is not setting your profits unreason¬ 
ably high. You ought to realize an in¬ 
come of $10,000 yearly.” 
“Now. look here, young man!” ex¬ 
claimed his companion getting down from 
the fence. “Don’t try to educate me in 
your new theories. That’s all right for 
you, but as for me, there’s no finer sight 
than just to walk out into my stable and 
look across the backs of $2,000 worth of 
live stock. You may be right, but 1 like 
my cows. I guess I’ll have to be going — 
there’s a red tablecloth on the clothesline, 
and that means company. However, I’d 
be mighty interested to know how you 
make out with those figures.” 
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