750 
Tht  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
The  Rural  New-Yorker 
THE  BUSINESS  FARMER'S  PAPER 
A  National  Weekly  Journal  for  Country  and  Suburban  llomci 
Established  t8S0 _ 
PiibIMi'd  w**klj  by  lb* *  Hur»l  Publiiklnr  Company,  S3S  W*at  *0tb  Street,  »w  York 
Herbert  W.  Oolukgwood,  President  and  Editor. 
John'  J.  Dillon,  Treasurer  and  General  Manager. 
Wm.  F.  Dillon,  Secretary.  Mrs.  E.  T.  Hoyle.  Associate  Editor. 
L.  H.  MURPHY,  Circulation  Manager. 
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•'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 
Mich  swindler  will  be  publicly  exposed.  We  are  also  often  called  upon 
to  ail  just  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 
respi  isibie  for  the  debts  of  honest  bankrupts  sanctioned  by  the  courts. 
Notice  of  the  complaint  must  hr  sent  to  us  within  one  month  of  the  time  of 
the  transaction,  and  to  identify  it.  you  should  mention  The  Rural  N«w- 
Yorkkk  v.  hen  writing  the  advertiser. 
Although  your  paper  does  not  give  much  information 
on  how  i  <>  grow  oranges,  avocados  and  other  tropical 
growth,  ii  has  an  irresistible  fascination  about  it  that  I 
cannot  resist  and  do  without  The  R.  N.-Y. 
Florida.  l.  s.  gregorie. 
ME  R.  N.-Y.  tries  to  be  human  and  to  under¬ 
stand  the  thought  of  human  beings.  Our  people 
ret  as  ballast  and  keep  us  down  on  the  ground. 
* 
In  your  issue  of  April  28,  1923,  page  661.  you  say  : 
"This  depends  more  on  men  than  on  forms.”  This  is 
singularly  true  and  comprehensive;  it  applies  to  all  our 
affairs;  to  all  labor  and  all  intercourse.  While  I  do 
not  always  agree  with  what  you  advocate  editorially,  I 
<an  congratulate  you  on  being  courageous,  forcible  and 
instructive.  To  read  The  Rural  New-Yorker  is  a 
liberal  education,  acquired  at  small  cost. 
New  York.  w.  k.  c.  mebriman. 
UR  opinion  is  that  many  or  most  of  our  so- 
called  agricultural  loaders  have  lost  their  real 
appreciation  of  human  nature.  They  seem  to  feel 
that  there  are  only  two  general  types  of  humanity — 
those  who  are  intelligent  enough  to  agree  with  them 
without  special  argument,  and  those  who  are  not. 
Fifty  years  ago  it  was  hoped  that  agricultural  educa¬ 
tion  would  make  people  mentally  free  from  the  forms 
and  prejudices  into  which  the  old  classical  education 
had  led  them.  For  centuries  the  “leaders”  seemed 
to  feel  that  the  mental  clothing  of  the  people  should 
lie  ready-made — not  fitted  to  their  intelligence  and 
industrial  needs,  as  tailor-made  clothing  is  prepared. 
Agricultural  education  seems  to  have  fallen  into  the 
same  general  groove,  with  a  few  changes.  The  agri¬ 
cultural  colleges  have  sought,  through  their  powerful 
extension  service  and  through  the  control  of  most  of 
the  farm  organizations,  to  dominate  farm  thought, 
.mi  d  also  its  expression.  Thus  we  are  given  a  set  of 
forms  or  prepared  programs  for  the  settlement  of 
farm  troubles.  Individual  initiative  and  human  na¬ 
ture  are  largely  left  out  of  these  programs.  Farmers 
are  expected  to  <lo  as  they  are  told,  not  as  their 
plain  common  sense  often  urges  them  to  do.  We  are 
well  aware  that  he  who  declares  that  men  are 
superior  to  forms  of  education  is  to  be  regarded  as 
a  heretic,  but  we  also  know  that  there  is  coming  a 
great  reaction  from  the  effort  to  make  agricultural 
leadership  into  a  rubber  stamp.  As  to  the  other 
idea,  if  we  thought  that  all  men  agreed  with 
every  proposition  we  stand  for  we  should  feel  that 
we  were  printing  what  our  boys  call  “very  perfunc¬ 
tory  stuff.”  Full  agreement  means  lazy  thinking  and 
no  mental  effort,  and  that  leads  to  mental  slavery. 
When  we  read  a  statement  with  which  we  do  not 
agree  we  are  forced  to  think  out  an  argument  against 
it.  and  whether  we  succeed  in  answering  it  or  not, 
i  lie  mental  exercise  strengthens  the  mind,  just  as 
physical  exercise  strengthens  the  body.  We  believe 
that  our  readers  need  this  form  of  exercise  far  more 
i  ian  they  need  placid  agreement,  and  they  seem 
to  think  so,  too.  We  say  what  we  believe,  and  we 
cannot  think  of  any  finer  education  than  the  effort 
'of  our  readers  to  reason  out  the  facts  and  the  logic 
to  disprove  our  statements,  if  they  can. 
HERE  a  man  starts  the  poultry  business  on  a 
farm  of  good  size  we  think  it  will  pay  to  put 
considerable  land  into  wheat  and  barley.  Both 
grains  are  good  chicken  feed,  and  they  require  least 
labor  in  handling.  We  would  not  advise  harvesting 
and  thrashing  in  the  ordinary  way.  We  would  cut 
the  grain  in  bundles  and  feed  in  the  slieaf,  letting 
the  birds  do  their  own  thrashing,  and  thus  provide 
the  litter.  We  see  only  one  reason  why  the  grain 
should  be  thrashed  at  great  expense.  Let  the  hens 
thi  it  themselves.  The  one  objection  is  that  rats  and 
mice  burrow  in  the  stack  or  mow  and  get  too  much 
of  the  grain.  It  is  easier  to  save  the  thrashed  grain. 
1  ‘oes  anyone  know  how  to  make  a  haymow  rat- 
proof?  That  is  a  great  need  where  small  grain  is 
sloped  in  the  sheaf.  Why  not  raise  corn?  It  is  a 
good  grain  and  a  safe  crop,  but  if  a  man  is  in  the 
chicken  business  he  will  have  far  more  than  he  can 
handle  at  the  time  when  corn  must  be  planted  and 
cultivated.  The  small  grains  do  not  need  care  at 
hatching  and  brooding  time. 
THERE  is  great  interest  in  planting  the  Flanders 
poppy  as  a  memorial  flower  for  soldiers  who 
died  in  the  Great  War.  Some  posts  of  the  American 
Legion  are  selling  packets  of  seed  as  a  means  of 
raising  money  for  their  meeting  rooms.  It  seems 
that  many  are  afraid  to  plant  poppy  seed,  since  they 
have  l>een  told  that  the  government  will  prosecute 
them  if  they  do  so.  We  have  explained  that  there 
i<  no  law  or  rule  to  prevent  such  planting.  The 
poppy  lias  been  cultivated  in  this  country  for  many 
yea ix  and  there  is  little  danger  that  it  will  become 
a  weed.  Plant  the  poppy  as  a  soldier’s  memorial  if 
you  care  to  do  so. 
* 
RECENTLY  articles  have  appeared  in  the  papers 
telling  how  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
has  found  that  blueberries  may  be  grown  in  garden 
soil  by  using  aluminum  sulphate.  This  is  supposed 
to  sour  the  soil  so  that  blueberries  will  thrive.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  true  blueberry  will  not  grow  in 
common,  well-drained  garden  soil.  The  item  looks 
innocent  enough  till  we  realize  that  it  is  mere  propa¬ 
ganda  based  on  a  false  statement.  A  number  of 
people  have  blueberry  plants  for  sale.  Most  of  them 
seem  to  be  mere  seedling  plants,  dug  up  in  swamps 
or  upland  pastures.  They  will  not  grow  in  gardens, 
and  if  they  did  the  quality  would  be  inferior.  Many 
people  have  bought  such  plants,  only  to  see  them 
fade  away.  The  story  of  this  use  of  aluminum  sul¬ 
phate  seems  designed  for  the  purpose  of  using  a  new 
form  of  bait  for  blueberry  suckers.  The  fact  is  that 
this  sulphate  was  used  on  rhododendrons.  It  gave 
results  on  these  plants,  but  no  one  is  warranted  in 
saying  that  it  will  help  blueberries.  These  fakes 
get  before  the  public  in  two  ways.  Some  newspaper 
men  are  so  eager  to  say  something  startling  that 
they  run  away  from  the  truth.  Again,  some  one,  as 
in  this  case,  who  has  something  to  exploit,  purposely 
twists  the  truth  and  gives  the  distortion  full  pub¬ 
licity. 
* 
WE  honestly  believe  that  on  more  than  half  our 
Eastern  farms  Soy  beans  will  pay  better 
than  oats.  They  will  give  more  fodder  or  more 
grain  feed,  and  they  will  leave  the  land  in  better 
condition.  It  is  a  difficult  job  to  try  to  prove  such 
a  statement.  For  centuries  farmers  have  grown 
oats.  They  know  just  how  to  produce  the  crop,  and 
it  fits  into  their  rotation  or  plan  of  farming.  Every¬ 
one  knows  the  value  of  oats  as  a  feed  for  horses,  or 
when  ground,  as  cow  feed.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Soy  bean  is  a  new  crop  to  most  of  us.  The  “hay” 
made  from  bean  vines  often  looks  like  a  bunch  of 
small  sticks.  Only  those  who  have  fed  it  carefully 
know  its  value.  As  for  the  beans,  it  does  not  seem 
possible  that  when  they  are  ground  they  make  as 
strong  feed  as  cottonseed  meal.  To  the  average 
farmer  the  appearance  of  the  Soy  bean  plant  is 
against  it,  while  oats  give  a  grain  or  liay  long  fa¬ 
miliar  to  the  farmer’s  eye.  Thus  it  is  often  hard 
to  get  farmers  interested  in  the  Soy  bean.  At  the 
same  time  there  is  no  question  about  its  value,  and 
in  the  future  it  will  become  as  popular  as  clover  or 
oats  on  our  Eastern  farms.  As  it  is  we  doubt  if 
75  per  cent  of  our  Eastern  farmers  have  produced 
a  profitable  crop  of  oats  in  the  last  30  years. 
* 
IN  1834  Richard  H.  Dana  started  from  Boston  in 
the  ship  Pilgrim  and  sailed  around  Cape  Horn  to 
California.  The  trip  required  150  days.  The  story 
of  this  voyage  is  recorded  in  “Two  Years  Before  the 
Mast.”  In  1849  an  uncle  of  the  writer  sailed  from 
(’ape  Cod  over  much  the  same  course  to  the  Cali¬ 
fornia  gold  mines,  about  160  days  being  required  for 
the  trip!  This  was  considered  a  fair  rate  of  speed 
for  those  days.  These  old-time  men  could  not  con¬ 
ceive  of  any  faster  travel  to  the  back  door  of  Amer¬ 
ica  ;  nor  could  they  think  of  any  great  use  to  which 
our  Pacific  coast  could  be  put.  Yet  the  other  day 
two  men  in  an  army  airplane  flew  2.600  miles  without 
a  stop,  clear  across  the  country  from  ocean  to  ocean 
in  26  hours,  50  minutes  and  3S2/5  seconds.  The 
idea  of  trying  to  split  up  a  second  of  time  would  not 
have  appealed  to  our  grandfathers,  hut  when  one 
is  flying  at  the  rate  of  nearly  150  feet  a  second  it 
means  something.  There  lias  been  no  more  startling 
or  spectacular  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the 
years  have  annihilated  distance  than  this  dazzling 
May  It),  1!)2:> 
flight.  Our  friend  J.  C.  Berrang.  with  his  ox  team 
express,  requires  two  years  to  crawl  across  the  coun¬ 
try,  while  this  mechanical  eagle  sails  along  in  hut 
little  more  than  a  day!  It  is  hard  for  the  human 
mind  to  grasp  the  full  significance  of  this  remark¬ 
able  feat.  If  the  next  30  years  are  to  witness  as 
remarkable  a  development  as  the  past  decade  lias 
wrought,  what  are  we  to  expect  as  a  part  of  common 
human  life  in  the  future?  It  can  hardly  he  possible 
that  rural  life  can  expect  to  keep  pace  with  the 
feverish  development  that  is  coming  to  the  cities. 
That  is  likely  to  he  the  salvation  of  society,  for  only 
in  the  country,  with  a  satisfied  rural  population,  will 
it  he  possible  to  maintain  the  true  conservative 
American  spirit. 
THERE  is  no  doubt  about  the  migration  of 
negroes  from  the  Southern  States  into  the  Mid¬ 
dle  Staff's  and  the  East.  Thousands  have  njadc 
the  change,  and  many  more  will  come.  It  is  largely 
a  transfer  of  farm  hands  to  manufacturing  and 
contracting  labor.  It  is  taking  the  cheap  hand  labor 
away  from  the  South,  and  will  force  a  change  in 
Southern  methods  of  farming.  Machinery  must  he 
used  more  and  more,  and  this  Avill  mean  great 
changes  in  the  social  and  industrial  life  of  the  South. 
Before  the  invention  of  the  cotton  gin  the  lint  was 
separated  from  the  seed  mostly  by  hand  methods, 
and  this  put  the  American  cotton  grower  at  a  great 
disadvantage.  America  could  not  control  the  cotton 
markets  of  the  world  until  there  came  a  practical 
machine  for  separating  the  lint.  Most  of  the  work  of 
growing  cotton,  up  to  the  time  of  picking,  can  he 
done  by  machinery  as  well  as  by  hand,  but  up  to 
date  the  black  finger  and  thumb  of  the  negro  field 
hand  have  monopolized  picking,  and  thus  dominated 
the  situation.  With  the  invention  of  a  cotton  picker, 
as  efficient  as  the  cotton  gin,  the  entire  situation 
would  he  changed,  and  machine  farming  would  pos¬ 
sess  the  South. 
ON  page  594  a  woman  asked  about  the  demand 
for  farmerettes  this  year.  The  best  of  our  in¬ 
formation  is  that  there  has  been  little  call  for  rho 
lady  hired  man  since  the  war.  Yet  we  have  had  a 
dozen  letters  from  people  who  say  they  want  to  hire 
the  woman  who  asked  the  question.  Can  you  tell  us 
of  any  places  where  these  farmerettes  are  still 
working? 
* 
At  the  Poughkeepsie  Fruit  Growers’  meeting  they 
asked  for  apples  to  be  given  away  at  the  time  of  the 
Apple  Exposition  next  Fall.  With  many  cases  of  giving 
free  things,  some  people  get  more  than  their  share, 
while  others  do  not  get  what  they  should.  I  make  the 
suggestion  that,  attached  to  each  ticket  of  admission, 
there  be  a  coupon  good  for  two  or  three  apples  free. 
New  York.  F.  w.  avardle. 
E  want  all  the  suggestions  we  can  get.  They 
will  all  he  turned  over  to  the  managers,  and 
will  receive  attention.  The  object  is  to  make  this 
apple  show  unique — different  from  anything  of  the 
sort  ever  attempted  before.  As  we  have  often  said, 
it  must  not  he  a  collection  of  piles  of  beautiful  fruit 
with  a  few  people  walking  solemnly  around  as 
though  afraid  to  bite  into  an  apple.  We  have  got  to 
put  snap  and  originality  into  it.  That  is  why  we 
want  original  suggestions.  Send  them  along. 
Brevities 
Dusting  with  powdered  sulphur  is  suggested  for  the 
strawberry  weevil. 
Sulphate  of  copper  is  what  they  use  to  kill  the 
moss  or  green  growth  in  springs  or  ponds. 
In  parts  of  Germany  bonds  based  on  rye  or  coal 
are  being  used  as  money.  They  are  more  stable  than 
the  German  mark. 
“Garden  sass !”  What  you  give  your  neighbor  over 
the  fence  when  his  hens  come  over  and  cultivate  the 
flowers ! 
It  is  said  that  the  use  of  horse  meat  as  human  food 
is  increasing  in  Germany.  Well,  why  is  not  the  horse  as 
clean  in  its  feeding  habits  as  the  ox? 
Somebody  suggests  using  tobacco  dust  on  tarred  corn 
as  a  crow  repellent.  It  surely  ought  to  dry  the  seed. 
The  first  dose  of  tobacco  will  make  about  anyone  sick. 
Would  Ihe  crows  come  back  for  another— as  humans  do? 
The  doctors  report  outbreaks  of  encephalitis,  com¬ 
monly  known  as  sleeping  sickness,  in  various  parts  of 
the  country.  We  find  that  the  boys  show  symptoms  of 
it — in  the  morning! 
You  notice  that  under  almost  any  conditions  the 
grass  crop  will  make  a  good  response  to  nitrogen  in 
the  fertilizer,  while  .clover  makes  best  use  of  potash 
and  phosphorus.  As  a  rule,  top-dressing  with  manure 
pays  better  on  grass  than  on  clover. 
We  cannot  think  of  any  reason  for  killing  earth- 
verms  in  the  garden,  but  some  people  ask  how  to  do  it. 
Lime  will  usually  do  the  job ;  so  will  bichloride  of 
mercury. one  ounce  to  15  gallons  of  water  sprinkled 
over  the  ground. 
