Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1901 — FARMERS CORNER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARMERS CORNER

We have often seen the adtlce In some of the agricultural columns to feed the horse before watering him, but we never had good success In conTlnclng one when he came in from a drive or a day’s work that be should wait for a drink until after he had eaten. We never tried very hard because we thought he knew better than the writers of such paragraphs whether be was more thirsty than hungry or 'not, and we know that while a glass of water tasted good before a meal we did not care for it after we were through eating unless the food was too salt Now we have a report of an English experiment in which one horse was given four quarts of oats, and then allowed to drink. Soon after he was killed, and scarcely one quart of the oats was found floating in the water In the stomach, while three quarts had been washed into the intestines, entirely undigested. Another horse was watered before giving him the oats, and killed after the same lapse of time. All the oats were found in the stomach, and the work of digestion was already •etting in. This may in part account for the fact we have long known, and sometimes alluded to, that the grain for a working or fattening animal seems to do much more good when the larger part of it is given at the night feeding. When we fed grain to our milch cows In summer we gave It only at night, and we thought it better, because they digested it better while at rest; but it may have been so for no other reason than that we watered before feeding at night and after feeding in the morning. When the hay or cut corn fodder was wet a little and the ground grain mixed with it, as in winter, probably it made less difference. —American Cultivator.

The Pea Loose. The new pest, the destructive pea aphis, has in the last two years inflicted enormous losses in various regions

where peas are grown for canneries, as Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Mich-

igan and Wisconsin also have suffered from it. Some of the scientists claim that it is naturally more an enemy of clover than of peas. An encouraging feature noted in Canada Is that wherever the aphis occurred it was attacked by parasitic enemies, the most vigorous of these being the small orange larvae of a species of dlplosls—minute maggots—which suck the juice out of the body of the aphis. The “brush and cultivator” method of fighting the pea louse is accepted as the most generally effective. For this it Is necessary that the peas be planted in rows, and when the insects are noticed the vines are brushed backward and forward with a good pine switch in front of a cultivator drawn by a single horse. In this manner the plant lice are covered up as soon as they fall to the ground, and a large proportion of them are destroyed. Peas sown late or on poor ground sustain most damage. The pea aphis is shown In the sketch many times enlarged.

'Lumpy Jaw. The malady commonly known as lumpy Jaw is caused by a fungous germ, writes a stockman. It makes Its growth on weeds and grass of low land, taking the form of mildew, which grows up in spores filled with numberless seeds. These are taken Into the animal’s mouth with grass and food and there commence their deadly work. Animals are most readily infected with these germs when cutting their teeth, the fungi getting Into the inflamed tissue and thence into the blood. They start an abscess, not necessarily In the jaw, but generally there. Pus forms and discharges, drops on the grass or food eaten by others of the herd and, being full of germs, spreads the disease from one to another. After the pasture has been affected with these germs it should be plowed and cropped for two or three years. These germs can be killed in the animal’s body by a careful treatment of 1% drams of iodide of potash for a 1,000 pound animal, once a day for four days, then twice a day for four days and then once a day for four days. Rest one week, and then repeat treatment. Keep the animal in the bam all the time, and give iodide of potash In the drinking water. The above remedy will exterminate the disease, but If the Jawbone has become honeycombed and the teeth loose in the Jaw it will not take away the lump. < All cattle having the disease should be kept apart from the rest of the herd, and the milk from such cows should not be used.

The Weeder. A writer In the Practical Farmer says that one of the best farmers In Minnesota recently declared at his home Institute that the weeder' had been worth 51,000 to him during the last ten years. It had enabled him to take better care of his crops, at less expense for labor. He told how he and the hired man would run the cultivators In corn and potatoes after a rain had packed the ground, and after three or four hours one of the boys would follow after with a weeder and bis pony, and at night It made the father almost ashamed—the boy had done so touch more good than he had. All who

have used- weed ers have only good to say of them. They will do the best work on mellow, clean land. Rubbish on the surface and stones would interfere with their use. Do not be in a hurry to get into the field when it is wet with dew or tain. Walt until the ground is dry, and then>you can cultivate and hoe fifteen or twenty acres per day. All weeds can' be kept in check by beginning early and going over the ground every four or five days. Molaaoes from Melon*. D. Hanz, a farmer of Georgia, has discovered a new source of molasses in the Georgia melon patch. According to his experiments and calculations, 270 melons will make thirty gallons of syrup worth sls. The melons for mart ket would be worth $5 or $6. This is important, if true, and it may be true. The value of melon molasses must depend on its quality. It may be practically worthless. If the sweet of the melon can be granulated to produce sugar, melon sugar may be worth attention, but the sweet of melon Juice is so diluted that it Is not likely to compete with the. sugar beet. The sources of sugar are many. In the North the sugar maple is an unfailing source, although greately neglected. If the waste lands on every farm were planted with sugar maples, or even seeded, and kept free from cattle, in due time the owner would have good timber trees and a never-falling source of revenue In maple sugar. The price of that article is high enough to warrant farmers in setting maple groves.—Twentieth Century Farmer.

Don’t Clip the Wlnars* The clipping of wings Is, to say the least, a cruel practice and often results In the loss or injury of oar most valuable fowls is the sensible conclusion of a poultry writer in Home and Farm. The temptation to go to the highest portion of the roost is too strongly inbred In the fowls to resist and they will invariably manage to get to the top. Then, In their haste to get down they fall, head over heels, having flo means of protection. I have seen fowls attempt to fly from a perch fully ten feet from the ground, invariably with the same results. The fence can always be built high enough to keep them in the yard and, aside from all Injury the clipping does, their beauty is so marred that one should refrain from such unnecessary mutilation. A fence four feet high will keep the Leghorns at home. The cost of wire is so moderate that every one may easily provide -a good fence for the yards without resorting to any cutting of wings.

Coat of Meat and Bntter. The same feed which is required for producing one pound of butter will make two pounds of gain on the steer. The Minnesota Experiment Station found that 100 pounds of grain mixture with an equal amount of hay and roots fed to four steers produced 24.19 pounds of gain, and an equal amount of same food fed to four cows produced 12.04 pounds of butter. The type is not of so much significance with che steer as with the dairy cow, for the reason that a steer not of good type may be a large feeder and a good digester and convert all the food taken over his own maintenance into gain, while a cow not of the dairy type has the alternative of converting food either into milk or gain, and she may choose the latter when the owner wants on’y the former.

FTntidx Huskinsc Horae. In talking about a husking horse, Why not make one right? Take the

wheels off the com plow and have an axle of gas pipe the length desired; then take two pieces 10 feet long, Ix 3, for sides, made like a wheelbarrow. Then put uprights 4 feet high in a slant over the wheels. You can husk on one end and pile the fodder on the other end. I use It for carting fodder from one shock to the other. I have hauled five shocks at once on it. It is very handy in winter when feeding when the ground is frozen to wheel fodder or straw on.—G. D. Work, In Ohio Farmer.

Beat Fodder Cora. A writer In Prairie Farmer believes the best variety of fodder.com to be a medium early variety of sweet or sugar com. It contains more saccharine matter than the common varieties; It produces more blades and grain than any other variety; It' Is eaten with greater relish, both green and dry, than field com, and It produces better pork, beef, butter and milk, yields more and better feed per acre and Is preferable for piecing out falling pastures to sorghum, for it furnishes both a grain and grass ration for all kinds of farm animals. The writer begins _k> feed it to hogs from the time it begins to tassel and thinks It as good as clover. If not better. The Apple Crop. That the apple crop Is actually* worth more In cash annually than the wheat crop is a fact. The entire apple crop for 1900 waß 215,000,000 barrels. These, at 52 per barrel, would mean $430,000,000. The wheat crop does not average In value much over $300,000,000. I'he meaning of this is that we have got the world’s market for our fruit and are exporting nearly 4,000,000 barrels per year. These bring In the European markets nearer $4 a barrel than $2. And still the export trade Is Increasing every year. American fruit has a known worth from St. Petersburg to Liverpool.

HIS ATTITUDE. President McKinley Not in Favor of Any of the Free-Trade Innovation*. -There is good reason to believe that the well-informed Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Press speaks with knowledge and authority when he asserts that President McKinley is opposed alike to tariff revision and to The Kasson plan of reducing tariff rates by special trqde treaties. The President, it Is said, deprecates the opening up of the tariff question as disturbing ahd injurious to business interests, and the Babcock folly 1 of slaughtering the minor concerns by removing all protective duties from foreign products competing with the products of the Steel Trust will receive no encouragement from the Administration. With equal positiveness it is affirmed that President McKinley has not only exerted no pressure for the ratification of the French reciprocity'treaty, but, on the contrary, has been in full sympathy with the protectionist opposition to that ill-advised and mischievous Instrument. According to the Press correspondent the President did not examine the French treaty before submitting it to the Senate for approval, and hence was not aware that Commissioner Kasson had agreed upon a draft distinctly designed to benefit certain industries by withdrawing needed protection from other industries. With equal reason It may be taken for granted that the President had not investigated the scope and operation of the proposed Argentina'treaty, which provided for a reduction of 20 per cent

from the duties on wool provided for In the Dingley Tariff law. Undoubtedly the President*’is in favor of reciprocal trade arrangements that shall enlarge the foreign demand for American products, but it is real and not bogus reciprocity that he favors—the reciprocity authorized by the Republican National Platform of 1900, in “what we do not ourselves produce.” Those who imagine that President McKinley is to-day anything less than the sound and consistent protectionist that he always was are nursing a vain delusion. The President is a friend of American labor and industry. Make no mistake about that!

Btop and Think. Like some other Republican newspapers which are carried off their feet by the proposition that the tariff should be removed from all articles which can be produced so cheaply as to enable American manufacturers to successfully compete for the control of foreign markets, the St. Paul PioneerPress gives unqualified support to the Babcock program of so revising the Dingley Tariff law as to abolish protective duties on foreign products competing with the products of the Iron and Steel trust. Out-Heroding Herod, the Pioneer-!*ress is prepared to go much farther than the Babcock bill in the direction of tariff reform, for It urges*that— t “Every consideration of party policy demands that the. Republican party nhall promptly deprive Its enemies of a weapon which may easily become powerful and effective In their hands—that it shall completely dissociate the pro= tective tariff from the trusts by the speedy abolishment of all duties, on trust-made articles.” / If this wholesale scheme of tariff revision were to be carried out the result would be to practically place the country on a free-trade basis, for there are very few industries which are not to gome extent in the hands of the trusts. Therefore, to repeal protective duties on all foreign articles competing with American trust-made articles would virtually involve the repeal of all protective duties. What, then, becomes of the concerns operating outside and independent of the trusts? There are gome thousands of such concerns which are engaged in supplying the home demand and do little or notiling In the way of export business. For example, the Woolen trust. Only a small proportion of the manufacturers of woolen textiles are Incorporated into the American Woolen Company. * Shall all these mills be deprived of protective duties merely for the sake of punishing a combination with which they are in no way connected? Shall the iron and steel producers outside of the big trust be forced to'close down their mills and discharge their workmen in order that free-traders and tariff tinkers may make the gallery play of taking away from the billlon-dollar trust the protection which it frankly states it does not need and does not want? That sort of

claptrap would not disturb the billion dollar trust a particle. As-a mattes of fact It would play into the hands of the big trust by driving a la.ge number of-non-trust concerns out of business. \ But how about the non-trust concerns in all the different lines of Industrial production—concerns which employ a greater number of wageearners than do the trusts? # Republican newspapers of the Pioneer-Press stripe should think of these tilings before plunging heels-over-head into the antitrust tariff reform puddle.—American Economist. _

A Good Policy to Continue. The Republican protective policy was adopted at the beginning of the Civil War, and it was maintained during all the subsequent years up to 1894, when the enormous war debt was being reduced. Not only did protection serve tp 1 provide the revenue needed to meet the burden imposed by the prosecution of the Civil War, but it encouraged and built up the industries that have given this country first place in the fight for the markets of the world. During all the years that the United States was reaping the benefits of protection the manufacturers of England, aided by a strong minority of the American people, were doing their utmost to break down the protective wall and open our markets to an invasion by foreignmade goods. Now the conditions are practically reversed. This country is fast becoming the commercial master of the world, and England, confronted by an enormous war debt, finds her foreign trade dwindling and is beginning to feel the effects of domestic in-

dustrial depression. There was never a better opportunity for the protectionists to make headway in England, and they are likely to take full advantage of the opportunity. Whether or not the prospective change in the fiscal policy of the British Government will be injurious to the United States remains to be seen.—Cleveland Leader. They- Never Reflect. Philadelphia Record managers and other free-traders, whose main political policy is, “Anything to deprive American wage earners of employment and wages and enrich foreign monopoly by giving them our home market while we pay the taxes,” are still battling for a return to the robber Wilson tariff which swindled, according to Samuel Gompers, two and one-half million breadwinners 'out of their jobs. Do these enemies of the common people ever reflect that the Ruler of nations Is also the God of the poor, and that His justice is merely delayed?

At to Pettigrew. From a ranting, populistic antimonopolist, impecunious politician to a bloated railway magnate Is a strange transition for Senator Pettigrew. It is not likely we will hear much more from Pettigrew about the dangers of wealth, the octopus of monopoly or the sea serpent of imperialism. Perhaps he may yet go back Into the Senate after he has become a chronic millionaire and be received with open arms by that august aggregation which so cheerfully witnessed his recent departure. Otherwise Km ployed. it Is early yet for the Democracy to begin “paramounting” an issue. Just now that party has about all it can do to keep the more enlightened and progressive element thereof from breaking into the Republican party.—Moweaqua (Ill.) Republican. t He Will Not Succeed.

Water Before Food In.

THE PEA LOUSE.

A BUSKING HOUSE.