VOL. XXIV.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., OOT. 12,1889.
NO. 41
■Written for the Indiana Farmer.
A Farmer Snepected of Dishonest Intentions!
BY W. W. SULLIVAN.
In tbe Farmer of the 24th of this month
—Maroh—Is a brief artlole with the caption
of "The Honest Farmer," with the author
of whioh I have a crow to pick, and as the
artlole purports to be editorial, per consequence the picking ia with yon, all the
Bame; dangerous as it Is for a farmer to
play"tags''ln the newspapers, and especially so, with an editor. The artlole says,
' An honest looking old farmer bought a
barrel of glucose and last year's maple
sugar of a oandy manufacturer/ and the
prasumptioh is, that he -will make the
twain into maple syrup, so called and Impose it upon "our unsuspecting city
housewives," for fresh made maple mo-
latses.
Tou say he looked like a farmer, maybe
he"wasn't. May be he was one ot your
city ohaps disguised, in order to cover
up his meditated rascality; possibly
ah editor whose bank account waa
.was growing fearfully less; but waving these mitigating circumstances,
did it oocur to you what that other fellow
had this stock of last year's maple sugar
and glucose on hand for? He wouldn't
be gnilty of as muoh as ever thinking
about doing anything so bad as that honest looking old farmer was ^suspected ef,
would he? Of course not.' 6, he was a
candy maker, and-,was going to use the
glncose in making candy you say. Don't-
cher understand T Well, yes, I guess I do,
but, if so, why was It that you hadn't a
a word of condemnation for him? Is it
becauae'nearly all his counterfeit candy is
to be consumed by the little children, and
they can,t jaw back and take their own
part? or is it beoauae this thing is so common with so large a portion of the manufactories that the press and the people,and
the law makers have given it up, and are
tacitly consenting to it, unless, forsooth,
"an honest farmer" should attempt It?
Dear Eiltor, since man Is so—almost
without limit—the creature of influence
by his environments and fellowmen, is. it
strange if the honest hard working farmer
"Who tolls so hard from sun to ssn,
And yet his work la never done."
by so long seeing so many persons, in so
many of the manufacturing interests all
over the country growing fat and sleek,
by years and years of continuously practicing similar prooesses of rascality, that
onoe in a great while, even he—the very
synonym of honesty—should be j istled,
and fall, and do likewise?
Apropos: Feeling slightly indisposed this
stormy equinoctial day, I concluded this
moment to take a dose of quinine; and I
have a box of the same, put up in "two
grain capsules that I bought last spring
down in good old Jafl. Davis oounty;
where everybody is honest,you know, and
where the people love Jeff, so well—especially the ladies, they jnst scream and
cry and sob—to look at him 1 But as I
was saying, I oonoluded as I was writing
on this BUbj set of deception—dishonesty
and fraud, that I would interview one of
these capsules of quinine. Briefly I concluded from the interview that gum
arable is cheaper than quinine; for while
they are all right if it's the gum arabic you
want, at the same time it takes eight of
them to represent the amount of quinine
you paid for one I
Now dear Farmer, It is not you I am
after so much, as all of us. For we are the
government.
If flonr is largely oomposeed of Spanish
•whiting, sugar and sugar candy of gluoose,
milk of chalk aud water, baking powder
of alum, and-even our very whisky itself
is adulterated (?) and poisoned, where is
this thing to end? Wouldn't it be a good
idea to use some of that surplus, that, in
the estimation of our honored executive
—is endangering the rook bottom foundations of our goverment—ln creating and
maintaining an efficient bureau to prevent these things?
England does it. Osrmany doea it.
And so does France; and even "heathen
India and China," proteot the lives of
their people in the same way, while the
watchword ot America of,
"On, on, right on"~leaps from every tongue—
"Llve.while yon Uve, and go it while you're young."
monopolizss our time and stultifies  our
conscience.    O, what a  burning shame I
■  * ■
Ornamental Farm and Lawn Fences.
The fence question has oooupied a very
prominent place in the minds of farmers
for a long time. It has at last been settled
for them by the Indlanapolla Fence Co.
This company makes one ot the handsomest as well as the most substantial and
cheapest farm and lawn fences now upon
the market. The accompanying cut shows
one or two spans of this popular fence and
the manner of bracing it from the corner
post. Instead of using barb or plain wire,
they use a galvanized twisted steel ribbon
which is muoh stronger, is not in j arious to
stock,will wear f orever,and presents a very
muoh more handsome appearance. The
posts aro iron andoinbe placed from there
showing as they apparently do,how much
more rapidly we inorease our staple products than our powers of consuming
them.
By way of  Illustrating thia we present
the following table, showing the  production of Indian corn, hay, cotton and wheat
ln the census years 1870 1880:
Tears.        Products. Amount.
1870 Corn, bushels    750,941,100
1880 Corn, bushels I,7>4,8il,CC0
1870 .....Hay, tons __     27.»16,C00
1880 Hay, tens      S5,2r*,'00
1870 Cotton, bales        8,154,000
IS. I Cotton, bales        5,757,f0»
18.8. Wheat, bushels     278,745,000
18*0. Wheat, bushels". „       7,600,000
188) Wheat, bushels    459,719,0C0
These are the four great representative
orops. Roughly stated, the gain per cent
may be put as follows for the decade:
Per cent.
Gain In corn. 150
Gain In hay __   27
Gain ln cotton   18
Gain ln wheat „   7„
Approximate average gain   £4
Thia average is about three times as
much as the gain of population. But lt
we take the reports of the Department of
Agrioulture as our guide, we find that the
increase in stock whioh consumes our corn
and hay have kept pretty well up with the
WIRE CLAMP.
DIVISION POST CLAMP.
to five rods 'apart. Just as many ribbons
can be used as may be desirable, and they
can be placed at any distance from each
other. They are kept in place by cleats
holding them to the posts.
, We also show the couplings used by
them; however, they can be used with
any kind of plain or barb wire as well.
These couplings and clamps are made
of the best quality of malleable
iron, and will not break. The cut
of the fence shows the manner of attaching the clamps having a tention device, to the end posts. By this simple
tention the-ribbons are stretohed taut and
held firmly in plaoe. There is economy
in building a fenoe that is absolutely indestructible. A fence of this kind costs
but little more than a board or rail fence,
and once built, lasts a life time. See the
advertisement of the Indianpolis Fence Co.
in this issue. In it they show another
kind ot fence. Do not build until you get
their prices.
Our Staple Pbo ducts .—The following
figures afford an interesting comparison.
increase of crops.
Mtlch Oxen and other
Years.       cows.                    cattle. Population.
1863      8,581,735                     l',034,28. 81,443,1(2,
1870.—   10,095,600                     15,188,5*0 38,5*8,871
1888.—   12,027,000                     21,231000 60,155,783
1899    15,298,625                     35,0.2,417 63,000,COO
In 1860, the cattle, exolusive of miloh
oowb, were equal ln number to 54 per cent
of the population, in 1870 to 39 per oent, in
1880 to 42 per cent and in 1889 to 53 per
cent of the population. And the increase
in hogs, sheep and horses must also be
borne in mind aa well as that of milch
cows and oxen and' then it will be seen
that we are but about keeping things even.
—Colman's Rural World.
What Good Roads Should Cost.—Boad
making is worse done in the United States
than ariy other work paid by taxes, except
teaching geography and grammar, and
our roads are without exception the worst
to be found .in any country not semi-barbarous. The roads of Pennsylvania are,
for instawn,* infinitely below those of
backwood countries like Spain or Italy, or
poverty stricken lands Uke India, where
the great mass of people have but one shirt
and do not always wear that.
Yet there ls no mystery about good
roads and they are not expensive. A civil
engineer, Mr. J. F. Pope, has just been
putting some hard faots about roads in
the Texas papers. He shows that even in
Texas, where labor is high and population
sparse, a good road 18 feet wide in the
track, with four feet margin on eaoh side,
can be laid down for an average $2,100 per
mile complete, and kept in repair for $100
a mile.
All that is needed ia a good line in the
firat plaoe, skilled supervision ln laying
out the drainage, and broken stone fine
enough to go through an Inch and a halt
ring, nine inches in the center and four
and a half inches on the side with the free
use of steam rollers. •
Main county roadB of this sort would
save their cost every 10 years and their
interest every six months. The money
and labor now wasted on poor roads would
build them, but we despair of ever seeing
it done.—Philadelphia Press.
■ ■ • »	
Clay Subsoil Lands.—We have in mind
some laige tracts of land right in the
midat of a fine grain-growing country that
have always been mainly kept in grass.
The soils vary from stiff clay to a black
loam, and are underlaid with a very deep
clay subsoil. Being comparatively level,
the drainage is bad and the most of this
land is, therefore, naturally unauited to
grain growing. Sjme grain has always
been grown in the more favorable portions,
but the crops were uncertain, being almost
entire failures in very rainy seasons
Const quently, the main industry of thia
section of the country has been stock raising. But within the past few years a good
deal of ditching and tiling has been done In
that section, and a very marked improvement made in the character of the land
Wherever the land has been properly and
thoroughly drained, flne crops of grain are
now grown. Now, the point to which
special attention is called is that this land,
which is naturally the very poorest for
grain, can be made the very best. When
rightly improved it has a special and desirable quality which we will endeavor to
explain briefly.
On land s naturally well drained by a gravel subsoil olose to the surfaoe, crops suffer
greatly from the lack of soil moisture every
dry season, and there ls no help for them
except by irrigation.
But the clay subsoil of the land described retains moisture during the driest season, and this moisture rises by capillary
attraction and supplies the growing crops
so that they never sutler from drouth.
On this land a good system of drainage
lowens the water level and provides for removing quickly the surplus water from
every heavy rainfall, while the clay subsoil forms a reseivoir for supplying water
when needed, so that good grain crops can
be grown every year, wet or dry. On this
land we can have practically a combined
system of drainage and irrigation, and
irrigation, too, in its best possible form-
that ls, sub Irrigation from a natural reservoir close at hand.
The improvement of this land by drainage is as great for grass as for grain. The
grass is sweeter and more nutritious, and
all the tame grasses and clovers can bs
grown. The productive,capacity of the
land will be greatly increased. Grain
growing need not supersede the stock raising industry but can simply be added to
it. So that, after all, this land with its
great natural drawbacks Is found to possess some superior advantages, and the
way to eecure them is to go about improving it in the right way.—Farm and Fire-
aide.
Evansville favors Chioago as a plao for
the World's fair. The Basines Men'o
Association has bo declared,
t