New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1909-01-06
How the Sharper Farms the Farmer
Writer in Saturday Evening Post Tells Of Some Of the
Fakes Worked on the Unsuspecng Agriculturalist

which is disposed OF in large lots to
the American farmer, and in smaller
lots to the suburbanite: and from all
this tremendous quantity of bad seed
only the poorest results can be expec-
ted. Most of those million pounds an
nually are mixed with clover seed and
sold as such. Small wonder that there
are many failures in clover crops. The
wonder almost begins to be that any
crops at all are successful.
There is something that is known as
yellow trefoil. You never love it for
itself alone. Nor, indeed, is it often
sold for itself alone. Something like
one hundred thousand pounds are han
died annually in this country from i'm
portations alone, and practically all
OF this importation is sold as clover
and alfalfa adulterant. And there is
a particularly vicious feature about
this. Yellow trefoil seed not only
looks much like the seeds it adulter-
ates. but it looks even better than they;
it has sort of bright, clean, honest
aspect which makes the purchaser
think he is getting a much better quail
ty than usual, which, of course, is
whatthe SUBSCRIPTIONS scotsman wants.
| know New York farmer who or
dered alfalfa seed and planted five
acres with it. He had never seen al
falfa, and when his crop matured he
did not know that it was nearly all
yellow trefoil. He cut the crop, was
bitterly disappointed, and he and his
neighbors had only evil words and
thoughts for alfalfa.
Again, on the mere strength of as
surance and "forehead of BRASS to
use the old-time expression, a man
went, last year, through much of our
Southern country selling cotton seed.
1t was the most marvellous cotton seed
that had ever come into being. He
was really comforting favor by let
ting people buy it at the rate of TWEEN
ty-five dollars a pound. Yet it was
afterward learned that each pound of
his supply cost him only five cents.
One of the commonest fakes is to be
found in the manufacture and sale of
stock foods.
CHAT and screenings naturally go
into stock food; sawdust is not I'M
known, and large percentage of bran
or middlings is not uncommonly the
bulls of rice, peanuts, oats and cotton
seed, ground fine for mixing. Nor am
| speaking of little swindles, for rice
hulls alooe are sent to certain mills by
the carload to be ground and mixed.
If sold as rice-hulls it would be anoth-
er matter.
Corn, which has partly fermented, is
more or less unfit for food, and so a
favorite trick is to dry it and dye it
yellow, that color being chosen be-
cause Of the popularity of very yellow
corn through the notion that the yell
lower the corn the more nutritious it is.
Cracked corn, intended for poultry
food, not infrequently begins to fer
ment, especially if it chances to have
been wet, and then the corn will go on,
unless checked, to blackness and loss.
Eut many dealer does not look with
equanimity upon the imminent loss,
and therefore dyes the corn and sells
it as first grade.
Nor is it only in such ways that
poultry suffer. There is a cookie,
which grows commonly in wheat fields
and is poisonous for chickens. It's
seed is three-cornered, black, and two
thirds the size of a wheat seed. Chick
ems will not touch it when mixed with
wheat grains or with screenings; but
when it is ground with screenings and
sold as legitimate food, and goes to
the chickens in mash, they have no
/ instinct which can tell them of its dan