Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1891 — SELLING LARD ABROAD. [ARTICLE]

SELLING LARD ABROAD.

An Example Showing the Value of the Farmer’s Foreign Market—The Foreign Effect of Our McKinley Ism. The great value of the farmer's foreign market may be seen from our exports of lard. The exports of lard during January show an increase of over 6,030,000 pounds over the exports during January last year, the figures for this year being 133,989,834 pounds, and last year 127,646,435 pounds. Our lard exports are growing rapidly, as the following figures will show: Pounds. 1888 270,000,000 1889 398,(00,000 1890 521,000,000

The values of exports were as follows: 1888..,..'". $23,000,030 1889 30,000,0C0 1890 30,000,000 This vast quantity of lard was of course paid for in manufactured goods of various kinds. Is it not true, then, that the freer admission we give to foreign goods tho greater will be tho foreign demand for our lard and all other products? And is not the other side of the question equally true, that the more we obstruct importation the more wo drive away foreigners from buying in our markets? The farmer, more than anybody else, it interested in the foreign market. His exports of meat and dairy products alone are almost equal to all/ the exports of our manufacturers. In 4890 our exports of farm products were over 74 per cent, of all exports; while exports of manufactures were less than 19 per cent. The farmer, therefore, has four times as much interest in (he foreign market as the manufacturer has. From this fact one important conclusion follows: When we raise a high tariff wall to protect our manufacturers and thereby aro :se a spirit of retaliation against us in foreign countries it i 9 mainly our farm products that are affected. It is believed that Germany and France would by this time have withdrawn their prohibition of onr pork if we had not entered upon the wild and extravagant protection scheme embodied in tfye McKinley law. France is now engaged in ffaming a new tariff law, and although our protectionists always classify France among “the poor and poverty stricken nations of tho earth” from which they assert that we need protection, yet France herself is now putting up duties against us upon the pretense that she cannot compete with tho products of American labor. Many of the changes made in the French tariff will bear heavily upon our farm products, lard itself having a heavy duty placed upon it. It is even proposed to withdraw the prohibition of our pork and substitute a duty nearfy prohibitory. This effect of our tariff in stirring up adverse legislation in foreign countries is one of the ways in which protection hurts our farmers which is too little considered by them. " • I Astonishing success lias attended the efforts of Dr. Lannelonge, an eminent specialist of Paris, to give intelligence to an idiot girl. Though four years old, the child could neither walk nor stand, and never smiled or tobk notice of anything. The doctor concluded that the abnormal narrowness of the head obstructed the growth of the brain, and in May last he made Un incision in the center of the skull, and cut a piece of bone from the left side of it. The result was marvelous. Within less than a month the child could walk, and she is now quite bright, playing, smiling, and taking notioe of everything around her. There Is no limit to the development of trusts and combinations to maintain prices. One of the latest cases reported is that of the manufacturers and dealers in corKs, who recently adopted a uniform price list for all corks. The McKinley duty on all manufactured corks is equivalent to a large increase on the more common giades. When on the redskin’* foot the shoe And not (he moccasin is worn, First there’s discomfort, squeezed of toee, Then come* the Indian com.