Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — No Politics in It. [ARTICLE]

No Politics in It.

The duty on Canadian barley was 10 cents a bushel. The framers of the McKinley law sought to raise it to 30 cents. The border towns, without regard to party lines, protested against any increase, but offered to compromise at 15 cents. Senator Hiscock was indifferent or hostile, and the objections of Buffalo, Oswego, etc., went unheeded. The increase was gratuitous. It was not needed for purposes of protection. The farmers of New York cannot be induced to raise barley to any extent. It is an expensive crop. Western barley will not answer the uses of brewers, who are the principal consumers of barley. It was not an instance of a foreign underselling a domestieproduct. Maltsters cheerfully paid a higher price for Canadian barley than they could buy the New York product for, because they believed that Canadian barley alone would make the best quality of beer. The malting and brewing interests of Buffalo are very large. This trade now claims that “the experience of the past year has demonstrated that the predictions of those favoring the increased duty on barley were erroneous, as is evident by the fact that the value of barley is lower now than it was when the duty was only 10 cents per bushel.” A meeting will be held on ’Change at rfoon to-day to ask Congress to restore the old rate of duty. Congress should heed the request.—Buffalo Express.

How the wool tariff operates against the use of wood in goods and in favor of substitutes in “woolen goods” is described by a New-England woolen manufacturer as follows: “Free wool, with the present ad valorem rates upon goods, would be a great gain to woolen manufacturers; and, as on the woolen schedule, free wool brings a very large reduction in the duties on goods, with largely reduced cost on many woolfc goods, the bill for free wool would benefit everybody. It is a very exceptional item in the tariff law. Free raw material for ■froolen manufacturers also means a greater use of wool for socalled woolen goods; mills running upon ‘all-wool goods,’ so-called, are now in many instances using no wool at all, but some waste or shoddy, and mostly cotton. Free wool would also put up the price of wool abroad which competes with American wools." No wonder that the shoddy manufacturers are opposed to free wool.

The Mexican Government has decided to place an export duty on silver-lead ore shipped to the United States, in retaliation for the duty of 1J cents per pound on the lead contents imposed on Mexican ores by the McKinley tariff. A short time ago we showed how the imposition of this duty on the part of the United States cut down our production of lead from silver-lead ore and at the same time send a great deal of capital to Mexico to be expended in the building of smelters there. Now that these have begun working, Mexico feels bound to help them as much as possible. We are sorry to be obliged to repeat that we desire no “poetical” contributions. This world is full of ordinary human clods of both sexes who seem to think it a patriotic duty to send us an installment of rhymed slush as often as they feel a rush of imbecility to their brain tanks, which is altogether too often for the capacity of our present waste basket.— Pullman, (Ill.) Journal. So, so; the Chautauqua reformers have decided that the corset most go! Just the same, Feeblewitte ventures the prediction that it won’t be let loose right away! It is credited with being a stayer, has held its own so far and ought to have backbone enough to squeeze along for a while yet. “My dearest Ida, how is it that you, the liveliest girl in our set, arc going to marry and settle down?” “Nothing is simpler, my dear. The season’s bonnets for matrons are so becoming! ” The grounds used for our World’s Fair comprise 660 acres Philadelphia used $36, Paris 143, and New Orleans 250 There are over 3,000 animals in the Londoß Zoological Gardens.