Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1892 — GRAINS OF GOLD. [ARTICLE]

GRAINS OF GOLD.

PEOPLE IN EUROPE ACQUIRING A TASTE FOR CORN. How the Department of Agriculture Is Teaching Europeans to Eat Corn —Maize for China. The maize crop of this country is valued at $800,000,000 annually. If a demand for the cereal could be created abroad the market price would necessarily nse, and it is reckoned that an increase of 5 cents a bushel would in ten years put one thousand million dollars into the pockets of American farmers. “Com has come to stay in Germany,” writes Colonel C. J. Murphy, agent for the maize propaganda, from Berlin. Already two corn-grinding mills have been established at Hamburg, two at Stettin, two at Dresden, one at Hanover, and one at Biberstein. Others are about to be put into operation. Stettin, the most important port of the Baltic sea, has imported this spring from the United States 25,000 tons of maize. Imports of com from America into Germany have taken a big jump within the last four-months. Most of the mills are working night and day, and the-demand for cornmeal is so treat that it is impossible for them to 11 their orders. The German government is now putting a corn-grinding plant into one of its mills at Magdeburg. This is the first step toward the contemplated introduction of maize into the rations of theariny. Such a departure, however, cannot bo taken suddenly, because it would be injudicious to appear to forco the food upon the soldiers, inasmuch as that would be likely to render it distasteful to them. Accordingly the authorities will go slow in the matter, their presentpiotion being to make the military bread eventually two-thirds rye and one-third corn. This would signify an enormous saving, owing to the comparative cheapness of the yellow grain, of which not less than 500,00 U hundred weight would be required for the army of Germany annually. In the windows of numerous bakeries in Berlin and other Gorman cities are to be seen to-day huge red paper signs bearing in big black letters the words “Murphy Bread! Two-thirds rye; onethird com. Five-pound loaf for 14 cents. Former price for three-pound loaf 11 2-3 cents.” This is a translation. One German commercial house has scoured the agency for certain American corn mills, aud is thus enabled to sell meal before the maize arrives. The difficulty has been to get the corn from the United States fast enough to supply the demand. Colonel Murphy lias sent a loaf of the rye-corn bread, together with a Bainple of meal, to each of the 400 members of the Reichstag. The magazine representing the interests of German pistry and cake bakers will include in its next number an article highly recommending corn to the trade. One of the greatest problems which confront Europeun statesmen today is the question of maintaining the present enormous military establishments ut the highest point of efficiency with the lowest charge on the tax-burdened people. Into this question the matter of rations enters very importantly, the demand being for a diet 'concentrated, highly nutritious and at the same time sufficiently varied. Maize affords just such food stuff, being especially valuable where muscle and hard labor are required. The greater part of the bread consumed by the armies of the South during the Rebellion was of corn, and likewise a large portion of that which was supplied to the Federal troops. There is no other food which is susceptible of preparation by cookery in such a variety of palatable forms. Colonel Murphy has published in a widely circulated pamphlet 130 different recipes for dishes to b 9 composed with it. Many of these he has prepared himself in public, serving them free to all comers, such as homijjy, Boston brown bread, Indian pones, Johnny cakes, corn mush, Indian pudding, corn dodgers, green corn pudding, corn griddle cukes, crumpets, corn wattles and gophers, croquettes, corn fritters, canned com, succotash, pino'.e, samp and corn grits. Pinole is a preparation of the vegetable now served out as a ration in the Mexican army. Com was first cultivated by white men on the James river. Virginia, in' 1608. The seed was obtained from the Indians, who claimed to have received the plant direct from the Creator. Whatever the actual origin of corn may have been modern botanists and naturalists are agreed that the earliest species was the kind known as “zea tunica” or “clothed com.” That is, each kernel on the ear was inclosed in a separate husk, like grains of wheat in the head. Descending from this type varieties have become almost innumerable, each country, climate and soil producing their own modifications. No other plant thrives so well in all latitudes. There are five distinct species of corn —dent, flint, sweet, soft and pop. No fewer than seventy-five varieties are grown in Nebraska alone. The different varieties of maize have bepn so determined by cultivation that each will invariably produce ears true to typo when kept free from others. It is said that the Indians have producod such well-defined mixtures of the kernels on the ears as to make it possible to describe by what tribe any particular ear has been grown. For example, one tribe has all reel and white grains, and another all pure black, and so on, even to the arrangement of the different colored grains on the ear. The adoption of these distinctions is said to have been originally for the purpose of detecting thefts of com by one tribe from another. The great “corn patch,” embracing Indiana, Iffinoiis, lowa, Missouri. Kansas, and Nebraska, produces enough of the cereal in one year to load a string of wagons, placed end to end and each carrying forty bushels of shelled corn, extending around the world six times. The line would stretch in a straight line 154,879 miles. Loaded on freight cars carrying *SOO bushels each, tho same quantity of shelled corn would require for carrying it four trains stretching continuously from New York to San Francisco, with a train 2,5C0, milts long left over. Trave ling at the usual rate such a train would require a whole year to puss through Chicago. Col. Murphy asserts that com can be, landed on the coast of China from the United States in thirty days by steam, ar d can be sold for one-half the price of rice, which, as everybody knows, is the principal food of the Chinese. When they find this out it will not take the pig-tnlled orientals long to learn how to cook maize. They are so poor that they will eat anything which will sustain life, cheapne.-s being the first consideration. Supposing this frugal diet once introduced among them, it is amazing to consider the quantity of the cereal whinh they would consume, taking into view the fact that the population of that country is 400,000,000. Processes are said bars been recently devised by

which baked com breatr jan be preserved in good condition for a yoar or even more. At present 20,000,000 bushels of the maize produced in this country are annually used for purposes of distillation.—[Washington Star.