Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — A BARN ON THE BORDER [ARTICLE]

A BARN ON THE BORDER

HOW IT CHANGED THE VALUE OF PRODUCE. The Final Saccem of an Interesting Experiment Is Put in Jeopardy Eesause the Projector Is Undergoing Trial lor Smuggling. Farmer Finnegan's Magic Barn. Once upon a time (and this is no fake story) there lived, and still lives, in. Hodgson, Aroostook County, Maine, a man by the name of Patrick Finnegan. . Mr. Finnegan is not a politician, as might be inferred from his name, but a farmer; and a remarkable one in some respects. It is considered the acme of successs in farming to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. Farmer Finnegan could do more; he could harvest three . bushels of potatoes where one had grown. This strange result was not due to any peculiarity of soil, but entirely to location. Fart of his farm was on one side of the imaginary line between the United States and Canada and part on the other side. This imaginary and apparently harmless line was a constant source of trouble and annoyance to him, as it has always been to Uncle Sam—especially since McKinley magnilied its importance. The farm animals, and even the farm hands, could not be made to understand the importance of this invisible line, and would not treat it with proper respect. Mr. Finnegan had learned, since he had been paying taxes in two countries, the importance of that line. He knew that it was a sin for the American side of his farm to have dealings with the Canadian side. le was a written law that the two ends of his farm should in no way recognize each other. In fact the United States ■Government had officers patrolling that line to see that nothing of value passed between the two ends of this and other farms similarly situated. Regardless of consequences and of the fact that they were cheap provincial animals on one side and valuable

farm animals on the other, above associating* with their pauper selves, the sheep, hogs, cattle, and horses would, nevertheless, persist in smuggling themselves back and forth across the line. Still greater trouble was caused when colts, calves, lambs, pigs, ete, born on the provincial end of the farm, innocently following their careless mothers, would attempt to become subjectsof the great United States without the payment of duty. Of course, our Government could not tolerate such reckless &buse of its rights, privileges, and laws, and the great Treasury Department, in several famous decisions, put its foot down on all such proceedings. These decisions have had to be revised several times to cover all possible combinations of circumstanecs of domestic animals that stray into foreign lands when about to become mothers. It is now safe to say that a calf born on the Canadian end of Mr. Finnegan’s farm is expatriated, though its parents are clearly American. Since 1890 Mr. Finnegan’s hens, geese and turkeys have proven (hemselves unworthy subjects of Uncle Sam. Keeping up their old habits they would walk, fly or swim into Canada to lay pauper eggs, and perhaps hatch pauper chickens or goslings, when these processes could just as well have occurred on our own free and valuable soil. Mr. Finnegan was put to endless annoyance trying to get back the disgraced barn-yard fowls without attracting the attention of the officials patrolling the boundary line between the two countries. At last, after many sleepless nights, Mr. Finnegan devised a scheme that might possibly save him much trouble, and perhaps even reward him for past trouble and expense. He would build a barn on the dividing line and keep the Canadian farm animals and products in the provincial end of it and the genuine American animals and products in the American end. The success of the scheme was beyond Mr. Finnegan’s most sanguine expectations. It had a magical effect on production. Not only did the soil become more fertile, but products garnered in that barn continued to increase in quantity. For every hundred bushels of oats or barrels of potatoes harvested and put into that barn the proprietor could take out and sell two or three hundred bushels or barrels. Horses led through that barn might add $25 or even SSO to their value. The barn had proved a bonanza to its owner, who was enjoying such unprecedented prosperity as to arouse feelings of jealousy in the breasts of his neighbors and suspicions of fraud in the minds of Uncle Sam’s patrolmen. The final success of the experiment is now put in jeopardy because Mr. Finnegan is undergoing a trial for smuggling potatoes across the border line. It is claimed, and indeed is not denied, that farmers in this country prefer to purchase their seed potatoes from Canada. They think this the test means of avoiding rot and of securing an early crop. Hence there is considerable demand in the United States, even when our potato crop is fair, for New Brunswick and Nova Seotia potatoes. This demand continues in spite of the 25 cents per bushel duty placed on potatoes by our late Wm. McKinley, Jr. Of course the duty makes provincial potatoes worth 25 cents less than when transported to the United States. These indisputable facts, coupled with the fact that Mr. Finnegan has undoubtedly been selling 700 or 800 barrels of potatoes although he has raised but 300, have been taken advantage of by his neighbors across the border, who have testified that they have sold produce, especially potatoes, to Mr. Finnegan, to be delivered at the cheap end of the barn. The charge is then made that Mr. Finnegan would smuggle the potatoes worth 40 cents per bushel to the dear end of the barn, where they were worth 65 cents per bushel. The Government officials discredit the whole story of the magic barn, and say that it is only a kind of smuggling that is being systematically conducted along the Maine border. They say that it is easy to smuggle there, because there are but eight officers for 200 miles of boundary. If -the jury decides against Mr. Finnegan, an<? convicts

him the awful crime of moving produce from one end of his barn to the other, he may be incarcerated for several months and have a whole year’s profits confiscated. Out of respect for an administration that has been discarded, the moral that could be drawn from this true story is omitted.