Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1898 — THE PRICE OF HAY. [ARTICLE]

THE PRICE OF HAY.

It seems everything is not as rosy in the effite east as our republican friends of the American Protective Tariff League and the Republican Literary Bureau, at Washington—where editorials are written for republican editors of country papers, including the Rensselaer Journal of course. Listen to this tale of woe from a Schoharie county, N. Y., paper: There are reports that new hay is worth two and three dollars per ton. George Letts says that at Altamont a lot of hay in which he has interest is worth only $1 per ton, and the same value on rye straw. Mr. Letts offered a lot of standing grass, stout and fine in quality, all of 10i acres, for $5, and offered to trim about fences without charge. He has failed to get a buyer at that price, and probably will let the crop stand. Probably next year the farmer will be obliged to pay to have a crop of grass cleared from the land. Hay is one of the principal crops of the farms hereabouts, and the diastrous price is a great hardship. If a man owns a farm, lives on it, and with his family, labors hard and economizes, he can make a living. But if he has a mortgage or other debts, both ends can not be made to meet. Something is going wrong with the farmer.