Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1906 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. 41 Prom our special correspondent: The foes of the Pure Food law have showed their hands in the Senate by introducing a measure striking out all but the enacting clause of the Heyburn bill preparatory to substituting for it a bill prepared by the National Food Manufacturers’ Association. Now a national pure food law has been long and urgently needed. It touches every man, woman and child in the country, especially the children, and it is a law that no honest manufacturer has anything to fear from. It has been urged by all state food authorities and by all of the agricultural colleges of the country. The Heyburn Bill was drawn under expert advice to fill this particular need and it put the execution of the law into the hands of the Department of Agriculture where it would be enforced. It also made the Department of Commerce and Labor, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice parties to its administration. It was not a measure that any manufacturer of impure food liked, and as they did not dare to fight it in the open, they have prepared a substitute which will be so placed that it is likely to die of inanition. The substitute measure while on the face of it more drastic even than the Heyburn Bill, leaves a beautiful outlet for every retail dealer in misbranded and adulterated foods by requiring that the label and the name of the shipper shall appear only on the box or create in which the goods are shipped and not on the packages sold to the consumer. One can easily see how parentally protective a law of this sort would be. It also provides against publishing the names of firms misbranding and adulterating foods and thus robs the law of the greatest of all safeguards, namely publicity. The measure has not yet come to a vote. But there is bound to be a lively fight and the manufacturers have a strong lobby engaged in trying to push their measure through

Shippers of live cattle who would gladly make an extra penny out of the sufferings of their dumb victims, have encountered a strong obstacle in the House in the shape of the Humane Societies which are trying to block what would be a disgracefully inhuman law. Cattle shippers aie limited by statute to 28 hours as the longest haul to which they can subject stock without rest, food or water, This law was for years a dead letter. But it has been enforced by Secretary Wilson for two years past and the shippers are feeling the pinch of it. They are now trying to get the time extended so that they can haul cattle 36 hours without rest, food or water, claiming blandly that the cattle suffer lets in this way than through the additional handling to which they would be subjected were frequent stops made. This is pure sophistry and is designed to make the run just as long as it can be itaade without actually losing on the weight of * the beasts shipped. The’r sufferings are nothing. It is merely a question of making the greatest possible profit out of them. If the decent minded men and women who are urging a reduction instead of an extension in feeding time have their way, it will result either in the shippers

being forced to put on cattle cars with feeding and watering attachments or better still ’in moving the slaughter bouses from Omaha and Chicago nearer to the cattle raising centers. The Beef Trust is largely indifferent to the outcome of the fight. It does not have to pay for shipping the cattle and if the extra expense to the seller forces the trust to pay a trifle more for beef, it will come out of the consumer's pocket anyhow. Of course should the slaughter houses have to be moved, it would entail some additional expense that would have to be made up out of the seller and the consumer combined. But the question of the humanity involved is a mere detail that would never have received a thought bad not this fight been forced by the Humane Societies irf the committee of the House. t t t Representative Sulzer of New York has touched on a very sore spot with the government by introducing a resolution for investigating the deal by which the old Custom House in New York was sold to the National City Bank eight years ago for a mere song and in virtue of which the government has been paying rent ever since for the old building. The Bank has never paid out a cent for it and has dodged the taxes on the property by letting the deed still rest in the hands of the government. This is not the first time that this transaction has been brought up, but it is an ever tender subject and if forced this time to an investigation is likely to uncover a pretty scandal. It will be remembered that the price was ridiculously low in the first place. The property was sold to the Bank for $3,265,000 when experts valued it at nearly SIO,OOO, 000. It has been appreciating in value every minute since. The Bank is a big depository of government funds, and it paid for the building simply by transferring the purchase figures from one book to another without even paying out a cent of real money. Even then it held back $50,000 of the purchase price, so that the deed has never been recorded, the result being that the bank has never had a cent of taxes to pay on the property. Meantime it has been receiving $130,000 a year rent for the building so that by the time the new Custom House is completed, which will still be some years hence, it will about have received the price of the building back in rent and will have the immensely valuable plot of ground through a process of high finance that it is difficult for a common person to appreciate. It will not have had to spend a penny for it. A thorough investigation that would turn the light of publicity on the whole transaction is to be devoutly hoped for but scarcely to be expected.