Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1906 — AN EDITOR REBELS. [ARTICLE]

AN EDITOR REBELS.

Mr. Littlefield finds that among other cold things in Maine, is a reduced plurality. If Germany has a greatest crop, and Japan has a greatest crop where are we to sell the surplus of our own greatest crop? Chicago’s food inspector has a consignment of olives under suspicion, but the trouble is, no one can tell whether an olive is bad or not, just by tasting it. The total tax rate in Rensselaer for this year will be $3 .36 on each SIOO valuation. The man who has a few hundred or a few thousand dollars in bank here drawing 3 per cent, will soon be figuring out how much poorer he is than the man with only the clothes to his back, for the former will have to dig up an extra 36 cents on each hundred dollars more than he receives in interest. “Blessed be nothing”—if you don’t owe for it. The Department of Agriculture hasabsoluteiy laid down to the packers and let them have their own way in a very important matter of labels. It will be recollected that the meat inspection law provided that all meat products should be labeled for precisely what they are. In accordance with this demaud nearly all oi the labels on canned and otherwise prepared meats had to be revised. The “picnic ham,” which bad no ham in it; tin “potted chicken,” which was in reality made out of sheep; the “California ham,” which was nothing but a shoulder, all disappeared from the trade. But when it came to the question of canned roast beef, the packers put up such a howl that they carried their point, and “canned roast beef” will hereafter be a staple article of trade, although there is no such thing on the market. The “canned roast beef,” which the packers have been putting out, is in reality simply par-boilod and steamed until it bears more resemblance to wet wrapping paper in quality and consistency, than it does to anything else. This was the beef that caused so much trouble during the Cuban war. Those who ate it, or tried to, agreed that it was a slimy, tasteless, indigestible mass, and most of the soldiers rather than try to eat it threw away the cans and went hungry. But canned roast beef is still a staple article of of trade. The paokers sell it to the armies of the world, probably because the enlisted men of the world can not effectively protest against anything that is issued them in the

way of a ration. The packers claim that “canned roast beef” is a valuable trade mark, and that they must so label their product in order to compete with Australia and South America, both of which countries are keenly after army contracts. So the boiled and steamed beef, which it is an insult to name in the same breath with roast beef, will continue to bear an alluring lying label, and the Department of Agriculture will salve its conscience by insisting that the method of preparation shall be noted on the cans in small letters underneath the label.

Concordia, Kas., Sept. 15.—The Concordia Empire prints the following;: "We have been invited to send a dollar contribution to the republican campaign fund that is being raised by popular subscription, and to which President Roosevelt recently subscribed. We would like to have our dollar in such select company, aU right, but we've done all the contributing we intend to this year. “We recently have completed building a house at a coat of something over 14,000, and for every foot of lumber, every pane of of glass, every sack of cement, every pound of nails, and in fact for nearly every bit of material that went into it we made a good liberal contribution through the trusts that control them, and we guess we have done our share. "It may be treason for a republican newspaper to talk this way, but facts are facts, and it sort of relieves our conscience to tell the truth about the trusts once in a while. We’ll just let the several trusts to which we have bad to pay unwilling tribute in the last year pay our dollar for us. We need it and they don’t.” The above item is clipped from the newecolumns of Saturday’s Indianapolis News, a paper that can always be counted on for shouting for the g. o. p, in each campaign, therefore it can not be classed as a democratic fabrication. But the editor might have gone on and truthfully said that he had been paying tribute to the republicanengendered trusts during the past eight or ten years on every item of material used in bis print-shop, from ordinary print paper to type aud printing material. Ten years ago type was about one-half the price it is to-day; all kinds of printing machinery have advanced from 20 to 50 per cent; paper of nearly all kinds is much higher, and the printer man gets no more for his product than he did then. Of course our Republican friends tell us that Roosevelt has busted the paper trust, and that as a result print paper, such as newspapers are printed on, is about one-half the price it was previous to the “busting.” Yet every editor who has printed this rot knows that he printed a lie, for print paper has varied but very little in price in the past five years, and is not likely to until some one gets hold of the trust-breaking club that will wield it where something will be hit. It is results, not mere words, that we want, and while the printing and newspaper business may be said to be growing better year by year, in the way that there is more reading, more advertising, more job printing being done, a greater volume of work, as it were, few country newspaper shops have as niuoh left at the end of the year after deducting the operating expenses as they had ten years ago. And every one of the editors of such papers, if they would tell the truth, would say so. The small dealer in all dosses of business is being robbed by the trusts, as is the consumer, but it would seem that the nepsper man gets it in the neck more frequent than any of the rest of them. Still the editors of the republican sheets will continue to howl for their trust-ridden party for fear the big stiok will smite them if they dare tell the truth and publish what they know to be the facts.