People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1895 — Congressmen Selling Seeds. [ARTICLE]

Congressmen Selling Seeds.

Enos Harnden, seed buy* for the department of agriculture, Washington, will soon make a report concerning sales of seeds by members of congress. It will involve men in a mess of petty crookedness. He has discovered that the seeds annually given members for free distribution among their constituents have been sold by many piembers. Harnden even bought some himself. For $75 he bought of a member, 14.9&0 packages of vegetate seed, 1,365 of flower seed, andelghtytwo packages of field seeds. These seeds actually cost the government $228, so that the member displayed a remarkable ignorance of their value. Mr. Harnden, while he was in the detective business for the department, refused to buy more than 100,000 packages of seeds which had been paid for by the government and given to members free and were offered him for sale. It is quite possible that when this report is presented it will do away with the free seed business altogether. The thing was started to enable farmers to secure new varieties of vegetables and grains, thus enriching the agricultural products of the country. Last year $160,000 was appropriated for the purchase of these seeds to be given to members of Congress in quotas of 15,000 packages each, and In turn to be distributed by them among their constituents. But the custom has been so abused that it will probably be stopped altogether. No good has ever come of it that anyone has seen.—Seneca News. If our debts are ever paid it must be in cheaper money than we have now.