Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1891 — BOOK OF THIS HEN. [ARTICLE]

BOOK OF THIS HEN.

Tariff Proteots Her Infttac Indastrjr—• Canada Delltag Om« e r < f»r a thine. “Hens are more profitable thaa boss.” said a South Water street com* mission merchant yesterday in that brief emphatlo way peculiar to the man whose time is worth ready cash.) “Yes. sir,” he continued, with a inflection, “and 1 the farmers of this country are just beginning to find it out. They won’t require much tending' and eggs nowadays are pretty valuable things. Time was when eggs used to go to the farmer’s wife for pit money. It isn’t so any longer; they have got to be an articlf pf commerce and we count their sale bv millions of do en. ■ “Over in Canada the hen has got into politics and the politicians there are quarreling about who has done most for the native bird. Our newtariff has flattened out their egg mar* ket pretty badly, and a friend of mine who has been there lately tells me that the restaurants in the big towns are selling omelets for a song. It wouldn't surprise me any if the native hen should cause a commotion among our Canuok neighbors. The Candians used to send about 15,000.0J0 dozen eggs to New York every year until we got a tariff of 5 cents a dozen clapped on to the market price of their eggs. Now th-y send but very few and we have most of the market to Last year we probably shipped cloie on to 45.0 ■O.OOJ do’.en eggs east.. Tuis year, wiih the new tariff, we shall send another I>,OJO.OOJ or 20.000,000; “No, it hasn’t made any difference in the price; we got more last season than we have been getting lately. The only particular advantage 1 see is that vve sha 1 sell more eggs and raise less hogs. The New York commission men are not ne.ar so saucy as they were when they had Canadian eggs to fall back on. They kicked the i about small eggs and cloudly eggs, but now they don’t grumble a little bit. The tariff has helped ui cons derable in that way. protecting our feelings to some extent. ‘‘The Canadians have a different way of doing business to what we have. 1 hey use the cold storage system the same as we do, but they change the eggs twice every season, while weon y do it once B iihg nearer to the mar* ket they could easily do this and hence have another advantage. ••The American hen is not much as a fly ng machine, but if she i? properly looked as er she is as good as a copper mine to her owner.” •Where do most of the eggs come from that are sold in this market.” “From all over the country. Wisconsin. Kentucky, Tennessee and lowa all send eggs to Chicago. The north, ern eggs are the best and bring tne highest price. Eggs are worth now anywhere from 14 to lb cents a dozen. Last year at this time we were getting 2J cents. This winter has hem so mild that the southern hens havn’t quit laying, not even duringthe Christ, mts holidays. In northern Wisconsia thoy have been at work d iring part of the season, bat laid of when the cold snap came on. Southern ezgs are p entiful „ust now, but they havn’t the keeping qualities of those that are manufactured up north. “Lent is always the best time in the year for the egg trade, but as I said,| owing to the desperate activity of the confederate hens, prices have beeQi bad. Commission me ’chants a"e paid' 5 per cent on the market price for selling the eggs and when prioes ara low profits fall down somewhat. Tnero will be a big demand from now on> until e&ster. After that the demand will diop. Those who have been eat* Ing eggs during the biggest part of lent won’t look at them then for another six months. ~... '.l “From September to the middle of January the egg 9 sold on the market are those which have been kept in oold storage. We commence to buy for storage purposes In March, when pr ces are ruling low. say about 12i cents a dozen. This year I will putj away about 5,000 cases, or 10),000 duzen eggs. Some qf the dca’ers put! twice this number away. We don't store every egg that comes to hand. We leave out the small eggs because! the grocer won’t buy them. Some giocers would rather have bad eggs than small eggs, the small ones beinj hard to sell, weile, the bover can’t cell whether the eggs he has b >ught are good or bad until he has paid for them. ‘•Befo’-e the egg 9 are put away they are ‘candled’ by the p ickpr; that is, he holds them up between him and the light and if they are not perfectly cl sar an 1 free from blemishes out they go. Cracked or cloud v eggs don’t go, ebber; in fact, so much < are is taken in the work of putting them away that last year when we examined our stock in the fall we found only an average of four bad eggs to each ctse of thirty dozen. The boxes in which the eggs are packed are madeout of whitewood; no other kind will do. If we used the ordinary pine we shouldn’t have a good egg in a case when we opened them. We use the filers, each egg being entirely separate, and every layer is covered by a ‘fiat’ nrade out of brown paper, which keeps the moisture from settling on the eggs and producing mold. The temperature in the cold storage house is maintained at 80 degrees above zero!’’