The St. Cloud journal. [volume] (St. Cloud, Minn.) 1866-1876, 1875-07-08
COMMERCE. IN HOGS.

The interdependence of our States
and the service which each renders to
the other find most homely illustration
in subject not fitted for poetic treat
ment, nor likely to appealto theimagi-
natlon-commerce IN hogs.
The great prairies Of the West
grew corr in such abundance that
even now, with all our means Of in
accommodation, it can not all be
used as food, and some of it is consum-
ed as fuel
1t often happens that the farmer
upon new land, remote from rail-
roads, can get only from fifteen to
twenty cents per bushel for Indian
corn, at which price, while it is the
best, it is also the cheapest fuel that
he can have, and it's use is an evil
dence Of good economy, not Of waste.
Upon the fat prairie lands Of the
West the hog is whoieso,aely fed only
upon corn in the milk or corn in the.
ear; thence he is carried to the colder
climate Of Massachusetts, where by
the use of that one crop in which
New England excels all others-ice-
the meat can be packed at all seasons
Of the year; there it is prepared to
serve as food for the workman of the
North, the freedman of the South, or
the artisan of Europe; while the
blood, dried in a few hours to a fine
powder, and sent to the cotton fields
of South Carolina and Georgia to be
mixed with the phosphate rocks that
underlie their coast lands, serves to
produce the cotton fibre which fur
nishes the cheapest and fttest cloth
ing for the larger portion of the in
habitants of the world.
Here, then, is commerce, or men
serving each other on grand scale,
all developed within the century, and
undreamed Of by our ancectors. The
vast plains Of the West, enriched by
countless myriads Of buffalo, can spare
for years to come portion Of their
productive force. Commerce sets in
motion her thousand wheels, food Is
borne to those who need it most, and
they are spared the effort to obtain it
on the more sterile soil Of the cold
Forth, Commerce turns that very
cold to use. The refuse is saved, and
commerce has discovered that its use
is to clothe the naked in distant lands.
Borne to the sandy but healthy soils
of Georgia and South Carolina, it rem
orates them with the fertility thus
transferred from the prairies of Ili-
nois and 1ndianna, and presently there
comes back to Massachusetts the cot
ton of the farmer, the well-saved,
clean, strong, and even staple which
commerce again has discovered to be
worth identifying as the farmers not
the planters crop, made by his own
labor and picked by his wife and chill
dren, to whom only few short years
since such labor was ignoble, and be
cause thus we'll saved worth higher
price.
! Had the custom-house officer stood
upon the Hudson River and said to
the farmer of Illinois, "Your corn and
meat must not come here, lest by your
cheap labor you ruin our farmers" as
the custom-house officer Of the United
States now says to the farmer and
miner of Canada, when they try to
send food and fuel to New England !;
had the tax-gatherer watched at the
bar of the harbors of Charleston and
Savannah to make the obstruction
greater, lest the meat packed in New
England should affect the price of
the poor freedman's pigs, and lest the
fertilizers made in Boston and Phila.
delphia should stop the phosphate
works Of those cities, as the custom
house officer Of the United States now
attempts to stop the refuse salt of for
eign production, even when only
needed as a manure had the revenue
official of Massachusetts stood ready
to make the cotton more costly, as
the custom-house officer of the United
States now doubles the price Of wool
of Canada-this commerce could not
have existed, the men of the West
; could not have rendered service to
New England, nor they to their
Southern brethren, nor they again to
the people of all lands and all climes.
The century has witnessed the es-
tablishment of the culture and ex-
change of cotton, the extension Of
civilization over the prairies of the
West, and the infinite and complex
movements which we feebly try to
grasp throughout all their ramifca'
tions, whereby the hungry are fed,
the naked clothed, and the soil that
has been burned over and scathed by
slavery renewed and made more pro.
) ductive than ever before yet one Of
7 the chief instruments in this vast bene
fit, by which the general struggle fol
7 life has thus been made less arduous,
: has been nothing but q herd Of s,rine
, -Ed,oard Atkinson, IN Harper's Mag
asine for July.
We are indebted to DR.. Scoresby
E for the following interesting facts with
! regard to the length and height o.
ocean-waves The mean height o:
waves in the Atlantic, driven by 6
westerly gale, is IS feet. The great
| oct rooordod ho;rh+ &c uouo IN +he