Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1878-06-19
Give Him a Chance.

There are newspapers unkind enough
to make disrespectful illusions to the
commissioner of agriculture, Mr.. Le-
Due. They poke all sorts of fun at
him for his tea and silk culture, his
dates, coffee and other enterprises. There
is the Globe Democrat, for instance, which
says: :" lie Due never weakens. Fully
convinced Of the great benefits that would
flow to a tea drinking people by the sue
cess of his scheme, he took his little wa
tering pot and carefully tended the solitary
tea plant which he had imported and
placed in n government hot house. Time
rolled on, until last Saturday, when the
tiny leaves hal developed sufficiently for
the purpose of experiment. Now. if some
intelligent congressman will only intro
duce II bill TO provide every farmer with ii
conservatory for tea culture, we will all
soon be rich and happy. By raising one
thousand million pounds of tea at one
dollar a pound, we could pay off the ma
tional debt in two years and have hand
some surplus left. If lie Due isn't careful
he will be the green tea candidate for next
president"
There is the New York Express, which,
discussing the project for cultvatng silk
worms. says: Zone would suppose that
gentleman filling the position that he does
would know enough of the history of ag-
ricuture in this country to be aware that
the attempt to produce silk in this country
has years ago been undertaken on a large
scale with competent capital, and resulted
in disastrous failure. We do not mean
the failure of the MoruS muHicaulis ma
MIA, but the legitimate business of produc-
ing raw silk" Then the Philadelphia
Times, a thorn in the commissioners side,
says: Commissioner LIE Due intends, it is
said-but we hope what is said is not true
to distribute three hundred thousand copies
of the report of the agricultural bureau.
Probably, however, the whole question
hinges upon the definition Mr.. lie Due
entertains Of the word Distribution I'm
der his predecessors it meant no more
than the storage rooms of the government
printing office, the vaults of the capitol
and Washington junk shops If LIE Due
hasn't been studying Worcester too closely
recently, the country is safe and the rag
men need not despair"
Now won't our contemporaries let the
poor old gentleman alone for week or
twoP He has been trying to do some
thing, but nobody will give him the OPP
portunity. Stand away and let him get
down to business. Teen you'll see agri-
culture boom!-Prairie Farmer.
1t must be nice thing to be an official
Of high standing in the government. When
Mr.. Watts was commissioner of agrcul-
ture many if not most of the prominent
agricultural papers were pitching in with
remarkable vigor, and with considerable
reason because the department did moth
ing. Exit Watts and enter lie Due. Mr..
lie Due Immediately stirs about to do
something, and among other things to see
whether tea can be grown in some parts
OF our many-climated country; to see if
perhaps we could raise our own coffee and
produce raw silk, when 10 and behold, he
is held up to ridicule by sundry and divers
OF the agricultural press in way of which
the above extract is fair specimen. We
have been at u loss to understand the mo-
tive of these attacks. No one of these
papers has had the kindness and courtesy,
the welfare of agriculture and the public
good enough at heart to point out to Mr..
lie Due first what WAS the proper field for
his operations, or the exact line of his
duties, and until they do that, and the
commissioner refuses to see SO great light
and walk therein, we submit that they
might well abstain from sneering and rid
icuIe. We don't know, and possibly the
editors of the papers aforesaid, don't know
that all these experiments will be failures.
Conditions, climate, labor and commune
cation all change, and some one thing
may succeed and be of great value, sufli
cient to pay even should all the rest prove
failures. AT any rate Mr.. lie Due, is trying
to do, and till he can be shown by these
Solomons of wisdom and Alexanders of
energy the right thing to do and the right
way to do it, they had better show the
grace of silence. At least that is the way
it strikes us.