Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1884-02-13
Pork and Wheat.
Rigilo i'll y, Y. Sun. -,


Chicago was no less desperate in her
speculations than New York. Grain
and provisions, especially the latter,
were pushed up without regard to facts
or value. Pork sold quite recently at
Sll barrel; it is selling now at SIT
tor May options. As Billy Murray,
formerly the Cammack of Chicago, re-
marked on Saturday: The pork pack
ers are all crazy. They ask more
money for mess pork than chickens are
selling for. Tie other day chickens
sold wholesale at cents pound in
Chicago, while 200-pounds barrel of
pork at $l7 makes a pound of pork
worth 81 cents" 1t must be said,
however, that considerable shortage
has been recently discovered in the
visible supply of hogs. Some time ago
the country was reported to be all
black with hogs. 1t was said that you
could not take drive out of any
Western town without running over
any number of big, fat, black hogs
Now it appears that the country is
short of 100000 hogs, as compared
with last year, which was itself poor
one. The quality of hogs is also re-
ported as being lower, consequent upon
the poor quality of corn fed to them
this year. The packing season, which
begins in November and ends in March,
will be over in month, and packers
are talking $40 barrel between now
and then. But if the supply should
prove short, summer packing will be
resorted to-, and, with modern appli-
ances for using ice, just as good pork
1t will not produce merchantable or
"cortract" pork, but the lumbermen,
the woodsmen, the miners, and
the negroes in the Southland these
are the largest home consumers of pork
buy it readily
The upward movement in the price
of grain is, if possible, still more per-
picking. The visible supply of wheat
is some 100000 bushels larger than
this time last year; of corn about
5000, 900, and of oats about 100000.
Of foreign demand there is none. Most
of the shipments made are purely spec
ulative, there being always some de-
mand for American wheat for the pur-
pose of mixing it with Russian, In
dian and Australian, the flavor of all
of which it is said to improve in mill
ing. 1t seems that American wheat
plays the same part to other kinds of
wheat as American cotton plays to the
short staple cotton of India. They
rarely use Indian cotton by itself in
England. But for these mixing pur-
poses ample supplies have already
been forwarded, not to speak of the
steady exports of flour. 1t has now
been fully established that all the
European markets are glutted with
wheat, and, with the opening Of the
Baltic and Black Seas in few weeks, |
an additional quantity of breadstuffs
will be brought into the markets. No
wonder. then, that grain merchants
are busting" all over England, and
that the price of wheat is there steadi- |
ly going down. 1t is known that the |
Liverpool banks alone hold some g.
600, 900 bushels as collateral security |
for bad debts, and are only waiting
for an opportunity to get out even if
they can. 1t has been established be-
yond any possible doubt that the |
world is at present producing nearly |
! 100, 600, 900 of wheat year moro than |
it can consume. There was probably |
always a surplus of production, but in
the absence of railroads the grain |
grown in the interior of lands had no
market, and was often used for fuel;
while to-day every bushel of it is
brought to the seaboard and shipped at
once to that part of the world which
telegraphs good demand and offers
the best prices. Yet our spectators
insist upon keeping the prices here
from six to eight cents above those of
the European markets. How they
can expect shipments under such cir
cumstances is more than any man of
average intelligence can conceive.