Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-16
FOOLING THE HORSES.
How the Dumb Animals Are Duped
Into Eating AduIterated Food.
CAT HULLS USED IN PLACE OF CORN
Many Fancy Brands of Flour Are Mixed
With White Corn Meal.
IT ADDS GREATLY TO THE APPEARANCE

All the rascality in trade nowadays is not
confined to those who manufacture coffee
beans. Foryears there have been regularly
made and sold in this city, and, Of course,
in others also, large quantities of bogus
chopped feed; that is, bogus in part, being a
brute who can only advertise his wrongs by
showing his bones. F. x. Weixel called
the writer's attention to the matter year
or two ago, but in the rush Of events it was
forgotten until the other day when A. M
Marshall exhibited samples of oat hulls,
which are a regular article of COM
merce pslmed off by rascals on an
unsuspecting public, An examination of
the stuff will show what Mr.. Marshall
asserts respecting 1t to be true, VIZ, that
there isn't nourishment enough in ton Of
it to make a repast for a canary bird, and
yet it is foisted upon the public by thou
sands of tons as feed.
Corn is of itself not only too heating to
feed extensively to working animals, but it
also tends to make fat rather than muscle,
while oats is a muscle maker, and conse-
quently in great request for horse feed.
But as oats at retail cost now about 2k
cents a pound, while corn costs half cent
less, consumers buy the chop feed, suppos-
ing that they are thereby getting a mix
ture of oats and corn, and here Is
where the villains get in their work. Mil
lers without conscience are furnished with
oat-hulls which they grind with corn, and
the resultant mass can only be detected by
an expert.
RoBBING THE HORSES OF THEIR FLESH.
1t is bad enough to thus cheat the buyer,
but what punishment is severe enough
for the unscrupulous who thus cheat the
poor laboring, dumb brute out of the sus-
him. Dreams" says the novelist poet,
''are the bright creations of poem and
legend. who sport on earth in the night sea-
son, and melt away in the first beaming
of the sun, which lights grim care and
stern reality on their daily pilgrimage"
but it is doubtful if the hungry, tired horse
enjoys the luxury of a dream as he is but
a light sleeper even when fed to repletion,
and the man who would cheat him is meaner
than was the proprietor of Dotheboy's s Hall
for his victims could talk while the horse
cannot. These hulls have no more nutri-
ment in them than so much chaff and if you
pour water on this chop they stand up and
give the appearance of the genuine article,
such as the s'diluted pincushions" fed the
hogs by Wackford Squeers. The hulls are
the refuse of oatmeal factories of all kinds
Of course they can be sold cheaply and yet
afford profit to all concerned, except the
buyer and the horse.
There is another fraud which is exten-
sively practiced, even by some dealers who
stand high up in business and society. That
is the adulteration of certain low grades of
-four by the admixture of kiln-dried
white cornmeal. This is not quite so bad
as the oat-hul1 fraud, as the -four fraud is
practioed on humanity, which ought to have
sense enough to drive rascals out of the
market by exposing them.
HORSES ARE NOT THE ONLY DUPEs.
The addition of the white Indian meal
not only improves the appearance of the
four,> but keeps the bread moist much
longer than it would otherwise be, but it is
deleterious from the fact that the cornmeal
does not cook as quickly as the wheat -four,
and in consequence is a stomachic 1rritant.
Were it not unhealthy it would be only
cheat. Verify the wise man voiced the
wisdom of many ages of experience when he
said: "He that maketh haste to be rich
shall not be innocent.
As to a remedy, Mr.. Marshall says an
expert man should be appointed inspector
and that he should not only be a man of
probity, but one removed as far as possible
from practical politics. The great cause of
these frauds, he states, Is the rage to get up
everything as cheap as possible. It might,
be added, by way of explanation, also that
the large increase of fraud in the last 80
years is largely owing to the constantly in
creasing idea that people to be anybody
must make living without manual labor.
While this country Is overrun with the
spawn of Old World prison galleys, 1t is
almost impossible to get intelligent men to
do common manual labor. Instead of
standing out manfully and earning an
honest living by hard knocks
and sturdy independence, that made
almost every American boy 40 years ago
expect to be proprietor himself in time,
the bulk of the present generation has come
to look upon ordinary employment as
ing this opinion. Those who have not ca
pacity to lift themselves either by educa-
tion or talent have settled down to be mere
drudges, without any controlling or even in
fuencing power in the management of their
affairs. Clerks no longer, as a rule, become
and young men of ambition who
spurn the old-fashioned initial progress in
life, are largely forced bv sharp competition
to be genteel swindlers, if not worse.
WHY DUDE CLERKS SELDOM RISE.
sumo the products of the country, as their
income is only sufficient to afford the imita-
tion of purple aud fine raiment, and those
who do try to make living by honest, Ia
borious effort are eaten up by speculators
and swindlers of all kinds.
With corn and oats chop made largely of
oat bulls; pepper largely of rice hulls and
corn husks mustard of cornmeal mixtures,
grated horse radish, half turnips, cream
tartar, 70 per cent gypsum, -four part white
cornmeal, fve-dollar-a- gallon whisky, q
poisonous decoction that costs less than a
dollar; beer and wines that are similarly
fixed up and a thousand other food adulter-
,tions, the wonder is not that disease and
abound, but that the race does
not show signs OF becoming extinct. Doubt
less onr ancestors had grave faults, but
Jon they 'I could pH' not aduiterate gteesa,
worth speaking Of Civilization is defined
Is the creation of wants, but surely the in
elligent want of the present generation
,annot be poisoning or starvation. Food
ind clothing are not too cheap, nor is the ]
market overstocked. The trouble is that
Millions are unable to find the means to
comfortably feed and clothe themselves and
hey buy that which is cheap and nasty"
AT present babies are starved by being
ed on watered milk. The sick die on ac-
count of lack of potency in drugs, and really
t looks as though the survival-of-t the-f -fittest
will prove the fittest to be those who are
he most expert swindlers. 4