The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-07-09
MURPHY BROD
GB Roggen, " Mais)
s Pfund go Pfennige,
oc
Fruherer Pr els fur Pfund so Pr.


G. Muller's big bakery, with it's four
branches, in Berlin, at which the ssMur-
ply brod" is obtainable. Putting into
plain English the facts Herr Muller thus
presents to his countrymen, he offers for
sixty pfennige about fifteen cents) a
quantity of bread, composed of two
thirds rye and one-third corn flour. for
which, at the rate charged previously
for rye bread, o31s pfennige (nearly
twenty cents), would have been de-
manded. A reduction Of a little over a
cent on each pound Of bread he con-
sumes means a great deal to the Ger
man wcrkingman. particularly when he
learns, as he speedily will, that the new
and cheaper bread is more palatable and
nutritious than that to which he has
been accustomed.
According to the representations Of
correspondent of the Paris newspaper
La Telegraphie, writing from Berlin,
the demand for the Murphy brod" is so
great that customers at the bakeries
supplying it have to form in line, and
there is already complaint that some
rascally bakers, while pretending to de-
cry the new bread, are secretly mixing
maize -four with their rye in order to
compete with the excellent quality Of
the Murphy brod," and at the same
time charge the old prices for their
product. That, however, under a pater-
nal government like the German, where
the police regulate everything, is mat
ter which will soon be set straight no
doubt.
In Hamburg an American firm have
gone into the business of supplying
murphy brod" to the public, and their
success has spread dismay among the
conservative bakers who have antag-
onized the new -four. Wherever the
indefatigable endeavors of Mr.. Murphy
have enabled the public to test and
prove the virtues Of Indian corn lively
appreciation of its desirability as food
has been demonstrated, and it is no
longer admissible of question that
through his enthusiastic efforts-pri-
marily, simply, as private Individual,
because he was that sort of crank"
and later as an accredited agent Of our
governments wonderful impetus has
been given to the worlds demand for
one of our chief products. It is a fact
not generally known that we devote an
acreage to corn growing exceeding the
aggregate area devoted to all other
cereals and potatoes, double that cut for
hay, and greater than all upon which
wheat, oats and cotton are cultivated.
Even in the eleven cotton growing states
"a larger area Of cultivated, land is de-.
voted to corn than to cotton. The acre
age now planted in corn annually, ac-
cording to the statistics of the depart
ment of agriculture, sis greater than the
total surface area of New England, New
York and New Jersey combined; greater
than the whole area of the United King
dom or of Belgium, Holland, Switzer-
land, Denmark, Portugal and Greece
combined. 1t more than equals in ex-
tent the total cultivated land in France
or Germany or Austria Hungary, and is
three-fourths as large as the aggregate
acreage sown to wheat in all the coun-
tries of Europe together"
About So per cent. of this enormous
production is annually consumed in the
country, more than 50 per cent. never
crosses the lines of the country where it
is grown, and not only is it leading
staple for the food of man and beast,
but on the broad prairies of the west
where wood is scarce vast quantities of
it have been consumed as fuel Our
production of corn since 1869 has aver
aged 1,455, 1908, 094 bushels per annum,
and our average expectation has been
only 3.8 per cent. up to the present year.
Not-only in quantity but in quality does
our corn lead the world. Inferior maize
Of unpalatable sorts is grown in Italy,
Spain and parts of France, and there is
also Danubian corn, fit only for chicken
feed, but the United States monopolizes
the supply of this cereal fit for human
consumption. Hungary, Russia, India
and the Argentine Republic may COM
pete with our wheat crop, but American
corn has practically no rivals. Hence
nothing can be of much greater i'm
portance in the line of developing the
value OF our resources than such work
as Mr.. Murphy has been doing. In the
language of Secretary Rusk, "Could we
secure an advance Of even five cents
bushel on an average for corn during
the ensuing decade, which might we'll
be done and still enable us to supply the
foreign demand at price far below that
OF other cereal foods of equal value, the
result would be to add $1,000, OOo.ooe to