The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-10
nTGpuRREn.

There seems to be a great deal of
 jealousy and unfair discrimination in the old world over American food inn portations into those sections of the globe. One day 1t is the American hog that is leglslated against, the next 1 1t is canned meats, then cotton seed oil, and now it is dried apples. The | cable some days ago reported the in- troduction into the German Reichstag of a bill ito protect certain domestic food products by laying an increased import duty on cotton seed oil. The bill has since passed, and the new duty on the oil in a condition fit for human food is raised to a trifle over cent a pound from the old rate of about 2-5 of cent. For soap making purposes, however, the unrefined oil is let in at slightly reduced rate, the old duty being dimin- finished by 10 per cent. Tn order to get the advantage of the reduced duty, Ambassador Runyon explains that the. oil must have mixed with 1t in the presence of a German customs officer some chemical which, without changing its character, units it for use in the manufacture of any article intended for human consumption.
 The policy of raising the cost of food materials seems to bear rather hard on the folks who have to consume them, and is only justified in case a sufficient gain to the country and the people en- sues through proper protection of home products and increased development of home resources. Recently there was an epidemic at the military barracks in Vitre, France. Tn the alarm and uproar that ensued the authorities cast about to find some scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of the visita- tion and they lit upon the consumption of American canned meats as the source of the evil. The medical experts. how ever, who were called in found that the prevailing disease was spinal cerebral fever, complicated with lockjaw. They found moreover that the disease was un- doubtedly due to the defective drain age of the place which induced blood poisoning, and not to canned meats in any way whatever. An official report to this effect was made by an eminent French physician. The local doctors who were inferior physicians and of narrow capacity and who had had no previous experience in treating the disease in question, attributed the pres ence of the disease to the eating of American canned meat, finding this theory suited to their convenience and the prejudices of the district and loop hole through which to escape the of ignorance and incapacity.
 Germany, too, has now been disturbed over the large quantities of American evaporated apples imported there. An | Agrarian outcry was raised against l them and they were denounced as not | only unwholesome but poisonous. The l claim made was that there was "death | in the pot" for the reason, as alleged, that the apples were heavily tinetured | with zinc in being prepared for market l The investigation of a considerable | quantity of the apples showed that the |
 
 nal and that one-flfth as much zinc | as the whole lot examined contained | would not harm an infant if it had ab- | sorbed 1t. Hereafter, however, the use of zinc frames in the practice of evapor- ating apples will no doubt be discarded | wherever the facts in the case are known.
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 BY ALL MEANS