St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-07-02
ApRICors AND MARMALADE.

original plan. The laws of trade are
as much a natural order as is the
procession Of the seasons, and trade
flows along the lines of least resist
ance as naturally as water seeks the
easiest incline. When men, presum-
ing on their wisdom, try to pervert
and divert trade, imagining that it
is potter's clay to be nodded in their
hands as they wish, they are sure
to botch the job. Violation of
of the economic penssIty.
Two instances illustrate this. The
German artisan, obeying laws of his
nature, both ate meat and bought it
where he could get it for the least
money. The American gave it to him
at lower price than the German
farmer had been supplying it, In
stead of meeting the competition, the
junker went to Bismarck. Himself a
junker of the junkers, that unecon-
omic statesman devised his protee-
tive tariff and, that proving INSULT
cient, followed it with his inhibitory
DEGREES on the alleged and untrue
grounds that our meats were not
healthful. The result was the in
crease of the price of meats to from
10 to 25 cents a pound. A second
effect was that the German artisan
ing in due time was an effort to pro-
vide him with the cheap meat his
financial condition demanded. The
response was a supply of horse meat
at cents a pound, made possible
by the decreased use Of horses fol-
lowing the extension of the railways
and the use of the bicycle. An in
cident is the establishment of a
horse-meat' cannery in Oregon to
supply the new demand for cheap
meat.
A second case is noted by the San
Francisco Call. It says:
The Call has frequently drawn atten-
ton to the fact that Crosse & Black
well buy California dried apricotS
ship them 5000 miles to London, manu-
facture them into marmalade and ship
| them back 5000 miles to California to
| be consumed. Is it possible to i'm
| asine anything more deplorable? If
| this industry were one requiring
capital Of prohibitory size, or if there
| were some secret or occult process in
| the manufacture of the article, there
would be some excuse for our delin-
| quency; but there is nothing of the
| kind. sH
| The Call, being a stalwart Repub-
lican paper and devotedly worship
ping according to the economic COS
| pei of McKinleyism, can hardly be
expected to see in the condition. it
laments the result of the efforts of
two or three countries to thwart
! the laws of trade and establish a.
better system than the Almighty
had devised for his children. The
main constituents of marmalade are,
fruit and sugar. OF the two, sug Jar
is the more expensive factor, invo1v-
| ing as it does in it's production much
manual labor from the planting of
the cane or beet to the refined prod
uct. England at one time did large
business in taking the raw sugar.
| OF the tropics and refining it. Ger
many and France, not satisfied with
getting their sugar from the coun-
tries where climatic conditions made
its production least costly, began to
tax their people to induce some of
them to grow beetS and refine the
sugar extracted from them. The
United States, with thin strip Of
sugar-producing territory, also en-
gagged in the fostering and protecting
business, first with tariffs and then
| with bounties.
The inevitable result followed. The
stimulated production exceeded the
demand. Sugar prices went down
and down. England quit refining.
Her refiners protested and asked for
protection; but English statesman
ship has got beyond attempts to
better the divine order, and an
SWered that if the other nations
wished to make sugar cheap for
Englishmen, no objections would be
interposed. So Englishmen quit re-
filming and went to making jam and
marmalade. They gathered in the
fruits Of the world and took the
sugar, cheapened by the other fool
ish countries, and made preserves for
them. And so it comes about that
Crosse & Blackwell take the apricots
raised by the Calls constituents, and
the sugar Germans and Frenchmen
are taxed to make cheaper for
| MesSrs. G. & B. and other makers of
| sweets, and the apricots come back
| to California tables in the shape Of
toothsome marmalade. Some day,
perhaps, our own statesmen will
doubt the infallibility of their wis
| dom, and then the Call will not
have to lament the spectacle Of
California apricots going to England
and coming home marmalade In the
meantime this stands as only one Of
a legion of incidents showing the
effect of tariff upon home industry.
| If they do not suit the protectionist,
it is natures fault, not ours.
Senator Vest says that if the choice
must be made between gold and
silver standard he prefers the latter.
| Senator Cockrell said, when it was
stated that free coinage would bring