The herald., 1896-04-24
THE TIN CART PEDDLERS
Something About Kitchen Tinware and Ma
tiOnal Politics

The enterprising Mr.. Hanna, advance
agent and boomer for the Hon. William
Mckinley, has instructed his select
corps of editorial writer's for Mckinley
organs Ito make q winner of the fact
that since the establishment of tin plate
factories in the United States the i'm
portation of English tin plates has fallen
off enormously" This tin plate racket
elected Mr.. Mckinley as governor Of
Ohio, and today the clashing of tin plate
cymbals by the McKinleyites is CRATE
ful music to the ears of Mr.. Hanna who
expects that Reed, Allison, and Harri-
son will be silenced by the tin plate or
chestra at st. Louis. Now, when these
things are thus, it is surprising that the
Mckinley fuglers do not know that the
consumption of tin plates in the United
States has been steadily declining
since 1876, except in certain kinds of
charcoal, coke nd terneplateS used by
the oil, provisions and roofing indus
tries, which make up IS per cent of the
orders sent to England for tin plates.
The reasons for the small importatiOns
of fine tin plates during the past twen-
ty years are, first, the invention and the
enormous sales Of agate and other sorts
of enameled wares for culinary utensils;
secondly, the fall in the price of copper
and improved and economical electri-
cal processes for coating copper ves-
sells with nickel and silver, by which
utensils formerly made of tin plates are
now sold at prices asked for tin utensils
thirty years ago; and, thirdly, the in
vention of wood pulp machinery and
processes for making wood pulp paper,
by which the collection and exchange
of tinware for rags by tinware ped
dlerS is now and has been for ten years
Improbable.
Twenty years ago there were more
| than $4,000 men engaged in bartering
| tinware for old junk in the New Eng
land and Middle states, going about in
| the familiar kind of red cart called "the
| tin peddler's go-cart." Today there are
not 500 of these peddlers in the United
| States. These peddlers were famous
| for inventing kitchen utensils for every
purpose in the daye when every woman
| in Yankeeland spent several hours day
| in her kitchen, and when it was the am
| bition of every good housewife to have
her kitchen shelved and pegged for
holding the bewildering variety of plain
and Japanned tinWare bartered for
rags, old metal, yarn stockings, nit
tens dried apples, eggs and butter.
In and around Salem, Mass, until
twenty years ago, the peddlers, of whom
sixty were sent out by two Salem
firms, received in barter vast quahti-
ties of pewter platers, porringers, cam
dleSticks, ale mugs etc, which were
used by the early settlers of the Puritan
colony, but the stores of pewter were
soon exhausted, consequently the ped
dlers got out OF that business, and
throughout the territory once ranged
by the tinware carts from Maine to
Cleveland, Ohio, the sales of tinware
have fallen off at least rs per cent as
compared with the sales of, say, twenty
years ago, when the red tin cart was
seen on every road and street within the
territorial limits in which for hundred
years it was a picturesque and faml-
lar object. In New England and New
York the tin cart peddlers. always So
Der, respectable and Industrious citi-
zens. were usually Democrats of the
old fashioned Constitutional school, see
| ing matters in the right proportion both
from political and industrial stand
| points. So it was that when industrial
revolution in their bushes set in few
| years ago, tinware men did not begin
| to yell for Mckinley and 3, forcel bill
| for the south, nor for Prof. Wilson's tar
| iff for deficiency only. Like sensible
| men, they found work in other pur-
suits, and are not looking for the time
| promised by Mr.. Hanna when, McKin-
| ley being president the politicians will
| do all the work, while the workingmen
will sit home all day.
G. W1LFRED PEARCE.
Washington.
New York Sun.