The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1896-05-22
Pork and Potatoes.

Pork is about as cheap as it is ever
likely to get. The price for July delivery
is nearly 81 per barrel lower than it was
year ago and $I4 per barrel below the
highest price for July pork in 1898. Even
the low prices of 1892 do not compare
with the present quotations. Cheap meat
always follows big corn crop, but the
present prices are abnormally low and
| hogs cannot be turned into pork and lard
proftably at this time.-GolG6Ag paper
While acknowledging the corn, this
goldbug organ does not attempt to name
cause for this depression of price, which
it admits is below cost of production. 1t
is not pork alone that is below cost but
the whole line of products of the farm.
Potatoes in this, the most favored quar-
ter of the country for farm products, are
not only below cost but they are abso-
lutely without price. Every farmer almost
has been feeding his potatoes to the stock
because he could not sell them for any
thing near cost, and now spring has
opened the farmers find themselves with
heavy stocks of potatoes on hand which
they are offering for 10 cents bushel
with no buyers.
Large cities are within fifty miles of
these farms with hungry mouths that
would gladly consume every tuber if the
people had money to buy the food which
is going to waste. In the West thousands
of bushels went to waste but no one ever
dreamed that potatoes in this section of
country with its dense population, would
ever be thrown out to rot. The like never
was witnessed by the farmers here before,
and they have had large crops often in
former years, with nothing like the pop
ulation to feed that now exists.
There is very plain cause for this con-
dition of affairs. 1t is the money famine
which afflicts the entire country Pork
and potatoes the plainest food of the great
mass of the every day work people are
below cost, and yet these people cannot
buy because out Of work and no money.
The manufacturing establishments of
textiles are glutted with goods which they
cannot sell, and of course, like farmers,
cannot employ labor. Paralysis rests on
everything, and people who accounted
themselves we'll off a short time back
know not where to turn for relief, and
bankruptcy stares them in the face.
Farmers have it in their power to put
and end to this deplorable condition, but
they seem willing to court its continuance.
1t is all easily traceable to bad financial
laws established and continued by both
old parties, but more especially by the
republican party, which is glorying in its
shame and preparing to rivet the English
gold standard" financial system on the
country still tighter, which has brought
the farmers pork down to a price lower
than ever before and below cost of pro-
duction, as this goldbug paper quoted
above, acknowledges, and potatoes below
any price at all.
The republican party proposes to inau-
gurate presidential campaign with this
goldbug system its leading party measure,
which means pork below cost and pota-
toes below 10 cents a bushel in Cecil
county, a condition which oldest farmers
declare they never knew before.
The financial system which brought
this condition will continue it, and if
farmers had rather suffer than help vote
the parties out of power which have pro-
duced it and which declare they mean to
continue it, they have only to continue
voting for them, and it's only a question
of time-and not a long time-when the
, Sheriff will take the last one of their
farms
: The women and little children who are
) destined to be the greatest sufferers by
this midsummer madness of their hus-
bands and fathers, ought to rise up in
indignant protest against the insane party
J cruelty that is robbing them of every conf
fort and turning them out of house and
home to become hungry wanderers on
the earth.