The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-11-17
WHERE THINGS COME FROM
THE STATISTICS THAT HAVE
STORIES
And the Pictures Behind Them
Are Interesting.

/ are AhteEestthSs
If you should happen to see little
book that Uncle Sam has just publish
ed, entitled Sources of the Agricult,
ural Imports of the United States,
you hardly would consider it delight
ful story book. 1t is full of tables OF
long figures in fine print and most de-
pressing to the view, like rainy Sat
| urday.
Yet that book really is as pleasing
as a game. You can do with it what
Robert Louis Stevenson's children did
when they gazed out of their windows
and over the garden palings and imag-
ined for fun that the land beyond was
far, strange country, and that the
familiar brook was mighty mountain
river, roaring through the heart of Asia
and that the neighbors were men OF
savage chimes.
Uncle Sans dry book of figures is
like a window that opens into the
storylands of the world. The stories
jump all around, from the Pacific ISL
ands to London, and from the Azores
| to Australia. And some most COM
mon articles suddenly get new inter-
est when we see from what queer
| places they come.
For instance, where do you suppose
the most of our imported beeswax
comes from? 1t is sent from the island
! that we made free-Cuba. And its
neighbor in the vivid blue Caribbean
sea, Santo Domingo, furnishes the next
greatest quantity. The black republic,
Haiti, which is on that same island,
also supplies a great deal. In Haiti
and Santo Domingo the baeswax is
brought to the dingy little seaport
places by natives from the interior.
Most of these ports have certain
days when everybody comes in to
| market.
Then one may see, early in the morn
| ing, as soon as the wonderful sulphur
yellow dawn begins, long lines of small
black monkeys winding down the mar
row paths of the beautiful mountains
that rise almost from the sea. Each
donkey has two cunning baskets, one
on side. They are made of plated
palm leaves and of stout grasses, and
they are stuffed full of all the strange
products of the land-great yams like
S"ECL PoIelCCoB RAHS elpPASso
that fill the hot mornig air with deli
cious doors; fat, little red bananas,
great plantains like yellow bananas,
only much longer and not nice to eat
raw; big piles of oranges and grape
fruits; green coffee berries just as they
have been picked, and beeswax.
In looking again through this window
OF Uncle SANS, we see that most ia
miliar and commonplace thing, the
onion. But where do you suppose we
see it coming from? From Egypt, the
land of obelisks and pyramids and
buried Pharaohs.
We call on many other lands for
onions, too. England sends us the most.
Then comes beautiful Bermuda, the
land of lilies. Then come Spain, Cuba,
the British islands in the West Indies,
Italy, Canada, Mexico and France. A
few years ago we imported many thou
sands of bushels from Switzerland.
Now and then few come from China.
Uncle Sans children really do need
lots of food. Such a thing as cheese,
for instance, comes to them twenty one
countries, and some of them are the
very last ones that you would think
of as shipping cheese to America. Who
would suppose that Uncle Sam gets
some of his cheese from Turkey? AL
most a ton of it was sent to us from
that country last year. The year be-
fore we even got some from Egypt.
Eggs have a curious story, too. The
Chinese empire shipped more to us last
year than did any other foreign coun-
try. The Chinese hens had to lay fast
to supply our demand. for eighty thou
sand dozens were sent to Yankeeland.
Hens in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Eng
land and France had to help
The sheep herders of all the world
had to watch flocks for US. Rough,
lonely men in rude shanties in Aus
tralia and New Zealand, half-breeds in
the wide plains of Argentina, in South
America, sedate, fiaxen-haired little
shepherd boys in Belgium, Germany
and France, wild, armed Monaghan
lovers in China, mounted Tartar herd
ers on the Russian steppes, Peruvian
Indians, blanketed Uruguayans-all
tended sheep whose fleece finally
reached Uncle Sam.
Men fought wolves in Russia,
iaguars in the Argentine and in Peru,
flesh eating parrots in New Zealand,
and robbers in China, that the big re-
public of which MANY of them know