The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-28
OUR MEAT IN GERMANY.
There is to be No more of it Under the
 New Tariff.

l nere IS 10 De NO more Of It Under the
 New Tariff.
 Berlin dispatches state that as the result of one years experience under the German law regulating imports of meat American sales of packed meats to the German Empire have ceased. There would be more sincere mourning in the United States if the people were not admonished every day by the ex- tortionate size of their own meat bills that the Meat Trust-including pack ers, wholesalers and retailers-is al- ready getting a much larger income than it deserves. and this at time clare that in the face of continually in- icreasing prices of dressed meat the prices of livestock have tended stead fly downward until they have ceased to be remunerative. Under these circumstances the public does not care a rap whether the Meat Trust can sell its meat in Germany or not. Upon the whole, it will be inclined to rejoice that the German people do not have to buy meat of the American Meat Trust.
 Unfortunately, however, congratula- tions would be ill-timed. The German people have gone farther and. fared worse. AS a result of the virtual pro- hibition of the importation of packed meats the German people have been delivered bound into the hands of a meat trust of their own, which is per- mitted by. circumstances to be far more extornate than our own. Germans who have plenty of money now pay roundly for their meat. Those who have not plenty of money do not include meat in their regular dietary. As the Ger man mill operative is accustomed to a meat diet which has hitherto been largely made up of American meat, there is great indignation in all urban communities, which is likely to make | itself felt very effectively whenever there is a new Reichstag elected. It is likely to show itself in a large increase of all shades of the Radical vote and make a great deal of trouble iii the en- pire, where there is already a very un- pleasant. divergence between urban and manufacturing interests on the one hand and rural and agrarian interests on the other. As rural interests are much the weaker, they are certain to go to the wall whenever those opposed to them unite. What such unions ac- complishes we see in Great Britain it is not good for a country. The best hope of any nation is in the prosperity of it's rural population.
 But while the American people have no sympathy with our Meat Trust, and while we may deplore the unwisdom of prohibitory tariffs on commodities for which country is unable to supply l the legitimate demand from domestic sources, our contention with Germany must be the unfriendly character of it's prohibitory regulations. These, by the way, are directed to all foreign meats not solely American-but America, as the principal exporter to Germany, is the greatest sufferer. We are not in a position to complain, and should not complain, of an open, impartial tariff even if prohibitory. What we have the right to complain of is prohibition by lvexatious administrative regulations assuming things to be true which are mot true, and the exclusion of goods under false pretences. If persisted in lit will in the end make our relations
 with Germany unpleasant.-San Fran lcisco Chronicle.