New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1909-01-06


Across the boundless plains of Ar
gentina sheep roam in focks of un-
counted immensity; and nothing, at
first thought, seems more unlikely than
any connection between those sheep
and frauds on the American farmer.
Nor is it in the early stages that the
connection begins to make itself evil
dent. For the sheep, fulfilling the
destiny marked out for them by civili-
cation, are gathered in great masses,
and the clippers go among them and
snip off their thick coats, and the wool
is shipped to Germany. There the
wool Is cleaned and carded, and the
impurities removed. And chief among
these impurities is a bur; the bur of a
kind of clover which grows where the
sheep love to Craze.
With the saving propensities Of an
old nation, the Germans see no reason
why these bur seeds should be wasted.
They cannot be proftably sold in Ger
many. No farmer wants to buy them.
They have cost nothing-t is to say,
they are by-product which comes di-
rectly from the carding. And so they
are shipped in great quantity to a
country where they find a ready mar
ket. They are shipped to the United
States.
Nor are they here disposed of as bur
clover seed. There is kind of bur
clover grown in our Southern states
that is pretty good. Nor is this
strangely-imported bur seed altogether
worthless. But five or six times as
much can be got for it by mixing it
with red clover seed or alfalfa as by
selling it for what it is; and SO it is as
alfalfa or clover that it goes to our
American farms, thus rounding out a
strange career from the time when it
grows on the plains of Argentina.
Many an American crop suffers from
this fraudulently mixed seed, for the
quantity handled is of large impor-
lance.
Glands across the sea- is an ad-
mirable sentiment, but, as George AIDE
once cleverly remarked, they would
"never reach across except to swat us
one;" and few things along this line
are enough to bear out such an idea.
For example, here comes Canada-not
across the sea, indeed, but across the
border, which is the same in princi-
ple-and she fakes our farmers with a
most deceptive imitation of Kentucky
bluegrass.
Without a magnifying-glass it is
practically impossible to distinguish
between Canadian grass and Ken
lucky. But when it comes up in the
fields no magnifying-glass is necessa-
ry. The distinction is then painfully
obvious. Hundreds of thousands OF
pounds of Canadian seed are imported
every year, and practically every
pound is sold as Kentucky grass, for
thus more than double it's legitimate
price is obtained. So bold and greedy
are some of the dealers that they put
in Canadian grass for more than half
the bulk. A one-thousand-pound lot,
sold recently as Kentucky, was exam
ined by experts and found to contain
only two pounds of Kentucky and nine
hundred ana ninety-eight pounds of
Canadian.
And this is remindful of method of
defrauding the American farmer on a
huge scale. Over in Europe they ac-
cumulate, at one place or another, a
lot of small-sized and low-grade
screenings which, under the admirable
European laws, are unstable there.
They look around for an easy-mark.
Again it is Uncle Sam! Whereupon
there are annual y unloaded at Amer
lean ports nearly million pounds of
weedy and almost worthless stuff,