Norwich bulletin., 1910-03-19
xw+nt.n Specially for The BuIIetin.)

xWtNter Specially for The BuIIetin.)
 At the, risk of being criticised for harping too much on one string, l want to talk a little more about these hixh prices. Everybody else is talk ing about them. and everybody seems to have an explanation Some people have two or three apiece. There Is room for little doubt that things cost from a quarter to a half more than they did few years ago. Whatever difference of opinion there may be as to ths cause, there is none as to this fact. Prices are going up; we can pay E1em or go without the goods, just as we please. The sellers generally main tain an attitude of lordIy indifference as to which we do. We can give up meat and live on beans and ground chestnuts, if we want to-beans and chestnuts are not so cheap as they used to bs-but if we're going to eat meat. why there 'tfs-and they'll let us nave it in exchange for our greenbacks, at about weight for weight.
 One biq railroad man says it's be- cause the farmers don't know their business and aren't raising as big something in this. But, do you know, zs a practical farmer, when railroad men undesirable to tell me how to farm. I feel much as I suspect NIT. J. J. Hill would feel if I should set out to teach him the Fundamentals of the railroad business. It's a durned sight easier to sit on a fence and tell the other fellow kow to manage either a farm or a rail- road than it is to manage it yourself. l don't know enough about railroading to run a handcar on gravel track; but I've forgotten more about real farming than any railroad president in these United States ever knew. So has any other farmer who has been OF the job for q generation. Perhaps we aren't getting out of our farms all the produce and all the profits we might I can we'll suspect it; but I'd be surer of it if I heard 1t from one real farmer than from seven railroad directors.
 Another man says it's the tariff. Again, that may have something to do with it. I am not inclined to be- fieve it, just because Politician Dusen- berry says so. however. He doesn't really know any more about it than I do-and that's very little. They haven't any tariff up in Manitoba. to speak of; certainly not our tariff That stops at the Dominion border. A newspaper out in St Paul has just been compar- Winnipeg. the capital of Manitoba, with those charged for similar goods in the two United States cities of St Paul and Detroit Almost inva- tarifed things are higher than those this side of the line. Butter, for in- stance, which runs from 2S to 36 cents south side the frontier, is 40 cents in
 
 to 40 cents in St. Paul and Detroit, are 45 cents in Winnipeg; potatoes are from to Is cents higher in the Do- minion city; milk is from two to three cents 6, quart dearer; chickens cost from two to six cents 8. pound more; beef about cent more; pork from two to six cents more; and so on. The paper states that 1t is quite 'the thing for Winnip eggers to come over to St Paul to buy clothing, as they can get it enough cheaper to
 
 furniture Is admitted by the Winnipeg dealers themselves to be ''exceptiona1ly l high as compared with other cities" Such things as this make me doubtful l about finding the high price nfgger in | the tariff woodpile.
 Another man says it's the trusts. l And again, there may be something '.trust-busters'' every time, and I T should rather like to see the trusts ! convicted of almost any crime which would result in their abolition. But it isn't only trust-produced stuff which i Is high and I can't for the life of me | zee how the sugar or lumber trusts | can be held responsible for the simply l citrag eors price of clover. seed.
 don't know what makes all the | high prices, nor even most of them, !, has helped and is helping to make meat i high I'm going to offer 1t as my indi- l vfduai contribution to the continent | wide controversy. | Twenty-Five years ago a eood many ef the farmers in this vicinity were raising beef as well as mutton for the market It was regular line of bust | ness with them and paid fairly well, as farming pays in other directions. They would raise or buy up stock of the matchmaking breeds. fatten them, and sell them alive to the butchers. Rfefif aeTa In the i1IyJr71iT1 "a in fact: they used to get, then, about as much per hundred weight for their beef and mutton on the hoof SIS they can get for 1t today. It cost them for the grain and labor needed hardly half as much as 1t costs today. The fatted anIrr1al which. twenty-five years ago,