OCR Text |
Show CORN IN EUROPE- Russia and Germany Take Kindly to Am-merican Am-merican Corn-pone and Hoe-cake. Mr. Charles J. Murphy, the apostle of American Am-erican corn in Europe, writes from St. Petersburg Pet-ersburg in relation to the prospect of greatly extending the consumption of corn for human hu-man food in that quarter of the globe, es-specially es-specially in Russia and Germany. He has been engaged for about five years past in the endeavor to make foreigners understand its great value, and has succeeded very well, considering the intensely conservative nature na-ture of the Europeans. He thinks there is reason to hope that the Germans will ultimately ulti-mately realize its value to the extent of using us-ing it as much as we do at home, in proportion propor-tion to the number of inhabitants. Of course other people would follow the exam pie, and we should then be in a fair way to realize the expectation of such a permanent European demand as to make an appreciable difference in prices here. The great importance impor-tance of such a movement may be inferred from a comparison, instituted by Secretary Rusk in his official report, to the effect that if wc could succeed in raising the price of our corn only five cents per bushel it would add a billion dollars to the wealth of the country iu the next ten years. The first three and a half years Mr. Murphy worked in this direction on his own responsibility and expended his own funds in th cause. Since then he has had little aid from the government gov-ernment and is acting for it as special agent "for the purpose of investigating the feasi-bilty feasi-bilty of extending; the demands of foregn markets for agricultural products of the United States, particularly that of Indian corn." The amount appropriated for the purpose last year was only 12500, a sum altogether inadequate to a proper carrying out of the undertaking. It is highly desirable de-sirable that the appropriation for the coming year be more liberal. It is not improbable that if sufficient money be furnished to enable Mr. Murphy to push the work energetically ener-getically through the next twelve months so much ground will have been gained that the matter may be left to private effort after- I ward. There are some cases in which parsimony parsi-mony is not good policy, and this may be one of them. |