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Show THE PRICE OF MEAT. CoIi-.rV, in its last issue, quotes prices of meats as soid in New-York New-York restaurants and makes a comparison of prices of cattle on the range and of prices paid by the people who patronise the New York eating houses: Take one such item as "L," which means lamb chops. At the restaurant two lamb chops cost 50 cents. That item is found on the outer rim of the chart on the bottom. Follow "L" inside the rectangle rec-tangle and you see that those two chops, weighing one-half pound, instead of the cafe price of 50 cents (which, of course, included the cooking) vn cost 11 cents in the market, 7 cents at wholesale and 3 cents on the hoof.. In the cafe a portion of potatoes, weighing 6 ounces, costs 60 cents.. At this rate a bushel would bo "fetching" $96, and an acre of 300 bushels would bring $28,800. The farmer gets on his acre $180, out of which he has to take 18 cents per bush-of bush-of the mean average cost, and his net profit under the most favorable circumstances is $123 an acre. So off the farmer's acre the hotel j gets $23,000 against the farmer's gross return of $180. For one egg j (pleasantly garnished, to be sure, in some such tasty dish as Mus- ' covite or a l'Sstragon) the Cafe Martin will ask 30 cents. That same 30 cents will buy 12 eggs in the market, or it will buy 15 eggs ! at wholesale, "fresh gathered, selected extras." An average beef at restaurant- prices in New York costs the consumer $870, Ke pays 20 cents , for a single apple, although the jobber sells twenty of these apples for the same price. He pays $6 1 for the same quantity of beefsteak that on the hook he could get for 48 cents, and so it goes down the line with greater or less variation. Of course, allowances must be made for cost of service, and above all for "style" in the restaurants of New York City, says the Kansas City Times. Somebody has named them "lobster palaces" and another cynic has remarked that they were designed to provide ''exclusiveness for the masses." The New York scale of prices does not hold in other cities and its ridiculous altitude is chiefly due to a form of snobbishness which has produced a raee of spenders and wasters who like to brag about the prices for what they eat in public. Throughout the country, though, there is too great a difference between the price paid to farmers and the price at which meat is retailed. There is something wrong. Too much is demanded by the middlemen. And this is true in nearly all lines of necessaries and is one of tV causes of extremely high prices. |