AMERICA, GERMANY, AND SPAIN-1897-1903 159 



poultices of good-will until common sense could assert its 

 rights. 



The everlasting meat question also went through vari 

 ous vexatious phases, giving rise to bitter articles in the 

 newspapers, inflammatory speeches in Parliament, and 

 measures in various parts of the empire which, while 

 sometimes honest, were always injurious. American 

 products which had been inspected in the United States 

 and Hamburg were again broken into, inspected, and re- 

 inspected in various towns to which they were taken for 

 retail, with the result that the packages were damaged 

 or spoiled, and the costs of inspection and reinspection 

 ate up all profits. I once used an illustration of this at 

 the Foreign Office that seemed to produce some effect. It 

 was the story of the Yankee showman who, having been 

 very successful in our Northern and Middle States, took 

 his show to the South, but when he returned had evidently 

 been stripped of his money. Being asked regarding it, 

 he said that his show had paid him well at first, but that 

 on arriving in Texas the authorities of each little village 

 insisted on holding an inquest over his Egyptian mummy, 

 charging him coroner s fees for it, and that this had made 

 him a bankrupt. 



Speeches, bitter and long, were made on both sides of 

 the Atlantic; the cable brought reports of drastic repri 

 sals preparing in Washington; but finally a system was 

 adopted to which the trade between the two countries has 

 since been uneasily trying to adjust itself. 



Then there was sprung upon us the fruit question. 

 One morning came a storm of telegrams and letters stat 

 ing that cargoes of American fruits had been stopped 

 in the German harbors, under the charge that they con 

 tained injurious insects. The German authorities were 

 of course honest in this procedure, though they were 

 doubtless stimulated to it by sundry representatives of 

 the land-owning class. Our beautiful fruits, especially 

 those of California, had come to be very extensively used 

 throughout the empire, and the German consumers had 



