392 
A. S HEATH. 
food-supplies we voluntarily deprive ourselves by refusing to 
permit the importation of the best food-producing animals 
of the world. And the worst feature of the spite is, that the 
servant of the people can interpose his ipse dixit against 
reciprocal exchange of the international food supplies of the 
noblest nations of the world. The self-cut-off nose of a nation 
disfigures the face of a great people. “It is only on a certificate 
signed by the Secretary of Agriculture, stating that the in¬ 
spected meat is free from trichinae and other parasites, that 
pork products are admitted to the markets of certain foreign 
countries. The rules regulating the importation of live stock 
into the United States are just as rigidly enforced, and it is 
hardly likely that any of the European diseases can ever gain 
a foothold with us here.” The quotation fortifies my just 
censure, as it comes from a department report. 
To return to our ability to supply food for our own people 
and for those of Europe who need it, it will only be necessary 
briefly to state some facts. The American farmers have amply 
supplied their own average size families, and have sold an 
abundance for forty millions of citizens, living in cities, villages 
and manufacturing hamlets, supplying them with grains, meats, 
vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, poultry, and many 
other necessaries from their farms. And these supplies were 
the best the world has ever used. These farms sold in 1895 five 
hundred million dollars worth of products, of which Europe 
received 79 per cent. The total value of the products for 1895 
must have come near three billions of dollars. And gold dol¬ 
lars at that. I here quote from the Report of the Secretary of 
Agriculture a most significant query : “ How can the 42 per 
cent, of the population of the United States which feeds the 
other 58 per cent, and then furnishes more than 69 per cent, of 
all the exports of the whole people be making less profits in 
their vocation than those whom they feed, when the latter sup¬ 
ply less than 31 per cent, of the exports of the country?” 
The decrease of cattle of the United States for the past 
fiscal year was about two and a half millions. The loss of such 
