The Macon _Telegraph_ says that Macon men in Florida laugh to
see natives opening canned tomatoes in sight of tomato plants
loaded with ripe fruit. Then the said Macon men go to their
own homes and buy Florida shad, at Washington Market prices,
altho their own river is full of them; and the _Telegraph_
asks: “Is it not a little singular?” Bless you, no! The same
sort of thing is going on all over the country. There is not
a year when hams and bacon do not bring higher prices in some
great pork-producing counties of the West than they do in New
York. There are Southern counties where the watermelon grows
so easily that the small boy scorns to steal it, yet in some
towns in these counties a watermelon costs twice as much as in
any Northern city. There are cattle-ranches in the West where
milk, when there is any, brings fifty cents a quart, and great
grain farms on the prairies whose owners never in their lives
tasted an ear of sweet-corn. And, coming back to the shad, there
are times when these fish are running up our own river by tens
of thousands that a breakfast of shad costs more than one of
beefsteak, altho the shad comes right to town and needs only
to be taken from a net, while the beef has to be fed at least
three years and then brought half-way across the continent by
rail. No, there’s nothing singular about it, except in the fact
that where food products most abound human nature seems most
incompetent to make full use of its opportunities. America is,
above all others, a land of plenty, but no one would imagine
it after looking at a price-list of family supplies.--New York
_Herald_.
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