WAUPACA REPUBLICAN

May 23, 1890

 

A Letter from Rhode Island.

 

            EDITOR OF THE REPUBLICAN:  Thanks for the weekly visits of the REPUBICAN.  Although only a little more than a year a resident of Waupaca, and so busy with learning the new business, that I could not meet the peole in social ways or identify myself as I expected to do with the general interests of the place, yet I came to see enough of the people there, to awaken in me a more than curious interest in their welfare and to enjoy, almost as much as an old resident, the weekly news respecting them, which come in the columns of the REPUBLICAN.  Especially rejoiced was I, when I heard recently, that potatoes had taken a jump to about 50 cents per bushel.  Of course, I understood that such a rise in price there usually means a corresponding advance here, which many people here can ill afford to meet out of their slender income, still, my sympathies are rather with the growers of potatoes of Waupaca than the consumers of Providence.  How often I have said to myself, would the farmers there who are paying interest on mortgages on their farms, could get for their tubers what we are obliged to pay for them, viz:  $1.00 per bushel.  How quick would the depressing mortgage be lifted and the last year’s store bill be paid, and a barn replace the old shed, and the dwelling house be enlarged and repaired, and the wife have a little relief from the ever-lasting drag of house work and the children be better clothed and schooled, and the future begin to lighten up like the morning sky!  But, if some magic of transportation should enable the western farmer to circumvent the railroads and all the middlemen, what would become of the latter!

            Well, if potatoes are high here, I shall always have one compensating thought, that they are high there; that what we lose Waupaca saves.  This, no one has a right to complain of, so long as prices here are not artificially advanced by a local tax on us, the consumers, in the form of the tariff.  That is simply robbing the eastern Peter to pay the western Paul, a species of sectional legislation, defensible neither on grounds of national economy or national justice.

            If you could make money by transporting your potatoes by some inexpensive way, what might you not make by shipping to us in the same way Waupaca ice!  Last year ice was sold here at $5 per ton. It is now $20, as it is retailed out.  Owing to the failure of the harvest here, our ice is shipped from Vermont and Maine.  The result of the advance in price, is that many small grocers can no longer keep fish, butter, lard, etc., and the monopoly in all manner of provisions which require ice for their preservation at this season, will fall into the hands of the few large dealers, who will recoup themselves by higher prices on all perishable goods. That means, probably, scanter tables for the poorer classes. How it will affect the price of cooling drinks and lager beer is yet to be seen.  One lamentable result of this dearth of ice is almost sure to be additional sickness and mortality among infants during the coming summer, especially in our large cities.  So Waupaca is to be congratulated that she lies in a latitude where the baby’s milk may be kept sweet and wholesome, even in dog days.

            I was interested to see that some of the lovers of sport, ala Isaac Walton, have had their usual luck with the rod.  You would hardly credit me if I should tell you that the streams, in certain parts of Rhode Island abound in trout.  I have no chance to verify what the papers are saying, but I have been down to the bay to angle for flat fish.  Do you now what a flat fish is like?  He is, I opine, about the stupidest fish that swims, and as ugly as he is stupid.  Instead of swimming with his belly toward the ground as all sensible fish do, he swims on one side, the other and upper side being supplied with both [Iris] eyes, which bulge out of their sockets, as though trying to see what was on the eyeless side of his body.  Is it possible that, long ago, the Adamic ancestors of the flat fish, were guilty of some unpardonable sin, and their present uncanny and repelling aspect is due to some piscatorial primal course?  Or did Nature, just for the fun of it, out of a passing freak or whim, create this outlandish creature?  Or was it one of her first experiments in fish building, a dismal failure, and she forgot to destroy the model?  Give it up!  It requires no skill to catch them. All you have to do is to bait the hook with a piece of a clam (clams 5 cents a quart) cast the line overboard, wait until the tide drifts the bait into the gaping mouth of one of these creatures, then pull them in out of the wet.  The wonder is that they know enough to swallow the bait; the ex-mayor of Waupaca, could no doubt catch as many of these flat fish as he dreams he does of Emmons’ brook trout.  In their advent to these waters they antedate the delicious scup, and tautog.  Next come the gamey blue fish, cod, haddock and such larger fry.  But to catch these, you must go “outside”, as they call it here.  As this requires too much sacrifice of the inside, your correspondent graciously resigns his seat in the boat to his friend.  He knows, for everybody says so, that such experience is good for biliousness, but he likes to be bilious, or, if he tires of it, finds refuge in “mandrake pills”.  I intended, dear REPUBLICAN to write to you something of the political and business outlook here, but, just as it always was, when fishing, I never know when to stop.  More anon.

                                                                                    Fraternally Yours,

                                                                                                W.H. SPENCER         195 Broadway, Providence, R.H.     

                        May 7th, 1890.