Cbe Conservative ,
as our peplo will purchase in twelve.
Wo have , therefore , reached that stage
of development wheii wo should vig
orously improve every opportunity to
widen our market and when it would
seem good policy for our government
to render every aid to a complete de
velopment of the possibilities of for
eign trade.
In 1895 our export of shoes reached
$1,000,000. In 1896 they were $1,500-
000. Yet leather exports wore $17 , -
700,000 for the same year. Taking
fiscal years ending "Juno 80 , in 1898
shoes were over $1,900,000 ; in 1899 ,
$2,711,656 ; in 1900 , $4,276,656 ; and for
1901 they reached $5,526,290 , showing
a gain of 200 per cent , in the past
three years. The exports of leather
for the same years , however , are over
$21,000,000 a year.
Our American tanneries make the
best leather in the world. They use not
only the vast production of the hides
in our own country , but last year
imported hides and skins to the
amount of $33,000,000 , making of
leather from the foreign hides and
skins alone more than fifty millions.
The Englishman , the German , and
other foreign manufacturers buy
that American leather to take home
and manufacture into shoes to compete
with us , and , when they take it out
of the country , our government pays
them for doing it , a bounty , alias re
bate of 99 per cent , of the duty that
may have been paid on the imported
hide , amounting to from 5 to 10 per cent
and no way has yet been found for
American manufacturers to get like
treatment. The result is that a con
siderable portion of the upper and
much of the sole leather made in the
United States from imported hides is
sold to foreign manufacturers at a
lower price than we can buy it , by 5
to 10 per cent.
It may be asked , Why don't you get
the rebate of duty paid on the im
ported leather in exported shoes ?
For the reason that there are
from fifteen to twenty - five
pieces of leather in a shoe , some
of which may have been made
from imported hide , and others
not ; and , when once a hide is tanned
and cut up into innumerable pieces
and made into a shoe , it is impossible
to trace those separate pieces , and
prove which are made from foreign
hide to the satisfaction of the United
States officers.
This hide duty is a serious handi
cap to the American shoe manufactuf
or in competition with the foreigner
ir for the export trade. As a revenu
duty , it is a failure ; for the rapidl ;
increasing rebate , together with th
cost of collection , will soon absorb th
income , and the opportunities ant
temptation to fraud in regard to re
bate are numerous. It protects the
'oroign manufacturer against Amori-
an , and nobody else. It encourages
ho tanner of leather for export to buy
foreign hides , whenever they can be
) ought for nearly the same price as
; he domestic , because ho can get his
profit in the rebate.
It has resulted in building tip the
annery interests of Canada at a corresponding
spending loss to those of the United
States. It has increased the cost of
footwear , and other products of the
lide to the people of the United
States , while benefiting none , unless it
bo the great meat-packing establish
ments ; and it is very doubtful if it
jeneftts them.
The hide duty ought to bo repealed ,
lot alone in the interest of the great
industry of curing and tanning hides ,
and fashioning them into the number
less things which are necessities , but
in the interest of the consuming
public.
THE COCAINE HABIT.
There are lots of ways for people to
do bad ; to do bad in ways which hurt
themselves and hurt other people. The
habitual use of cocaine is one of the de
velopments of the time. Liquor and
morphine do enough to devitalize the
physical and pervert the moral nature ,
but by accounts cocaine is worse than
either. Its discovery as an anesthetic
was hailed as a boon , as indeed morphia
is. In one of the public places of Bos
ton is a monument to the discoverer of
ether , and on it the inscription , "And
there shall be no more pain. " The senti
ment is beautiful , and might well be in
scribed on the monuments of the dis
coverers of the other anesthetics ; but
while these are invaluable servants of.
the human race , they are , like fire and
water , awful masters. As to the co
caine habit , it is reported as spreading
rapidly over the United States , and the
Georgia legislature , now in session , is
casting about for means of controlling
it , for it is represented as very prevalent
among both races in that state. It ap
pears that by its habitues it is not swal
lowed but used by injection , and upon
the subject a recent writer says :
"Cocaine injection is , without ques
tion , the most dangerous and subtle
form of inebriety known. Compared
with it , even morphinomania is com
paratively harmless. It grows on one
with amazing rapidity , and gives little
or no warning of the harm it is doing
until the evil is accomplished almost be
yond recall. With most narcotics you
have quick presage of coming evil. Let
the average man inject a dose of mor
phia and he will find the temporary
ease followed by excruciating headache ,
by raw nerves , and by fearsome depres
sion of spirits. But with the cocaine at
first there' is none of this. Pain is
deadened. The things that troubled
you seem swept out of your life. You
have a seriteo of self-satisfaction , of buoy-
ncy , of ease , and of pleasure. In the
.ormal man or woman there is often at
Irst no great reaction , although in this ,
as in every nerve poison , the effects
iffer according to individual tempera
ment. But the pleasure passes off very
quickly , even more quickly than with
ipium , and the victim is almost inevit-
.bly driven to renew the injection. In
nany ' cases from twelve to twenty
doses are before long taken in a single
The cocaine habit is said to be singu-
arly insidious , stealing upon its victim
ind fastening him before he is aware
; hat he is in its clutches. It has for
some years been a subject of special
tudy in England , where its existence is
ecognized as not only a now evil , but
perhaps the greatest of all of its kind ,
onverting , as it does , honest men into
thieves , truthful men into liars , and
iionorable men into dishonorable hur
rying its victims into imbecility or un
timely graves. Happily the habit has
not , we think , fixed itself to any extent ,
if at all , in North Carolina , and it is to
be hoped that it never will. Charlotte
Daily Observer , Nov. 10 , 1901.
CREMATION.
Editor The Conservative :
In connection with "Items of Interest
to Cremationists , " contained in The
Conservative of the 14th inst. , I beg
leave to transmit to yon the latest copy
of a periodical , issued in Berlin twice a
month to-wit "Die Flamme "
, - : , devoted
to cremation. It appears from the
photograph of a modern Crematorium ,
that the remains of the deceased cannot
come into contact with the fuel nor with
the flames , and that the incineration is
effected solely by atmospheric airwhich
has been heated up to one thousand de
grees of Celsius.
Cremation is therefore nothing else
but a quick process to resolve or decom
pose the remains into the original ele
ments , which is finally accomplished , by
changing the body into earth , from
which it had been taken or from which
it had originated.
Enclosed please find the latest report
of the imperial board of health in Ber
lin , from which it appears that the mor
tality in the principal cities during Sep
tember , 1901 , shows a percentage of
deaths out of 1000 inhabitants as fol
lows , to-wit : Ohristiauia , 11.3 ; Wies
baden , 13.1 ; Frankfort on Main , 18.9 ;
Hanover , 12.7 ; Berlin , 16.2 ; Paris , 16.7 ;
London , 15.6 ; Rome , 17.2 ; Philadelphia ,
16.5 ; New York , 18.9 ; Petersburg , 22.9 ;
Warschaw , 28.0 ; Dublin , 28.4 ; Moskow ,
81.8.
81.8.As
As far as my personal observations go ,
the cleanest cities in the world show the
least mortality and the greatest pros
perity , for cleanliness is next to Godli
ness. DR. F. RENNBR.
Omaha , Neb. , Nov. 17 , 1901.
