The Indianapolis Journal

TURPIE'S FIGURES ON HOGS.

The Journal's correspondent in Paoli, as reported in yesterday's issue, represents Senator Turpie as telling the farmers in his audience in that city that their hogs brought only $3.15 per hundred in July, and that a farmer beside him (the correspondent) in the meeting said that he sold hogs in July for $5.25 per hundred, and that no fat hogs had been sold this year for less than 5 cents a pound. The Journal is not sure about the prices in Paoli or for the year, but, turning to a Journal report of July 23, it appears that prices ranged from $5 to $5.85 per hundred. Since that date prices have declined a little, but are now improving, Wednesday's Chicago quotations being as follows:

Rough and common, $4.90@5.15; packing and mixed, $5.20@5.40; prime heavy and butchers' weights, 5.45@5.50; light, $5.10@5.40; grassers, $4.50@5.

What can Senator Turpie mean? Has some one been deceiving him, or did he get the price years ago and has concluded that there has been no change? This is the most charitable conclusion regarding such a stupid blunder. If he has been made such a victim it is time that he should drop the study of free-trade maxims long enough to do what President Harrison accused the Democratic leaders in 1888 of not doing, namely, consult the markets. Now, if the Senator had made such a false statement about the price of tin-plates or pearl buttons, or even if he had repeated the often-exploded slander upon the agricultural implement manufacturers, it might have passed, but when he stood before an audience containing many farmers who raise and sell hogs and told them that they received $3.15 per hundred, when they received over $5, he advertised himself either as an ignoramus, or as something more culpable; so that men who find that he knows nothing about so ordinary a matter as the price of hogs will conclude that he cannot be relied upon in anything he says. They are right.