Eugene Leigh in Business in France, Daily Racing Form, 1916-02-23

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EUGENE LEIGH IN BUSINESS IN FRANCE. I.exingloii. Ky.. Iehruary 22. — John S. Barbee of Glen Helen Stud is in receipt of an interesting 1 letter dated January 24. 101G. from II. Eugene Leigh. Maisons Laffltte, France, from which the following is an extract: "I will endeavor to give yon the news and tell you how I have beeu weathering the storm. You can guess that when the war broke Mil it caught me horse rich and money poor. Fortunately I he government took all of my old horses at from £300 to 00 apiece. Then I fed a lot more for a year which cast 00 or 00 each, and 1 was forced to 1 1 1 sell them at 50 to 00 each. The result is that I have held on to eight of the ln-st young ones. which 1 will probably 1m sorry for. One of my owners has twenty-four young ones with me. which by cutting corners pay for keeping mine. "Now. I will tell you a good and bad luck story. In the retreat OB Paris there were some hundreds of cars of bread sent back here and thrown away. 1 picked up about three hundred tons of it. As I had aliout one hundred hogs on my little island, I let them acot, annulate and eat bread. The first .f October I had over six hundred, when along came the cholera and killed over four hundred of them, which meant a loss of 98,999, as they were worth sixteen cents a pound. I had to pay " twenty-two cents a pound for live pigs last week. The enclosed cards will exolain themselves. The cards referred to by Mr. Leigh are business cards of tare p rk shops of which he is proprietor, one at hfaisons Laffitte and. the other in Paris. The one at Maisons Laflltto I have had going since January. 1915, and II" one in Paris since January first of this year. The htaisoas shop made ,999 last year and is known as the Golden Pig. This sht selW supplies at reasonable prices and is the talk of France from one end of the trenches to the other. War makes funny diumw. I have a partner in it. The one in Paris is mine alone. It cost me about $::.50l to tit up and ,590 to stock. We killed between eight aud nine hundred pigs for the Maisons shop last year. I am getting so expert on hogs that I can guess within two pounds of their weight nine times out of ten. "My only trouble now is capital. Am so short I have to buy twice a week. With ,000 ready cash could pick up a bargain quite often. There is 11. such thing as credit here. Fer thing is enajb. II looks like this terrible war will hist ciuhteeii months or two years longer. You have no idea what it is."


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1910s/drf1916022301/drf1916022301_1_9
Local Identifier: drf1916022301_1_9
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800