default fonts too small

["Jeffrey W. Baker" <jwbaker@acm.org>]

I installed a fresh Debian on a new PC and it has a problem that I haven't
noticed with my other installs.  The default fonts in many applications
are WAY too small.  For instance, the tooltips in sawfish are an
unreadable blur.  In Motif applications, the fonts are all 6pt which is
entirely too small.  Motif buttons are completely unreadable.

What controls the default font size for these applications?  My screen is
121dpi and I have all the scalable fonts I can get my hands on.  X is
properly configured and xdpyinfo shows the correct screen size and
resolution.

I'm looking for a global equivalent to gtkrc for non-GTK applications.  I
tried putting this in my Xresources:

*Font:  -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-160-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

and ran xrdb -merge but it didn't help at all.

-jwb