222 ANNUAL REPORT 



tainly appreciate that excellent lunch they gave us this afternoon, 

 and it will be a long time before we forget the good ladies of Ex- 

 celsior. 



Mr. Wilcox was then called upon for an essay replied as follows: 



POTATOES, COST AND HOW TO MARKET THEM 



By L. H. Wilcox, of Hastings. 



Mr. Wilcox. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I suppose I 

 can occupy a few minutes here in filling up a little gap and so fa- 

 cilitate our business. I have prepared no paper upon the costs 

 production and marketing of potatoes but will speak a few words 

 from personal experience and observation. I call to mind a com- 

 mon expression of our old friend, Prof. Porter, in speaking of the 

 building up of the agricultural interests of the university, anp 

 especially the farm school. He used to talk to us of the theory 

 and practice of agriculture. Now, ladies and gentlemen, when we 

 talk about growing apples, cultivating peaches around Lake Min- 

 netonka, and describe in glowing colors what would be in the fruit 

 interest, we are talking about the theory of horticulture, but when 

 we come to the practice of horticulture, we are obliged to look to 

 those articles for which Minnesota may become famous and which 

 add to the wealth-producing power of our state, and in this list we 

 find potatoes and certain classes of fruits. Now, when we talk of 

 fruit in this society, we are very apt to forget the largest and best 

 fruit that can be grown in the state; we are very apt to forget such 

 things as melons and scpiashes, which are larger than the Piussian 

 apples ever will be in this state. (Laughter. ) 



But my topic is potatoes. That is a branch of horticulture. 

 The culture of our vegetables this society, as a society, ne- 

 glects, and if there is anything, during the past few years, that I 

 regret, it is the fact that we have not given more prominence and 

 more time in these meetings to the development and the advance- 

 ment of the vegetable interests of this state. We all of us admire 

 flowers; we listen with great pleasure to our learned entomologists 

 and we give hour after hour to everything beautiful that is con- 

 nected with horticulture; but in doing so we are apt to neglect the 

 practical things which add to the productive value and wealth-pro- 

 ducing resources of this state. Now, potatoes can be grown here 

 successfully, and I might say that there is no part of the Union 

 that produces that tuber with more perfect characteristics, of bet- 

 ter quality and more productively than certain lands in the 

 state of Minnesota. And the potato production is extending in 

 the great Northwest. When our people, when the American can- 

 not raise enough of the common vegetables, the common articles 

 of life, to support our own people, when they howl about the pro- 

 tective tariff on everything of that kind, and import millions and 

 millions of bushels from Europe and pay fifteen cents a bushel du- 

 ty on them at that, is not that a sign that we neglect our own soil, 

 our own state, and the most favorable conditions under heaven for 

 the production of the crop? 



