RECENT FACTS. 447 



factory. The process of manufacture is comparatively simple, and any 

 ordinary man could learn it in three months. Common potatoes usually 

 yield 8 pounds of starch per bushel; good table-potatoes, 1) pounds, and 

 it takes about oue-half of a cord of wood to dry one ton of starcb. 



An expert in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, says that the manufacture of 

 potato-starch cannot be made profitable where more than 25 cents per 

 bushel are paid for the potatoes. Another statement, from Northeastern 

 Vermont, shows that in the fall of 1871 the factories in tbat region paid 

 25 cents per bushel for potatoes. A writer in Malone, Franklin County, 

 New York, reports that within a radius of ten miles from that village 

 there are 20 starch-factories, that these cost from $1,000 to $G,000 each, 

 and work up 1,000 to 12,000 bushels of potatoes each in a season, their 

 daily capacity ranging Irom 300 to 400 bushels. A bushel of potatoes 

 yields 9 to lOJ pounds of starch. 



The Manchester Mirror reports the names of sixty-five potato-starch 

 factories in Northern New Hampshire, nearly all of them being in the 

 counties of Coos and Grafton. In 1871 these factories made 3,000i^ tons 

 of starch. Levi Bartlett, referring to his visit to that region and the 

 profits obtained by its farmers in growing potatoes for starch, says that 

 a lai'ge proportion of the lands are new, recently cleared from forests. 

 He indicates the danger arising from the exhaustive nature of the crop, 

 and the probability that serious prospective injurj^ might be averted by 

 returniug to the soil the potato pomace remaiuiug after the separation 

 of the starch, Vvith the plant-to])s, thus restoring most of the mineral 

 elements — potash, phoa]jhoric acid, »SjC, — abstracted from the soil. 



A()ricultHral machinery Vii Oregon. — The Willamette Farmer states that 

 the sales of agricultural machinery in Portland, Oregon, during May, 

 1872, amounted to $300,000, sales by one house reaching $170,000. Ac- 

 cording to estimate, about one million dollars' worth of agricultural ma- 

 chinery has been sold in Oregon during the season, 75 per cent, of the 

 purchase-money going out of the State to meet manufacturers' charges 

 and freight. 



Inducements to immigrants — Mrs. Caltou Belt, of Locopolis, Mississipj)!, 

 in view of proposed immigration from Alsace, offers homes for sixty 

 farmers and their families, and engages to make loans to such as have 

 not means to commence operations. Fifty acres are to be set apart for 

 each cottage ; 15 acres to be rent free for the family sustenance, the 

 rest to be cultivated in cottou, of which the lessor shall receive one-half. 

 Homes are also offered to a manufacturing colony. 



An immJgranfs success, — The following points are from an account 

 given in the London Agricultural Gazette : In 1855 Charles Butcher 

 and son arrived from England in Monroe County, New York, where they 

 obtained work at $16 per month, each. Commencing x>euniless, they 

 accumulated in three years between $500 and $600. They then bought 

 a farm of 04 acres at $50 an acre, paying $500 in cash. The farm was 

 subject to overflow and the ravages of wire-worms, but the new owners 

 renovated it by skillful labor. The son married. In five years the farm 

 v/as paid for and stocked, and after about two years more was sold for 

 $85 per acre. A better farm of 140 acres was purchased at $95 per 

 acre, which is now paid for, and the whole property is now valued at 

 over $15,000. Lately, the lather, at the age of fifty-eight years, has 

 sold bis interest to the son for $10,000, payable in twelve years, at 7 per 

 cent, interest. 



Disproporiionate premiums. — Mr. C. T. Leonard, of Ohio, reports that 

 a certain ilgricultuicd society in that State, at its first annual fair in 18GG, 

 offered premiums on horses to the amount of $210, of which only $6 



