SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



They proved to their own satisfaction that three hun- 

 dred bushels at twenty cents is a lot more profitable 

 than seventy-five bushels at eighty cents, though in 

 each case the gross return is $60. Jackson had shown 

 the sweet potato farmer how to cut costs so that bigger 

 yields paid better. 



The sweet potato we eat is not a tuber like a white 

 potato, but a thickened section of root. To get fine, 

 round specimens, it is necessary to grow plants in a hot 

 bed, and set the little slips out in the field. All this 

 handwork piles up costs and labor troubles. As long 

 as cotton was profitable, nobody was much interested 

 in sweet potatoes. But with cotton fading out and cattle 

 coming in, the jumbos, which make twice as much car- 

 bohydrates per acre as corn, become more and more 

 attractive. Moreover little chunks of root can be drilled 

 by machine just as chunks of Irish seed potatoes are 

 planted. The low-cost-big-yield kinks have not all been 

 smoothly ironed out, but Jackson is enthusiastic over 

 the prospects of a substitute for cotton on the coastal 

 plain and he is too shrewd a veteran to follow a cold 

 trail for more than three years. 



To the weight-and-waistline watchers, starch is a par- 

 ticularly insidious type of food. All of us think of it as 

 breadstuff s and puddings. We forget the starched 

 clothes and are surprised to learn that to manufacture 

 pastes and sizing materials and for textile finishing and 

 the commercial laundries, we make nearly a billion 



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