66 THE POTATO 



^ 



they shot that shaft with far-reaching aim. Miles 

 of greenhouses were rushed up for the purpose of 

 'forcing' tubers of the $800 per pound variety, 

 and the pubHc was conjured to buy shoots or 

 sprouts of that and other varieties at $20 each. 

 Thousands of farmers and gardeners who could 

 not afford to buy a pound of tubers at $800 per 

 pound rushed to buy these precious shoots at 

 from $10 to $20 each. One developer boasted 

 that he had taken 1,000 shoots from a single tuber, 

 so that if he had sold all these at an average of 

 $15 each he would have made $15,000 off a single 

 tuber, and had that precious tuber left to grow a 

 further crop with. 



"But the potato harvest of 1904 found the 

 growers of new and high-priced varieties in a very 

 different frame of mind. The precious shoots 

 which they had bought at from $10 to $20 apiece 

 had each and all of them yielded a caricature 

 of a crop, as the merest tyro in botanical science 

 and farm practice could have told them would be 

 the case. Most of the new, or so-called new, 

 varieties had also proved to be quite as susceptible 

 to the disease as the older varieties. And above 

 all, the general crop of the country was a very full 

 one, so that prices ruled very low. Then there was 

 a rush to sell for seed the stocks which had been 

 bought at fabulous prices, but the demand had 

 gone off and the slump came. The following year 

 — 1905, that is — was also a favorable one for the 

 potato crop, and on account of the heavy yield 

 prices were low. The new varieties rushed upon 

 the market two years before had, as a rule, proved 

 ho better than any of the well-tried standard 

 Varieties, and some which were undoubtedly new 

 varieties developed a fatal facility for going wrong 



