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 public 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 

 no better than any of the well-tried standard 

 varieties, and some which were undoubtedly new 

 varieties developed a fatal facility for going wrong 



