BuBEAu OF Ageicultuke 515 



loyal to every friendship and knew not enmity. He was prompt to 

 every appointment, and there was never doubt as to his position 

 on any question. He was open as the day, without guile and 

 ii.bsolutely fraxik. 



Mr. Johnson held the highest office within the gift of this as- 

 sociation longer than any predecessor. Let it be recalled also, that 

 when he absolutely declined re-election, he was elected President 

 Emeritus without a dissenting vote. He thus died within the full 

 communion of its membership. All of him that was mortal has been 

 returned to the peaceful bosom of the mother that gave him material 

 being. His gentle spirit has winged its silent way to that mysterious 

 power that we can neither fathom nor understand. But yet he is 

 not dead, because the deeds wrought by good men for the endless 

 uplift of humanity are equally crowned with its own immortality. 

 Forever will the future be rendered better by the efforts of his 

 fruitful life. And thus let there be discharged our loving duty of 

 enshrining another memorial in the sacred Valhalla of our worthy 

 and honored dead. 



THE POTATO GROWING INDUSTRY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY 



P. E. jMerriman, Louisville, Ky. 



Perhaps it would be interesting to know just where Kentucky 

 stands as a potato laroducing state. Now, New York stands first, 

 Vv'ith an acreage of •100,000 acres, and Michigan comes next with a 

 little over 300,000 acres, and Kentucky stands forty-first. 



Jefferson County does not claim to be a first crop section, al- 

 though we have a large acreage in first crop, but more attention is 

 paid to the second croj?. Our state stands first in second crop pro- 

 duction. I am going to speak mostly of the second crop industry. 

 The first crop industry has been well gone over and many bulletins 

 published upon it, by the various states. The second crop is Jeffer- 

 son County's OAvn industry. It is a unique industry, and was born 

 in 1882 near Louisville. John Pierce was the originator. At first 

 there was only a small acreage but it gradually developed until 

 last year we had almost 11,000 acres of potatoes devoted to the 

 second crop. It was in February of last year that there were some 

 43,000 or 44,000 barrels of potatoes in cold storage. The average 

 yield per acre was 60 barrels. Altogether we had 690,000 barrels, 

 which, at an average price of $1.75, makes over a million dollars. 

 Nearly $100,000 of this was paid out for labor, picking and harvest- 

 ing the crop. 



The second crop is planted between the middle of July and the 

 first of August, and one good point about the second crop is that it 

 aoe-i not sprout very nuieli. We can hold them in cold storage and 

 l)huit tliem, gathering about the first of October, and rifter putting 

 Ihem in cold storage, they do not sprout. They have a flavor that no 



