Photograph and copyright by Keystone View Co. 

 BONANZA FARMING IN THE NORTHWEST 



This machine cuts, threshes, bags, and weighs the wheat in a single operation. The 

 teamster who can handle the fifteen to thirty horses required to operate it commands good 

 wages. 



an egg, some fruit, a bit of sugar-cane, 

 and some cooked rice. 



The husks of rice stick so tightly to the 

 grain that the latter is left rough when 

 the husk is removed. The grains are 

 thrown upon rollers covered with sheep- 

 skin and polished just as we might pol- 

 ish silver or gold. Medical science has 

 learned that the absence of the elements 

 contained in the rice husk produces the 

 disease known as beriberi when an ex- 

 clusive rice diet is eaten, just as a too 

 exclusive diet of corn produces pellagra. 



These two discoveries open up an en- 

 tirely new field in the investigation of the 

 causation of little understood diseases. 

 They rank with the discovery of the 

 method of transmitting malaria, yellow 

 fever, bubonic plague, and sleeping sick- 

 ness by mosquitoes, fleas, and tsetse flies, 

 respectively. 



THE PLACE OF THE POTATO 



It has been the honor of America to 

 contribute to the world its greatest crop 

 in point of yield — the white potato. 

 Making its bow to civilization from the 

 land of the Incas, in Peru, the potato 

 has girdled the globe, winning the esteem 

 of every land and every people. 



No other plant in the entire range of 



the vegetable kingdom has ever gone so 

 far or met with such universal favor in 

 so short a time as this apple of the earth. 

 Today North America produces more 

 than half a billion bushels, while Europe 

 produces approximately ten times as 

 much as our own continent, and has prac- 

 tically a monopoly of the potato-growing 

 industry, producing nine out of every ten 

 bushels grown in the world (see p. 106). 



A NEW BEAST OP BURDEN 



Figuring to such a large extent in the 

 diet of the race, the potato offers a solu- 

 tion of one of the important problems 

 that the farmers of the earth are facing. 

 There are more than one hundred million 

 horses in the world, most of them being 

 found on the farm. To provide these 

 horses with grain and hay and pasturage 

 requires several hundred million acres of 

 the world's best land. 



It so happens that the potato is an ad- 

 mirable material out of which to make 

 alcohol for motive power. Under mod- 

 ern methods of distillation, a few acres 

 of potatoes can be made to yield enough 

 alcohol to drive the farm-tractors of an 

 ordinary farm. The average farmer has 

 held to the horse as a means of transpor- 

 tation because he could use him without 



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