THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



361 



When King John of France was be- 

 ing taken to England after the battle of 

 Poitiers and one of the principal items 

 of his expenditure was for sugar, one of 

 the kingly luxuries of the day, could he 

 possibly have imagined that the time 

 would come when a descendant of a West 

 African slave, in a continent yet un- 

 discovered, would remark in the language 

 of his captors, "It just seems like some- 

 body was dead in the house to have no 

 sugar." These are consequences of food 

 habits. 



HOW THE DRIED VEGETABLE HABIT WOULD 

 CHANGE WORLD AGRICULTURE 



To get into the habit of using dried 

 vegetables would result in a tremendous 

 change in the agriculture of the world. 

 It would create demands for the products 

 of plants which are now grown in com- 

 paratively restricted areas, and these 

 areas would extend, just as the areas of 

 the sugar-beet, which in Napoleon's time 

 were small, have grown until they cover 

 vast regions of the globe — 675,000 acres 

 in America alone. 



The sweet-potato is one of the plants 

 which would be affected at once, for its 

 limiting factor of cultivation is its poor 

 keeping quality and the fact that it rots 

 if exposed to a temperature below 45 

 degrees. It already ranks second among 

 the vegetables grown in this country, not- 

 withstanding its perishability. 



Dried sweet-potato slices form one of 

 the most successful of all dried vegeta- 

 bles, for they "come back" when soaked, 

 retain their sweetness and flavor, and 

 can be fried or candied in a most appe- 

 tizing way. The longing of our South- 

 ern boys in France for their favorite 

 vegetable can be easily met by the use of 

 these dried sweet-potato slices. 



Were adequate plants erected where 

 they would be able to turn this extremely 

 perishable food into such an imperisha- 

 ble one as sweet-potato flour, in a manner 

 comparable to the great Dutch white-po- 

 tato mill, which is reported to manufac- 

 ture into potato flour 33,000 bushels of 

 fresh potatoes a day, it is reasonable to 

 predict that our 953,000 acres devoted to 

 the crop in 191 7 would expand until a 

 much larger proportion of the millions of 



acres of cheap cut-over land in the South 

 suited to its cultivation would be planted 

 with sweet-potatoes. 



THE VIRTUES OE SWEET-POTATO FLOUR 



While the sweet-potato has not as much 

 protein as the white-potato, it has much 

 more sugar — towards the close of the 

 storage season it has as much as 2j per 

 cent, reckoned on the dry substance. It 

 is richer in carbohydrates, and produces 

 flour of such excellence that the follow- 

 ing comments have been gathered from 

 experienced cooks who have tried it : "It 

 makes just as good ginger-bread as any" ; 

 "Better muffins than Graham ones" ; when 

 used with corn-meal, "Delicious griddle- 

 cakes," "The best I have ever tasted" ; in 

 whole-wheat bread, "It gave no new 

 flavor and saved adding so much short- 

 ening" ; "In pastry we found it most sat- 

 isfactory." 



For almost a year, the director of the 

 Tuskegee Institute writes, the baker of 

 the institution has saved 200 pounds of 

 white flour a day by the use of sweet- 

 potato flour (one-third sweet-potato to 

 two-thirds wheat flour), and the resulting 

 bread has not only become the favorite 

 among the pupils, but among the citizens 

 of Tuskegee as well. 



When one considers that the sweet- 

 potato crop takes 15 per cent less potash 

 fertilizer than the white-potato ; that the 

 seed is much cheaper ; that there are two 

 planting seasons possible ; that the yields 

 on poor soils with little humus are large, 

 as high as 100 bushels — even 700 bushels 

 are recorded ; that it grows in the region 

 of our cheapest labor, and that that labor 

 understands its culture, and then com- 

 bines these facts with the experience of 

 those who have dried the sweet-potato 

 and actually made a fine flour out of it, 

 one is forced to the conclusion that only 

 a demand for the dried sweet-potato 

 product is necessary in order to establish 

 the industry firmly. 



THE WHITE-POTATO SITUATION 



But the white-potato situation has 

 proved in this present emergency an even 

 greater problem than that of the sweet- 

 potato, for the car shortage has been so 

 great in Colorado, Michigan, and Idaho 



