250 
American Agriculturist, October 13,1923 
The Great Usefulness 
of the New 1% h. p. 
McCormick-Deering Engine 
T O SEE the new 1 % h. p. McCormick-Deer¬ 
ing Engine standing quiet, compact and 
unassuming at the dealer’s store, it is hard to 
realize the great range of its usefulness and the 
degree of the power it will deliver at trifling cost 
of operation. 
Two cents worth of fuel in this McCormick- 
Deering Engine will do any of these jobs: 
Separate 4000 pounds of milk. 
Pump 3000 gallons of water. 
Shell 25 bushels of corn. 
Grind 6 bushels of feed. 
Cut I ton of ensilage. 
Press 15 gallons of cider. 
Grind 2 bushels of corn meal. 
Saw 1 cord of wood. 
Churn 200 lbs. of butter. 
Bale X A ton of hay. 
Clean 30 bushels of 
seed wheat. 
Grind 25 gallons 
of cane juice. 
Light up the farm 
for 2 hours. 
Do a family’s 
weekly wash¬ 
ing. 
Grind the mower 
knives for a 
season. 
Sueh many-sided labors may be turned over to this tireless hired 
man the day it is set down on your place and for years to come. It is 
of lasting reliability and you will know why when you have inquired 
into the details of its construction. 
The new McCormick-Deering runs at low speed (500 r.p.m.). It is 
equipped with Bosch high-tension magneto and spark plug, removable 
cylinder, enclosed crank case, throttle governor, simple fuel mixer, and 
large, well-made, replaceable bearings. It has a simple cooling system 
and an unfailing oiling system. 
This \ l A h. p. size operates on gasoline. The other McCormick- 
Deering Engine sizes, 3, 6 and 10 h. p., use kerosene as fuel. All are 
made of equally high grade materials throughout and include many of 
the features named above. 
Write for detailed information. Stop at the 
McCormick-Deering dealer’s store and go 
over the engine of the size j)ou require. 
International Harvester company 
606 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, Illinois 
BEFORE YOU BUY A WINDMILL 
Carefully consider the following facts ! A year’s supply of 
The Auto-oiled Aermotor is the Genuiue erery AenMtor 
Self-oiling Windmill, with every moving part 
fully and constantly oiled. 
The Auto-oiled Aermotor has behind it 8 years 
of wonderful success. It is not an experiment. 
The double gears run in oil in a tightly enclosed 
gear case. They are always flooded with oil and are protected 
from dust and sleet. Oil an Aermotor once a year and it is 
always oiled. It never makes a squeak. 
You do not have to try an experiment to get a windmill which 
will run a year with one oiling. The Auto-oiled Aermotor is a tried 
and perfected machine. Our large factory and our superior equipment enable us 
to produce economically and accurately. Every purchaser of an Aermotor gets the 
benefit from quantity production. The Auto-oiled Aermotor is so thoroughly oiled 
that it runs in the lightest breeze. It gives more service for the money invested 
than any other piece of machinery on the farm. The Aermotor is made by a responsible company 
which has been specializing in steel windmills for more than 30 years. 
For full infor- \ FRltffATAI} Chicago Dallas Des Moines 
matton write x*.■CtJEm.lVJ.Jt hJUlV hL'ILf* Kansas City Minneapolis Oakland 
*12001 Log-Saw Profit 
**I think you can easily make $1,200.00 to $2,000.00 
log-sawing profit with the WITTE Log and Tree 
Saw. Bays Wm. Middlestadt of Iowa. It’s easy to 
make $40.00 a day with the W1C0 Magneto-Equipped 
WITTE Log and Tree Saw 
Cuts down trees and saws them up FAST—one 
man does the work of 10—saws 16 to 50 cords a day. 
Thousands in use today. 
m rr Just send 
ritC. XL name for 
full de- 
tails, pictures and low 
prices. No obligation 
by writing. _ 
WITTE ENGINE WORKS 
6801 Witte Building, Kansas City, Mo. 
6801 Empire Building, Pittsburgh. Pa. 
FRUIT TREES SMK! 
ATREDUCEO PRICES 
SHIPPED C. O. O. PREPAID 
Write for our Illustrated Catalog 
Pomona United Nurseries 
2 Tree Avenue, Dansville, n. y. 
Now,a more dependable,d 
able, powerful engine Direct 
| from Factory at Low Price, j 
, 2%, 316. 6 and 7 horse-power j 
sizes also at a Big Saving. 
OTTAWA 
ffl* EASIEST ENGINE TO START. 
Eg 90 DAYS' TRIAL! 10-YEAR GUARANTEE: CASH or EASY TERMS. 
t 
E7DCET 3>AAIf _“How to Know Better Engines, 
rnu DUVn Also Special Offer. Write today I 
OTTAWA MANUFACTURING CO. 
Desk 1Q51-Y, Magee Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
KITSELMAN FENCE 
“I Saved Z6%c a Rod,” says J. E. 
Londry, Weedsport, N. Y. You also save. 
We Pay the Freight. Write for Free 
Catalog of Farm, Poultry, Lawn Fence. 
KITSELMAN BROS, Uept.303MUJBCIE, IWD, 
Carloads of Dry Sunflower Stalks 
for cash F. O. B. your Station. 
Stale lowest price. 
CONSTANT LE DUC. CHATSWORTH, N. J. 
Harvesting Potatoes 
Proper Handling Will Avoid Injury to the Crop 
F HE desire to har- By E. V. HARDENBURG until this suberization 
vest the potato crop has progressed to a 
WANTED 
with all'possible haste and facility in 
order to avoid unfavorable weather* and 
to most efficiently use the available 
labor supply generally results in a crop 
of tubers the majority of which are 
more or less injured. Most of this in¬ 
jury can be avoided, and will be avoided 
if growers and shippers of potatoes 
can be made to realize that the neces¬ 
sary care in handling will pay. The 
rough handling to which the potato is 
annually subject is not, and probably 
would not be tolerated with any other 
perishable food product. 
According to the United States De¬ 
partment of Agriculture, the disposi¬ 
tion of the 1922 crop of potatoes was 
as follows: 
Available for sale as food and seed, 
57 per cent; used on farm as food and 
seed, 31 per cent; unfit for food or 
seed, 12 per cent. 
The 12 per cent of the crop -which 
was unfit for either food or seed is 
especially significant. It may be that 
this percentage was slightly higher 
than average last 
year because of 
the abnormally 
large crop, which 
made it possible 
for the market to 
use greater than 
average discretion 
in its choice of 
quality. This as¬ 
sumption, how¬ 
ever, does not 
minimize the im¬ 
portance of the 
factors involved in 
the present discus¬ 
sion. We may as¬ 
sume that this 12 
per cent of tubers 
unfit for regular 
use consists of (1) 
small or cull tu¬ 
bers, part of which 
are the result of 
low breeding, dis¬ 
ease, and unfavor¬ 
able growing con¬ 
ditions; (2) dis¬ 
eased and insect-injured tubers not the 
result of rough handling, and (3) 
tubers defective either directly or in¬ 
directly as a result of rough handling. 
It is to the last named source of loss 
that growers and shippers have failed 
to give sufficient attention. The larger 
part of this mechanical injury results 
at digging time, the remainder at some 
subsequent time during which the crop 
is graded, sorted, bagged or shipped. 
It is not at all uncommon to find bins 
or piles of recently harvested tubers 
in which scarcely a single unblemished 
potato can be selected. This is espe¬ 
cially true in regions where the crop is 
harvested before full maturity of the 
foliage. In the latter case the skin of 
the tuber is thin and very subject to 
injury. Also, because of the high 
water content of the tubers at this 
time, they are more subject to crack¬ 
ing and bruising during harvest. Care¬ 
less use of hooks and forks in digging 
by hand, results in a type of tuber in¬ 
jury that, although perhaps not very 
apparent at the time, results later in a 
dry decay within the tuber and an al¬ 
most total loss in value. Mechanical 
diggers, on the contrary, if not set at 
the proper depth in the row, result in 
cut or sliced tubers. Such injury, al¬ 
though less wasteful than the other 
kind, is, nevertheless, avoidable and 
must be removed from stocks to be 
sold as U. S. No. 1 Grade. 
More Care at Time of Storage 
It is fairly well known that newly- 
dug potatoes should be allowed to dry 
thoroughly before handling. This al¬ 
lows the skin to “set” and prevents 
peeling or chafing. During the early 
storage period the outer coverings 
of the tuber dry, thicken and contract 
to form a protective coat. This phe¬ 
nomenon is known as suberization from 
the fact that the covering so formed 
consists largely of a corky substance 
known as suberin. Less injury is like¬ 
ly to result from handling potatoes 
therefore if the mechanical grading and 
subsequent sorting can be postponed 
A cross-section of a tuber that has 
made second growth, which elim¬ 
inates it from U. S. Grade 1. Note 
knobby effect on stem end and the 
dark streak marking where second 
growth began 
reasonable degree. When the economic 
factors concerned in storage and mar¬ 
keting make such postponement unde¬ 
sirable, greater cai’e in handling should 
be observed. 
Storage in Bags Undesirable 
There is probably no better method 
of storage than in small open piles, 
bins or in slatted crates. This allows 
of proper curing and good ventilation. 
Bag storage over any protracted period 
has been found undesirable. Many 
growers have made the mistake of bag¬ 
ging the crop at harvest time for ship¬ 
ment at some future time without suf¬ 
ficient regard for the condition of the 
stock as to quality, which may have ap¬ 
preciably changed during storage. This 
has many times resulted in serious con¬ 
troversy between producer and buyer, 
especially in the case of seed potatoes. 
Both wet and dry rots naturally de¬ 
velop and cause progressive decay and 
shrinkage during such storage, depend¬ 
ing upon the amount of injury and 
disease present in 
the crop at time of 
bagging. Such 
decay also tends to 
cause spoilage of 
the bag containers 
and results in an 
untidy commodity 
at the receiver’s 
end. Frost or 
freezing injury 
during winter 
storage in bags 
may also occur. In 
any event, pota¬ 
toes stored in bags 
should be re-sorted 
and re-bagged be¬ 
fore final ship¬ 
ment. 
With the pro¬ 
mulgation of 
United States 
Grades for pota¬ 
toes, this commodi¬ 
ty is now quoted in 
the large terminal 
markets on the 
basis of U. S. Grade No. 1. No mat¬ 
ter whether the producer grades his 
product according to these standards 
or not, the price he receives for it in 
such a market is partly determined by 
its conformity to the *U. S. standard 
and the prevailing market price for 
these grades. U. S. Grade No. 1 is 
defined as consisting of potatoes of 
similar varietal characteristics which 
are not badly misshapen, free from 
frost injury, soft rot, sunburn, second 
growth, growth cracks, hollow-heart, 
cuts, scab, blight, dry rot, disease, and 
insect injury. The diameter of pota¬ 
toes of round varieties shall not be 
less than 1% inches and of potatoes 
of long varieties, 1% inches. 
This grade is not merely a standard 
for the establishment of uniformity in 
size of tubers but clearly a standard 
permitting a certain minimum of qual¬ 
ity also. The grade cannot be made 
by the grower who merely sizes his 
crop and overlooks the tubers slightly 
injured by digging implements and 
rough handling. Fork or hook injury 
and bruises later result in what the 
grade specifies as dry rot. This clearly 
distinguishes dry ro’t as distinct from 
the dry rot of late blight. Other de¬ 
fects concerned in U. S. Grade No. 1 
Avhich are easily overlooked in grading 
are hollow-heart, sunburn and wire- 
worm injury. A sunburned tuber, 
being tougher than a normal tuber, is 
fully as desirable and possibly more so 
for seed purposes. But it is worthless 
for eating because of its acrid taste 
and high poisonous content of the 
chemical solanin. All such tubers must 
be removed from U. S. No. 1 stock. 
Second growth tubers, as specified in 
the grading standard, are usually the 
result of unfavorable growing condi¬ 
tions. Late summer or fall rains, fol¬ 
lowing a droughty period during sum¬ 
mer, are likely to induce this second 
growth or knobby protruberances at 
the eyes or at the apical ends of the 
tubers. Such tubers result in much 
waste in preparation for cooking and 
(Continued on page 258) 
