WAUPACA REPUBLICAN

March 28, 1894

 

 

 

            We beg to take exceptions to Bro. Barnes’ “potato prediction” in which he predicts dire results from this “excessive potato business.”  We agree with the writer that it might be just as well to “plant fewer acres and take better care of them” but as far as “excessive potato business is concerned, we say keep right at it.  As long as farmers can realize from thirty to forty-five cents per bushel it pays better than any other crop and the returns are sure.  Besides it is this “excessive potato business” that makes it possible to run seven or eight warehouses in this city, a big starch factory and give employment to quite an army of men in planting, cultivating, digging, storing, buying and handling.    And we would not advise everybody to “market them earlier.”  The early fall market is all right but the all-winter work makes business and brings from one hundred to three hundred teams into town every day from September to April and turns the tubers into money for the purposes of trade and to help swell the bank accounts.  No, let Waupaca keep up her reputation as the best potato center in the United States.  Let farmers keep plenty of stock, sow clover and use other fertilizers, but as long as potato culture proves a sort of gold mine, let the good work go on, and keep right on raising the tubers in excessive quantities, to sell to the many dealers who have headquarters in Waupaca and get solid cash returns.