REPUBLICAN POST

January 31, 1890

 

SOME POTATOES

This “Potato Town” is Not to be Sneezed At.

 

            Ed Bailey informed a REPUBLICAN scribe yesterday noon, that he had kept tally of the number of loads of potatoes coming into Waupaca for the last four or five days.  We give the figures so the readers, especially those smooth bore reporters in some towns, that often speak contemptuously of Waupaca as a “potato town,” may know that the murphy is the means of setting some money in circulation, out this way.  Here is the record of loads and bushels:

Saturday                       loads 130                      bushels 7,150

Monday                        loads 140                      bushels 7,700

Tuesday                        loads 154                     bushels 8,470

Wednesday                   loads 180                      bushels              9,900

Thursday                      loads 100                      bushels 5,500

            Total     loads 704                      bushels 28,720

            The above figures as to bushels, Mr. Bailey says will undoubtedly overrun. It is based on an average of fifty-five bushels to the load and many of the loads had sixty or seventy bushels. Allowing that the average price is 27 cents, it makes $10,454.40 cash paid for the tubers.  But it is evident the averages are too low, because $6,000 were paid out over Coolidge’s bank counter in two days, this week.  The railroad company fail to supply cars enough to transport them, and the consequences is the warehouses were filled to bursting Wednesday night and farmers were ordered to hold up until they could ship them out a little.  That is the reason the Thursday’s record was so low. Dell Penney said there would have been 200 loads in Thursday, if they could have had room for them.  Taking into consideration that this potato business commences the latter part of August, and don’t let up until the first of April, here some idea can be formed of the magnitude of the business at this “potato town”.  And a glance at the livestock, beef, pork, clover seed, butter, eggs, cheese, hay, wood, grain, vegetable, etc., etc., marketed here, shows that other things help to make this a booming town for the farmer.