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A POTATO AMBASSADOR

By

ARTHUR CHAPMAN

N the endeavor to find out why the United States, with its immense area of arable land, cannot always raise enough potatoes to supply the home. demand, the Department of Agriculture has had a "potato ambassador" abroad, studying potato conditions in Europe.

E. H. Grubb, of Carbondale, Colorado, known as the "Potato King" of the Centennial State, has been making official investigations for Uncle Sam, and he has found that American potato growers have much to learn of foreign farmers before the crop in this country becomes great enough to supply the demand from year to year. Mr. Grubb has specialized in potato culture for years, though he is also celebrated as a livestock raiser. It was on his suggestion that the government established a carriage horsebreeding station in Colorado, to develop a national type of carriage horse, and he put the need of better potato conditions so convincingly before Secretary of Agriculture Wilson

that a scientific investigation of conditions at home and abroad was determined upon and Mr. Grubb was chosen to carry out the work.

"I have found that the foreign farmers, in the great majority of cases," said Mr. Grubb, on his return, "are far ahead of our tillers of the soil. They are quick to take advantage of every scientific implement, and they put their land to the best use. That is why Lord Rosebery, on soil that has been cultivated for hundreds of years, can grow 2,000 bushels of potatoes to the acre while the best I can do on my irrigated farm in Colo

rado is 600 bushels. Foreign farmers are specially strong in saving their land, not making it barren by too frequent demands for bumper crops. The potatoes of Great Britain are not as large nor as firm as those grown under irrigation in our own West. That encourages me to believe that, when scientific culture becomes general, especially in the West, it will no longer be possible for Germany and Russia, and nearly every foreign country, to outstrip us in potato production. There is no reason why a small country like Germany can raise one-third of the potato crop of the world nearly 1,700,000,000 bushels, while we can raise only about 300,000,000 bushels.

"With cheap potatoes to fall

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back on, there will be no cry about the high cost of living in this country. Germany is able to get along with little. meat, because potatoes are used as a substitute. The Germans use potatoes to make alcohol for commercial purposes, and also put the tubers to other general uses, but in this country we seem to think the potato's field of usefulness is ended when it figures on the table. We ought to be able to raise potatoes enough in this country to enable us to use denatured alcohol as much as we use gasoline. In Germany potatoes are even dried and used for feed. In fact there is no end to the uses to which the potato can be put-but the first problem is to make the American farmer raise a better and larger potato crop.

For thirty years the consumption of potatoes in this country has been about three and one-half bushels per capita, but the supply has not always kept pace with the demand. It will surprise the average individual to learn that we import about one-quarter of the potatoes used in this country, but such is the fact.

This lagging of the potato crop is one of the chief reasons why living expenses in America have climbed until the average wage-earner stands aghast at his household bills.

"Advancement in knowledge of soils, and how to preserve their richness-that is the solution of the potato problem in this country, and incidentally the solution of the cost of living problem," declares Mr. Grubb. "We have been wasteful of our soil, which was the best in the world. First we impoverished the soil of New England, and of late years we have wasted the soil of the West. Now there is no new soil to be taken up, and we are face to face with the problem of making the best use of the old acreage. Europe has faced that problem for centuries, and has solved it, if one is to judge by the immense crops European farmers grow on a restricted acreage. The potato is only one of the many things we must cultivate better-but it is one of the most important."

The government's "potato ambassador" is another Luther Burbank in many

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respects. His highly developed ranch, at Carbondale, Colorado, under the shadow of Mount Sopris, is the scene of many interesting experiments, carried out by this man who is intensely interested in the problems that confront the American farmer. In the course of his potato experiments he has succeeded in developing potatoes that are of uniform size, consequently being ideal for baking purposes, and that have thin skins and shallow eyes-points that any housekeeper will appreciate. These potatoes will yield heavily under scientific cultivation. Grubb has made no secret of his methods, but has carried on an evangelical work in many Western states. Several railroads have engaged him to instruct settlers along their lines in the art of potato growing-for that it is an art

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anyone will admit after seeing the results achieved by this Colorado Burbank. New York railroad recently engaged him to carry on the work of restoring the abandoned farms along its line. Always Mr. Grubb has given his services and the results of his investigations in a most unselfish spirit, though he could have made himself wealthy by keeping his potato knowledge to himself and supplying the demand that naturally arose for his products.

Mr. Grubb's commission to inquire. into potato conditions abroad is considered one of the most important steps taken by the Department of Agriculture in recent years, and the final report of the "potato ambassador" will affect every potato raiser and consumer in the country.

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I

A CONTINENTAL FUR FARM

By

AGNES C. LAUT

S the world facing a permanent shortage of fur supplies? Is the oldest industry of man coeval with cave life threatened with extinction?

Three times in the last few months the statement has been made to the public with show of first hand authority that the last chapter of the fur hunt is being written; that the oldest industry of man coeval with cave life is threatened with extinction; that another twenty years of fur hunting will mark the last of the precious furs; that another half century will witness the utter extinction of fur bearing animals in America.

The statement is a sweeping one, vitally significant to every denizen of

snowy latitudes the world over. Is it true? When I was a child in the Canadian Northwest, you could buy a buffalo coat for $25 or a beaver from $70 to $100. You cannot buy a buffalo coat today at any price; and during the closed season established for beaver by the Canadian Government these past seven years, it has been almost as impossible to buy a beaver. I remember one summer in the Rockies years ago pricing mink skins from the Stoney Indians. I could have bought them at 80 and 90 cents apiece. cents apiece. Those skins today would cost from $10 to $15 each. I could have bought the most perfectly marked ermine from 4 to 10 cents a skin. Today those skins would cost from 40c to $1. I

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have in my work room as I write a lynx skin robe larger than the ordinary floor rug, for which I paid less than $30. Fur traders today tell me that lynx skin would bring its weight in gold-which is not so costly as it sounds; for lynx is the lightest of furs.

Does all this prove that we have reached the permanent world shortage of furs?

One does not need to prove the extinction of the buffalo. Buffalo, which . roamed the prairies between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan so numerous that literally bridges of the dead spanned the rivers in spring where the vast herds

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crashed through the ice or over a cliff into an Indian pond-today exist only in half a dozen private and public parks. I have visited all of these parks in the last three years. I do not think the total number of buffalo from Missouri to Saskatchewan today exceeds 1,000. The largest herd I know does not exceed 400.

The case is almost as bad regarding fur seal. But a few years ago the population of the seal islands was five millions, and the yearly catch 150,000. Last fall, the greatest authority on seal fisheries in America today told me he did not believe there were more than 30,

THE GREAT FUR COUNTRY OF THE NORTH.

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The shaded line represents approximately the boundary of this territory.

000 seals alive in the whole world; and not a seal would survive the next five years unless pelagic sealing ceased the indiscriminate shooting outside the pelagic zone by Japanese, Canadian and Russian poachers of male and female and young swimming to the rookeries. The death of each female in spring costs besides the mother's life, the unborn pup's and the young seals' ashore which die of starvation when the mother's care is removed. Still a worse feature of this pelagic sealing occurs during fog. When the fog falls over Bering Sea

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