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Show MURPHYS, SPUDS AND PRATIES I BY ELBERT HUBBARD SESVBBAIi big shipntenta of Irish piVatoes have recently recent-ly arrived in New York ity from Scotland, paying a .tin duty to Uncle Bam. Hut before you begin to get the wieitexahama by taNing that America Ameri-ca is looking to Europe for food, Mippose we get the facts. These potatoes were sold at an advance of something like 50 par cent on market price and shipped to the west to be used foT seed. I bought a bushel and had to pay $8 in hard earned oiazuma.' The United States imports Data front Norway, and has for yearn, but potatoes from Ireland has made a thousand edUora throw double Arab-. And now a bigger cargo, still is coming direct from Ireland to be distributed throughout the United States for eed purpose-. If we get lrieli and Scotch folks for seed purposes, why not spud? The Irish potato is strictly a.. American product. These same menv colonists who took tobacco over to England carried with them potatoes But potatoes were not raised in Ireland to any treat e.Ve-t until about one hundred and fifty -.. i ago. The transplanting was a lueki stroke for Ireland. The climate and soil there were eminenrlv adapted for raising potatoes. Tbe potato saved Ireland from starvation and turned ho tide from misery to a j life that produced quit S number of White Hopes And it a S fact that the land that will produce good potatoes will also produce goo,) men Ireland ha kicked up a dust in a political wajf piite DOXOnd her sice, measured in aousre miles. Transplanted Irish rule the world. Transplanted potatoes teed the world. Poetrv, pratie? and politicians poli-ticians Why not f .And this move of briugi,ic pr.ta toes from across the sea for see.) purposes in .-ec-i-a ia eminent! ' scientific. Maine ha- two great crops, DOtS toes and politicians, and I trust no one will dispute me when I suy Ireland has the same. Potatoes require S soil with more or less clav and gravel, and not too rich in oam. In other words, potatoes are like folk they re quire a certain amount of difficulty and hardship. And another feature in which thv are like humans they need a change of environment Thev "run on'1 when seed is planted over and over from one locality, just at families die 'r,i"i want of tmna plantation and transmigration. In Illinois we used t-. save the little scrubby potatoes to plant, and (he good ones we sold oi ate. The result! Was are soon were nn tnc senile. That Is wbt happens to -ocietv in war time---we breed from the unfit, and that is the real curse of war. Ask Andy. Plenty of educated foika d- not know thai the lood of the potato i not the tuber or root wbteb We cat. potatoes Bower and bear s little black s I in i pod or k) i ! To et new breed tv e have to plant the s'-ed. not the ''eye.'' knd hare acalfl you find a ease where genius does not reproduce itself. Tin "re" will give you the -ace s.r of potato, but the seed harks back to a former an .est or and may give you something some-thing lotally different. To ffrtil!;' the flower of a po tato vine with the pollen of some one particular breed is a dehra'e operation. Then to plant the seed and pick out certain tubers and r plant these requires great potienep and much time. You thus sc.. why nnd how eortaifl potatoes may bo elmap at a dollar ea.'h. Small potatoes and few .n a hill, probably means an ill bred potato, where the poorest have been used for seed. The divine energy that , fake-, the special form ea;pl a potato is very particular at times, ft has its likes and dislikes, pref erences, prejudices, glooms andjoys. Some potatoes cross with otbera I most happily, and others are grouchy, glttin and unsociable. Potatoes like a change Of soil I ami climate. They have a passion for migrating Tn Idaho and Orcoie-v county, Colorado, thev I raise aueh crops that I dare not tell the truth as to bow mauy H bushels per acre, tor feei yon ': WOUld put. me in the overcrowded I Ananias club. But at. a ri?k, let. me sav that six and seven hundred I bushels to the acre are not unusual un-usual j Hnt. thesf. tremendous crops are I most! raised from seed carried I from FToulton, Me., or East An rora, N. V.. just as the tinet r. roses in Oalifornia are slipped in I Mooroe county, New York. Tran- I planted to a more favorable soil, With more water and sunshine, the I new product is twicp the sir.e of (f; its pa Tenta. For several years this increase I will oe ijoteii and then the breed gets tired. languishes. growe I small, becomes -ickly and ha.- tn H be abandoned. A rotation of crops, H or a BOOvihg from field to field is .the onlv thing that will keep one kind of potuto from running out- H ' H |