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Show By VES HARRISON Many Bountiful and Centerville ien now in their 70's will remem-,r remem-,r with fondness what was in lny cases their very first job as jungboys in the early 1920's, in ,e onion patches of Porter-Walton ompany in Centerville. BOYS IN their pre-teens and ear-teens ear-teens came from Bountiful in oves to work alongside a number Centerville youths, weeding and illing onions, laying them in neat indrows so the tops would dry, ,d then shaking or threshing them long slatted frames so the chaff 0uld blow away, leaving the autiful, clean onion sets. These sets were then stored all inter under controlled tempera-res, tempera-res, and sold in the spring to the ore's and distributors. When anted, they would soon grow into esh, young green onions. The ys so engaged used to playfully and John F. Porter was owner and operator of a ranch in Morgan County. Neither N.T. or John F. were active in the business in its beginning. F.W. Walton was an experienced experi-enced market grower with training in the seed business, having been employed in seed processing and selling by Vogeler Seed Company, a seed dealer in Salt Lake City, for a number of years before starting this venture, and after the departure depar-ture of N.T. Porter to California he became president of the company and was in active management until un-til his death in 1940, a period of 35 years. J.J. PORTER was a student of law and business administration at the University of Utah, but terminated termin-ated his schooling to join in the new venture as secretary-treasurer as well as office manager, correspondent correspon-dent secretary and chief accountant accoun-tant and financial agent for the in 191 1 with spur track facilities on the Union Pacific Railway to handle hand-le rail cars of their product lines. Through the medium of semiannual semi-annual seed and nursery catalogs, as well as through personal salesmanship sales-manship throughout the Inter-mountain Inter-mountain territory, an extensive mail-order business was developed. de-veloped. WHEN World War I broke out in Europe the United States had very few seed producers, consequently Western European countries and Great Britain were the major sources of vegetable and flower seeds. The War soon brought on shortages shor-tages and America was faced with the need to expand production of food crops as markets opened up for her to supply not only her own needs but to furnish other countries coun-tries who were caught up in the War and whose production suffered suf-fered as a natural consequence. |