The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1891-07-11
THOSE MONTANA POTATOES.

= tnls city, sent a barrel OF potatoes raise
t in the vicinity of Great Falls to the cit
| OF New York as a sample of what it
prolific soil can do in the line of vege
tables. The potatoes were simply a sam
pie lot mot selected-as some of tn
tubers weighed only 90 pounds. If NJ,
Haven had shipped specimens none O
them would have weighed less than 81
pounds. The potatoes, however, small
as they were, attracted considerable at
%tention in the great seaboard metropolis
and among others they fell under the ey,
of the editor of the New York Sun
That gentleman was so impressed witt
their size and quality that he made the
"find" the subject of a iattering notice
in which the enterprise, prosperity and
remarkable productions of this marvel
ously productive state were highl, ex.
tolled. The Suns article was reproduced
by the Butte Miner with added com.
mcnts, among which the GLOWING APP
peared:
We welcome the Sun as a champion of
Montana interests and trust that it will
give us a genuine. stem-winding, self
Cooking. rose tc boom.
To this irresistible appeal the Sun,
with that accommodating spirit for
Which, it is justly distinguished, CRATE
f'Ily replies:
We'll. then, herewith we boom the ris-
ing state OF Montana. which we have
often doomed before. and always with
pleasure. IT has productive mines and
lrldesccnt prospects; il has a great
longitudinal area and variable weather:
but above all, it is the place for raising
big potatoes. deserving to be called
murphics. 1t is rather thinly settled as
yet, but 1t has room for millions of PEG
pie, and is anxious to get settlers DOS
sesscd OF capital. who are ready to invest
their money in promising properties or
prospects. It's democratic majority in
last years state election was as high as
III, but the majority will 90 higher.
Boom. then, Montana boom! With heaps
of potatoes. piles Of the precious metal.
and ~boundless hopes, the state can calmly
yet proudly await the coming ages.
This is ali extremely kind upon the
part of the Sun and is good. very rood.
as far as it goes. But it could have said
much more and kept within the domain
of truth. 1t could have added without
fear of successful contradiction that
possesses more natural re-
sources than any other state in the
union; that the development Of these re-
has hardly begun: that it's
magnificent mines of precious metals are
merely scratched over; that notwith-
standing this fact it leads the procession
of precious mineral producing states in
the value of its output; that its coal
are practically inexhaustible;
that it can supply fuel for a continent;
hat it has here in the vicinity of Great
Falls the largest known marble qnarry
n the world, and the finest stone quarries
n the west; that it has the vastest water
'ower in America; that it has the
agricultural and grazing areas
N the continent; that it raises the fat
est cattle and sheep ever shipped from
my other natural range in the union:
hat it produces finer and more wheat
nd barley and oats to the acre than n
'ther state in Uncle Sans domain; that
t raises bigger potatoes and other vegc-
ables grown in the north temperate zone
han can be raised elsewhere in the
United States, and that it produces pref
Ter babies, fairer women, and more
allant men than are found in the same
rea in any other section of Gods green
The Sun could have added these facts
its mention Of a few of Montana's re-
,urces and then left unsaid the major
art Of the attractions the state pos
,sscs. That barrel of big potatoes is
ut a verse, as it were, in the great chap
n OF Montana's multiplied phenomenal
roducts Il mere hint of what it can do.
taste only of its |unmeasurcd richness, a
rop in the ocean of its possibilities, a
Iphcr nothing.