Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1894-06-28
-ahont 1000 carloads from Plain6eld. soo

from ScanQlnayla, ana IN all SUUu car
Loads from this potato district, which IS
forty miles long and twenty miles wide
This year it is estimated that the ship
ments will reach 10000 carloads, and the
crop will be worth something more than
S2,OOO,00O if the Democratic Congress
does not try to give the potato market II
America to Ireland and Scotland.
The Mckinley law placed Il duty OF
- cents a bushel on potatoes, and the
Wilson bill cuts it to 10 cents. The old
tariff before the Mckinley law was 10
cents a buShel.
1T was found that the old law did not
enable Western potato-growers to COM
pete with those in Scotland and Ireland,
for the freight from Wisconsin points to
New York is 26 cents a buShel. and the
Scotch and Irish growers are able to ship
their crops as ballast on ships coming to
New York at 10 cents 100. or 6 cents
a bushel. This enabled them to put po-
tatoes in the American market at 2l
cents for freight and tariff, while the
Western growers had to pay 70 cents.
The Fifty-tirst Congress increased the
duty to % cents bushel, so as to give
the advantage in the New York market
to the American growers.
The Wilson bill places the duty at
10 cents bushel, and under it the Scotch
and Irish growers would be able
to put their potatoes in New York at 4
tOSL OIL 10 cents DuSIel, Oh ~ CeHlS 1883
than it costs tie Wisconsin growers to
get into the same market. This will not
strike the Wisconsin growers directly, for
their potatoes go to Chicago. But it will
drive the Michigan growers from the
New York market to that of Chicago to
enter into competition with the Wiscon-
sin Illinois and Iowa growers. That will
have a tendency to bear the market and
reduce the price of potatoes here at Wau-
paca and other points in this section of
Wisconsin, In 1898, under the Mckin-
lev law, the Scotch and Irish growers
shipped 1926 900 bushels of potatoes into
this country, and with 4 1O-cent tariff in
stead Of ,25-cent tariff they would null
tiply this shipment several times.
1.-The cultivation of 100000 bushels Of
potatoes has made that the principal bust
ness of Waupaca. The town has no
manufacturing, but the two banks of
the place in the winter of 1892 and 1898
paid out $1,25O,OO0 to the farmers who
were potatoes growers.
''Nearly all these farmers started in
poor and had to mortgage their land.
They began this industry about twenty
years ago in small way, and those who
engaged in it prospered so that others
followed their example. The mortgages
have been lifted from the farms, new
houses and larger barns built, potato
warehouses and cellars prepared so as to
enable the farmers to hold their crops for
winter or spring market, and potato
has become king in Waupaca county. 1t
sustains farmers, bankers and business in
half dozen small cities.
''The potato has made fertile farms, rich
farmers, farmers who have retired on a
competence and have moved to town to
educate their children, sustained bankers,
general business, and two railroads that
run this potato patch. 1t has also given
business to a starch factory, and it will
continue to make rich farmers, if it only
has the protection of the Mckinley law.
But if the Democratic Congress is more
interested in reviving the nationality of
Ireland and Scotland than in preserving
the prosperity of America, and reduces the
duty on potatoes, the Tammany bosses of
New York will again be able to eat Irish
potatoes and buy them cheaper than they
now do those raised in America. The
Wisconsin potato growers are now fully
persuaded that protection does protect,
and that the American farmer has just
as much protection from the Mckinley
law as do the robber barons who are COM
monty known as manufacturers. They
have learned that it pays the potato
grower when the factory men are not too
poor to eat potatoes and pay the market
price for them, as they have been doing
able to do this past winter. Congressman
Barnes, who represents the Eighth Con-
gressional district. seems to be as uncon-
cerned about the potato growers as he is
about the paper-makers at Appleton. He
voted the Wilson bill straight, and that
strikes at the greatest manufactured
product of his district, and also at the
greatest money crop that comes from the
farm and puts more than $2,0O0OOO in
circulation among the farmers here in one
small section every year. The potato
men are Republicans because they want
the potato to have the protection of the
American tariff rather than that of the
green flag of Ireland