Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1902-10-15
POTATOES GROWING SCARCE
Farmer Says Very Little Land In County
VIII Raise Paying Crop of
TuberF.


About this time in ordinary vears
along country roads leading to the
city at daylight each morning wao.
ons heavily laden with potatoes are
wont to be found making their labor.
ious way to market, while near sun
down in the evening the same wagons
are usually found rumbling home
ward to be loaded at night and bring
another cargo to town on the NOR
row. Ordinarily there are few fine
DAYS in the middle of October that do
not see at least a dozen loads of tu-
bers standing on Market square or
being peddled out along the streets.
But the situation is altered this
year. According to those who keep
close watch of the market not load
of late potatoes raised in the coun-
try lying near the city has been sold
here this fall. Some early ones have
been placed on the market, but they
do not count when the time comes t.
put ''Murphies" in the cellar for win
ter use. 1t is not because the tops of
the late crop have been kept green
by the wet weather, delaying the
ripening process, for all the vines in
this section have been dead since ear
ly in September. Neither is wet
weather, preventing the harvest, and
bad roads preventing hauling to mar
ket, responsible. There are practic-
ally no late potatoes to come to
market within hauling distance of
the city and those there are will be
for the most part absorbed by the
farmers who have none and the small
towns and villages where facilities
for shipping in northern grown pO
tatoes are not as good as they are
here.
The peculiarities of the situation
led man who grows tubcrs and who
has been watching the potato mar
ket for years past to remark today
that he believed the days of the home
raised potato for the people of Rock
Island are practically over. There
has been Il constant tendency during
the past few years" he told an Argus
reporter. ito reduce the acreage of
potatoes in this locality. and this is
true especially last year and this.
The fact is that there is very little
land in Rock Island county today
that will raise paying crop of tn
bers from year to year. When the
land was new it was different. On
the other hand it is as easy to raise
good crops of corn as ever ana lately
a given acreage of corn has yielded
larger cash returns than the same
amount of ground planted to pota-
toes and has been vastly less trouble
in raising. harvesting and marketing.
I'VE are not, strictly speaking, i'm
the potato belt here. and farmers are
beginning to find out that they can
not compete with the growers in the
north, where larger crops and Il bet
ter quality can be produced. OF
course truck farmers will continue
to raise enough of the early varieties
to supply the demand i'm the summer
and early fall, but in view of the rea-
sons l have given | feel safe in pre-
dieting that the bulk of the Irish
vegetable will more and more as the
seasons roll by, be brought in by rail,
while what few potatoes are produc-
ed i'm the adjacent country will go to
supply the needs of the people
through Mercer county. in the great
er part of which it is impossible to
raise them even in quantities suffi-
cient for family use