Mohave County miner., 1912-06-29
Onions Make Texas
 Rich and Healthy.

ing houses and private homes the menue for breakfast, lunch and dinner are made up largely of onion dishes onion soups, onion relshes, onions boiled, onions fried, onions baked. onions toasted, onions with meats, onion pies and onions cooked and served in great variety of other ways. The people ate onions and talk ed onions. It was onions, onions, onions, all day long. In the COW camps upon the ranches, in the homes of the rich and the poor, in the hotels and boarding houses the people feasted upon and discussed onions. It Was a general day of rejoicing over the proud prominence which the former lowly vegetable has attained in the list of wealth producing crops of this state.
 Thousands of people Tn Texas eat onions for morning appetizers, just as apples are eaten in other parts of the country. It is claimed by medical men that the vegetable is a perfect health regulator and that it wards off disease.
 It is related that in some south Texas communities when man sui fering from torpid liver visits doc. tor the prescription is 1.-Two onions, three times day, before each meal"
 Onion eaters are killing the drug business in some of the towns. it is claimed. Of course, onion prescrip. tions are filled by the grocer instead of the druggist.
 Eat onions and be an optimist. That is the slogan of Texas people. It is claimed that a man who has liver in good working order cannot be a pessi- mist. Judging from the roseate hue which onion eaters look at the world in general, there is truth in the slogan.
 The Bermuda onion crop in Texas this year was enormous. It affords an interesting study in figures. One man who likes to handle statistics has fig ured it out that total production of approximately l.SOO, 100000 onions is the seasons record. This would be 20 onions for every man, woman and child under the American flag. Twenty onions of the average size grown in this state weigh about six pounds. If each onion grown in Texas this year was placed side by side in row as they grew in the fields they would en- circle the globe four and one- half times. It required 225 trains of 20 re. frigerator cars per train. making a total, unbroken length of B l.2 miles to move the crop to market.
 Profits from the onion crop is mak. ing money kings in many communities of south Texas, Many men are piling up wealth at the rate of 5O,OOO$ to lOO,OOOS per year from the production of comparatively small farms. This new industry has already added many millions of dollars to the value of land which only few years ago was con- monly considered to be practically worthless.
 When T. c. Nye, who is known as the father of the onion industry in Texas, went down to Laredo about 10 years ago and plowed up two acre patch of the sun-baked, arid land in the valley of the old Rio Grande and planted it in Bermuda onions, people of the old, sleepy border town looked upon him as a harmless sort Of crank who did not have enough sense to know that nothing could be grown up. on the soil of that region. The Mexi- cans gave him wide berth. Filled with inherent superstition the peons would tap their heads suggestively when Mr. Nye passed them and whis. per, "Loco, loco!"
 When MT. Nye obtained an enor. nous yield of onions from his little plot of land the people of the town be. gan to take notice. When the report was circulated that he had sold his crop for 350S an acre there was astonishment.
 ''Impossible!" the incredulous cried "Grow a crop worth 35O$ on an acre of land that was worth only one dol lar! Why, such thing could not be