Norwich bulletin., 1917-03-17

only are we dangerously near short age for our own home needs. but the hun gry armies of Europe are calling on us to make up their rations. They will continue to call on us for con- stantly increasing supplies the com ing season, if the combined efforts of the civilized world can defend ocean routes from the ravages of Prussian piracy. % And yet even in these grains, so many farmers are selling over freely under the temptation of big prices, that the Department of Agriculture has felt itself compelled, as a patri- otic duty, to issue formal warning to all farmers mot to part with their valuable seed and thereby endanger the coming seasons crops"
 Now, we're just . small bunch of Eastern Connecticut farmers talking together. I don't fatter myself that all the farmers, even of that restricted Talks. If all who actually do, and who find for themselves reasonable motive for action in my suggestions, should double or treble or quadruple their potato plantings the coming year, the result, even at a hundred percent. yield, wouldn't bushel up so big as to make a cents difference with the com tipental potato market and it's prices. If the few of us who feel that way should really act that way and prices should keep up anywhere near their present altitude it would mean a good many extra dollars in our pockets. Eh
 l, for one, saved fewer potatoes for seed, last fall, than I now wish had. I wasn't enough of prophet to fore see the shortage. so I laid by about the winter, I began to suspect. the pos sibiiity of what has since happened and was lucky enough to lay in a few extras from a neighoor at a dollar. a busheI. I shall plant all that I saved or bought for seed and some few more which we are gaining by extra econ omy in table use.
 I'm not figuring on B bushel for particular sum. Honestly, hope they won't be so high as that again. For, under our present system of middle men, B a bushel to me on the farm means s1 or $1.15 a pack to consum- CTS. And that's too much. It's more than potatoes are worth. reckoning them by their nutritive value. More over, l don't want to prosper. nor to
 have you prosper. nay fellow ia rm ei,,saT the cost of innocent suffering. Let us leave that sort of sharkisYn. to the sharks, whether filmed or two-leggedi
 I've heard of some conneet,cu. man who asserts that he can produce po- q s,nshel, with hired help. I can. do it for that price, nor for three times that price, even if I did all my own work. I once sold several huJ cred me just 42=1-2 cents bushci to pro- duce, for 25 cents bnshel--and lad to haul them to the railroad a' that. I can afford to pay, even moie for products. however, if I can get some where around g a. busieI for them.
 
 There are considerable areas. in our part of the state which will grow good potatoes. There are other consider able areas which will grow corn. It to grow corn, in the immediate past, than the corn grown would sell for. But that isn't true. at present prices. And oats And buckwheat. And per haps barley.
 And beans White beans, T mean 'pork-and-beans" sorts. At $12. or SIS a. hundred pounds. wholesale, they're a mighty paying crop wherever the woodchucks will let them grow. got S5.50 Q buSfel for all raised, last season. and could have sold ten times as many at the same price, if I had had them
 Did you notice, also, that cabbages are worth over hundred dollars a ton by the carload? Don't you wish, now, you had a couple of trainloads of the green things? Probably they won't be worth so much, next fall and win ter. The market-gardeners are likely to plunge" little along that, line, and there's no telling whether they may not overdue the thing. But they're worth raising, at half present prices.
 One other word:-we farmers are currently supposed to be a. has 2 nead-f c. excessively practical folk Eitb our eyes always and firmly gli.ed tc the main chance:" regardful ch 'efly of Number One'' F Perhaps.
 But my personal experience with farmers is that their patriotism ranks quite as high as that of comnfissio men and retail grocers,. say. And, as the producers of the nations food. we have not only our own interests to advance. but it is our bounden duty to think, also, of the great wide land and its more than hundred million mouths, all dependent upon our work for their food. .< i
 It is not only our privileges that we are to consider we have :.isn cri:es. as patriotic Americans, which it would be close to treason for u. wholly to ignore.
 THE Fk PMrP