Its struggles in its earlier days were terrific but it managed to pull through because there were sufficient loyal members in its ranks to stand by their guns. Perhaps they were driven to exhibit this fierce loyalty by the very character of the opposition. The Equity has many enemies, even among professed friends of the cooperative movement, but so far it has continued to function in spite of this opposition.

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7

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Minnesota Potato Exchange

The potato, with the single exception of wheat, is the most important crop for human consumption taken from the soil. The per capita consumption of potatoes year in and year out is greater than for any other crop, except wheat. We consume on our tables one million bushels of potatoes every day in the year, and in comparatively “lean years." This amounts to 1,429 full carloads on the present basis of 700 bushels to the carload.

In spite of the consistent and constant demand for potatoes, there is no article of food which we produce which indulges in the wide fluctuations in price from season to season that potatoes do. In 1919 at the peak of the season, they achieved the unheard of price of seven dollars per bushel and within six months had fallen to a little more than a dollar a bushel. One year we paid nine dollars for seed and the next year we paid eighty cents per bushel for better seed. And so it has gone on throughout the years.

Well might the question be raised as to why all this erratic fluctuation in price by the lowly spud? One year the grower makes a good profit and the

next year it is all wiped out. Some years the crop is not dug, as in the fall of 1919 in many sections, because the price will not bring enough to pay for the labor of digging. Yet the world needs potatoes and needs them badly.

The trouble lies in just two things: A variation in production, haphazard marketing and speculation. The spud has ever been the darling of the speculator. As many fortunes have been made and lost in speculation on potatoes as on almost any other food crop. The speculators merely take advantage of the weakness of our present marketing system, and the plan they operate under is extremely simple. The grower is privileged to use it to his own advantage, just as the Minnesota growers are doing this year for the first time in history.

But before we consider that proposition, it is well to get a few spud figures in hand. In 1917, an average war period potato year, our total production amounted to 442,108,000 bushels, and in 1912 we produced an excessive crop for pre-war times which amounted to 420,747,000 bushels. The effect of this crop and the resulting low prices are noticed in the production for the following year, 1913, when the yield amounted to only 331,525,000 bushels. In 1920 the production amounted to 414,986,000 bushels, following the lean year of

1919, when the production amounted to only 357,901,000 bushels. The latter year was when the price did not pay for the digging and millions of bushels in the potato section were not dug. It was not a poor season, but it served to give the speculators a hand, just the same.

The conclusion to be drawn from these figures, running as they do over a period of years is that the per capita consumption of potatoes runs from 314 bushels to 42 bushels per year, roughly speaking. The wide fluctuation in price is caused by the presence or absence of that vital 14 bushels per capita per year. We consume practically every bushel of potatoes we produce, so the exportation of a portion of the crop has little to do with the case. In 1920 we exported only a little over $8,000,000 worth of potatoes which would run about 10,000,000 bushels at the prevailing prices then, but we import potatoes to take the place of those we sell, so the score is about even there.

The next conclusion that is forced upon one is the fact that the wide fluctuation in price, as shown in Fig. 13, is all out of proportion to the fluctuation in production. The production might be more nearly regulated by the growers, but since sane production, which means production at a profit, is the only sort that pays today,