Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1905 — POTATO CROP TOO BIG. [ARTICLE]

POTATO CROP TOO BIG.

Colorado" Farmers Struggling with Great Yield of Tubers. Colorado’s potato crop this year is enormous and the problem of marketing it presents so complicated a situation that some of the trans-continental railroads may be tangled tip in a rate war before it is over. All the railroads in Denver have received an appeal from the United Produce Company, which is the Potato Growers’ Association in northern Colorado, asking that a proportional rate of 25 cents a hundred be made on potatoes from Denver to the Mississippi river. The present rate on potatoes from Colorado common points to the Mississippi is 40 cents a hundred. This the growers do not want changed on potatoes routed within their present territory; what they want is a reduction of 15 cents between Denver and the Mississippi river on freight destined to go beyond, so that Colorado can extend her territory on potato sales in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and even New York. Unless some solution of the matter is soon found it is predicted that more than one-third of the crop in the northern part of the State will rot in the field. Farmers are now selling them at 35 cents per 100 pounds, sacked, and there is threatened a further drop of 10 cents in the price, which barely covers cost of production at the present rate.