EZRA M. SMITH (R) PETERBOROUGH Committee on Judiciary ROBERT WRIGHT (R) Committee on Judiciary WHEN Robert Wright runs for the state legislature he works up more enthusiasm in Sanbornton than a presidential campaign. Which, at first thought, seems surprising for he is known as one of the most silent men in the House. He accomplishes much with few fireworks, as those who know of his work as chairman of the judiciary committee in 1919 can testify. This is his fourth appearance in the House. He's been there every term but one since 1915. IDENTITY BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Somewhere-in desolate, wind-swept space— "And who are you?" cried one, agape, THE PARTING BY MICHAEL DRAYTON Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, -Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, HERACLITUS BY WILLIAM JOHNSON CORY They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remember'd how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, Potatoes dug from ten hills each of certified and common stock. The certified seed at left produced 13 pounds, consisting of 44 marketable and 15 unmarketable potatoes, while the common stock at right produced 51⁄2 pounds, consisting of 24 marketable and 14 unmarketable ones. I THE COLLEGE AND POTATOES A Movie of the Extension and Experiment Service at Work NSTEAD of potatoes this article might have dealt with chickens or dairy cattle or apples or home economics. In all of these lines and others the strands between the State College and New Hampshire's 20,000 farms are being woven more tightly; but there is not time to speak of everything, and potatoes alone may well, as the boys say, constitute a "mouthful." In fact, I am tempted not to make it an article at all but rather a moving-picture. Suppose that you are seated in cinema darkness, and that you are looking not at THE GRANITE MONTHLY, but at the screen. First let there flicker for a moment the windows of an ivy-covered brick laboratory strangely shot through by the radiance of a setting sun. Behind the glass a tall black figure stands turning upside down the contents of a vial and closely scrutinizing them. This, the caption informs you, is the State Agricultural Experiment Station at Durham. In an instant the scene shifts to a busy office. A young man at a desk talking hurriedly to a farmer in overalls. A stenographer calls the young man to the telephone. Energetically he speaks into it. This is a county agent's office in one of the ten county Farm Bureau centers of the state. Then you see a lone weather-beaten farmhouse with a road winding to it, tall maples, a big barn and a cosy atmosphere that makes the pianist down front break spontaneously into "A Little Gray Home in the West" or its latest successor. And suddenly, as if connecting all three of these scenes, appears a row of smooth, wellshaped potatoes linked together to form a long chain. "Educated potatoes" the film calls them. You realize that in some mysterious way they are to bind together the laboratory, the county agent's office, and the farm. It is the fall of the year 1918. Seated around a table are some of the members of the Experiment Station Council-F. W. Taylor, veteran agronomist, large-framed, with bull-dog jaws and a sense of humor; O. Butler, unbelievably tall and lank, a specialist in plant diseases, educated in France, with twinkling eyes under steelrimmed spectacles; W. C. O'Kane, nationally known as an entomologist and writer, facile, with an alert manner, togged for a cross-country tramp; J. H. Gourley, clean-cut, bald-headed, keen-eyed, whose apple investigations. have brought increasing fame. Take a close-up of the man who is speaking, as he leans back in a swivelchair. Of medium build, clean-shaven, gentle-eyed, with a bald lane over This the top of his head, he is easily the most unassuming and yet perhaps the most quietly determined man in the room. is J. C. Kendall, director of both the Experiment Station and the Extension Service. Twentyfive years ago John Kendall came to Durham to enter college as a student from a Harrisville farm with only a bicycle, eight dollars in his pocket and an undefined zeal for New Hampshire's farming in his heart. The years have taken away the bicycle and perhaps the eight dollars; but they have given a point to the zeal. THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN recently stated that more than any other man in the state he had had his finger on the pulse of New New Hampshire's agriculture. "Gentlemen," he says, "we have got to do something about our potato production. New England as a whole has been increasing its acreage. Maine has nearly doubled hers, but we have been slipping. We are close to the market with a bulky crop that cuts down through freight rates any advantage of the West. What is the matter? And what can the Experiment Station do about it? Discussion waxes slowly. It is not a matter of acreage, but of the amount produced per acre. If so, why is our average production so low on this basis? Finally the floor goes to Dr. Butler. "It seems to me that the limiting factor here" he is a scientist and likes to use phrases like this "is disease control. Most of the potato stock in the state is suffering from the degeneration maladies - mosaic and leaf-roll. Scab and rhyzoctonia are prevalent. Our farmers do not even protect themselves from late blight. The most pressing need is an introduction of certified seed, and of a campaign for the use of Bordeaux mixture." Now the discussion becomes keener. There are conflicting reports about certified seed; some of it pro |