THE WONDERFUL POTATO-PATCH.
IN the spring of 1862 potatoes were very scarce and dear.
The women of Muscatine, Iowa, who were earnest workers in the Soldiers’ Aid Society of that town, were anxious to secure potatoes to send to the army. They decided to canvass the town and the region round about for that purpose.
But the first grocery they entered the proprietor said, “No, I have no potatoes to spare; but I have a field about a mile out of town that you may have the use of, if you wish to raise potatoes.”
The proposition was accepted gladly; and they at once began to solicit potatoes for planting.
At the appointed day for planting, the loyal old men who had not gone to the front, and the women and children, rallied for the work. Wagons were in readiness to carry out the ploughs, harrows, hoes, and potatoes. The men ploughed and harrowed and furrowed the ground, the women and children followed, dropping and covering the potatoes, and the field in due time was planted.
When the time came to cultivate the potatoes,a “potato picnic” was announced; and when the day arrived, wagons were in readiness to take all who were willing to work to the field. A picnic dinner was served, and although the work was hard, these hours of toil were enlivened with laughter and song and wit and wisdom; and the weeds were destroyed, and the potatoes cultivated. And so it was each time when the cultivation of the field was needed.
Happily the Colorado beetle, known as the potato bug, had not been heard of as yet.
But there came a time of drought and great anxiety, for men, and women too, for women toiled in the fields in those heroic days. They watched the clouds with sinking hearts, as they sailed carelessly by, giving never a drop of rain to revive vegetation and moisten the parched earth.
Every one felt as much interest in the potato-field the women had planted as though it had been their own.
There are, perhaps, a score or more of men and women still living in that loyal town, who will remember that “Sanitary Potato-Patch;” and the remarkable fact, that one day a cloud sailed over it and drenched the field with rain, scattering only a few sprinkles over the fields adjoining.
The yield of that potato-field was immense; and the entire crop was in time shipped to me at St. Louis, and distributed in camps and hospitals.
I do not now remember how many bushels they raised on that patch of ground, but I distinctly remember that they sent me by one shipment fifteen hundred bushels of potatoes.
Never were potatoes more needed, or more acceptable to men suffering from that army scourge, “scurvy,” than were those fifteen hundred bushels, distributed to Iowa soldiers and to all in the general hospitals. To me the supply seemed inexhaustible.
One of the first stops made by the steamer sent down with them was at Island No. 10, above Memphis, Tenn., where one hundred bushels were put off, with the injunction that they must be divided equally among the men and officers of an Iowa regiment stationed there.
There were over one thousand men in all.
On my return trip the steamer stopped again at Island No. 10. My feet had scarcely touched the shore till I was surrounded by soldiers, who reported that the officers had eaten up most of the potatoes, and that they had been given only about three messes.
I was indignant, and went directly to the colonel’s headquarters with the complaint. He was greatly surprised, and sent for the quartermaster and other officials, who listened to the complaints very serenely. When they had heard all I had to say the quartermaster said,—
“You only gave us one hundred bushels ofpotatoes; how long did you think they would last?”
“About a month I thought.”
“We have ten companies of one hundred men each. Every company got ten bushels. That divided among one hundred men would only give them about two messes apiece.”
“That is so,” I confessed with some confusion.
“I see,” he continued, “that you are not accustomed to feeding armies.”
“If that is the way they eat, I don’t want the task of feeding them. I accept your explanation, and beg you to excuse my ignorance in these matters.”
And so we parted. I had a few minutes later, as the boys gathered about me at the landing, the privilege of explaining why they did not get more than two or three messes of potatoes,—that there were too many of them. That if there had been ten men and one hundred bushels of potatoes, instead of one thousand men and one hundred bushels of potatoes, they would have fared better.