Word: aroostook
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Across the fertile countenance of the nation, the farmer bent his back in the June sun and worked the land. He labored wherever the earth lay open, the rain fell and the sun shone-from the lumpy flats of Aroostook County, Me., where the summer potatoes germinated in their dirt hills, to California's Imperial Valley, polka-dotted by the gold of new oranges and ripening honeydews...
When the farmers up in Aroostook County grew too many potatoes, the government stepped in and bought the extra. When the hog growers out Iowa way raised too many pigs, the government stepped in and bought up the glut. But when the Johnson Company canned an oversupply of Bestoval Cocktail Fruit Mixture last fall no one came to their aid. A serious cut in the price of cocktail fruit mixture threatened! If the University authorities hadn't acted decicevly right then, there is no telling what might have happened...
Many another corporation was also worried over a cut in fourth-quarter earnings from the steel and coal strikes. Some had been hard hit already. Of 47 railroads reporting so far, only two (Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, and the Bangor & Aroostook) showed a gain for the first nine months over 1948. Some were in the red (e.g., Pennsylvania's September loss of $2.7 million put it in the red for the first nine months, v. a $20.4 million profit in 1948), and a bad third quarter put all the rest down anywhere from 15% to 75% for the nine...
...Apiece. By the end of June, the Government had in one year poured a whopping $64 million into the pockets of Aroostook potato men, to buy up the surplus from Maine's biggest cash crop. Some of the takes were eye-popping examples of the nation's weirdest experiment in farm pharmacy (total U.S. cost last year: $225 million). At least two Aroostook potato shippers collected Government checks for around $500,000; a dozen or so got more than $150,000 each; at least 31 over $100,000 apiece. In all Maine, 4,503 farmers averaged...
Good Years & Bad. Embarrassed by the Post series, Aroostook farmers rushed forward with explanations. They argued, as every farmer does, that good years only made up for many bad ones, and that their business is at the mercy of the weather. They pointed out that potato raising is an expensive business, with all the costs of planting, harvesting and shipping to come out of their Government checks. But even the potato lobby in Washington (headed by Senator Owen Brewster) had realized that it had begun to overdo...