Word: potatoe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...matter when he asked: "Shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land?" No, we shall not, was the answer, and so there came the thousands of Irish starved by the potato famine of 1845, and thousands more of Germans oppressed after the uprisings of 1848, and still more thousands of Russian Jews afflicted by the czars' pogroms, and then in 1882 Congress passed the first immigration laws barring lunatics, convicts and Chinese laborers. The principle of "selectivity" had been born...
Very little is pretty about Soweto, not even the name (which rhymes with potato). It derives from no tribal dialect but from "southwestern township," its location, eight miles southwest of the larger white city. Soweto is actually a black bedroom community for Johannesburg. Most of the adults commute daily aboard crowded, segregated trains to jobs in the city. Few whites return the visits. To enter Soweto, a white person must obtain a special permit good only for daylight hours, a day at a time...
Simplot professes to be surprised by all the fuss. "There's nothing to get excited about," he told TIME Correspondent Eileen Shields. "I think it will all work out." How could a market professional like Simplot, at 67 a veteran of half a century in the potato business, get drawn into such a mess? The biggest factor was the volatility of the May potato-futures contract. From a low of $5.92 per 100 Ibs. of potatoes in February 1975, when trading in the May contract began, the price zoomed to almost $20, dropped back to $8, went up again...
...then began to scramble for potatoes, which he knew he would have to deliver by last week. With offers of cash and his own stock of potatoes, he managed to settle some of his contracts. For the rest, he sent agents to Maine's Aroostock County, heart of the state's potato business, to try to round up spuds from farmers with cash offers of $6.50 to $8. There were a few takers, but most of the Maine farmers balked because they had received other offers as high as $15 from export agents-some of the longs...
...major holder of unfulfilled contracts, to see if a compromise price could be worked out. Simplot offered Collins $10 to buy back his contracts, but Collins wanted $12.50. If they cannot agree, the exchange will decide a fair price for them and thus settle by fiat the great potato battle...