POTATO HAS BEEN BARRIER TO SOCIAL PROGRESS

Wanganui Chronicle, 6 September 1950, Page 5

POTATO HAS BEEN BARRIER TO SOCIAL PROGRESS

LONDON, Sept. 5 (Recd. 7 pm).— By making men lazy, the potato has been a barrier to social progress, 76-year-old Dr. Redcliffe Salaman told a meeting of the British Association in Birmingham yesterday.* Dr. Salaman, who was formerly Director of the Potato Virus Research Station at Cambridge University, said it needed only the addition of a daily pint of milk to ■ make the potato a complete food. The ; potato’s influence had delayed pro- | gress in Britain, generally, and in Ire- 1 land, in particular. It had fitted well j into the “lazy bed” system of crop- I growing which the Irishmen had de- . veloped to avoid the draining of wet I land. “To the peasant, who could feed | his family and stock on the proceeds I of a few months’ work each year in I the potato field, laziness became an in- j evitable characteristic,” Dr. Salaman said. Squalid homes, early marriage, ( large families and lack of personal ' hygiene were all intensified by the , potato, which gave them an “inviol- . able stability.” Two million people had cither died ' or left Ireland when the evil influence ; of the potatoes food monopoly there ‘ ■ reached its tragic climax in the fa.'l--1 ure and famine of 1845-46. “The adoplion by workers of a cheap food like the potato automatically prevented a 1 rise in wages,” Dr. Salaman said. “The price of bread might be almost prohibitive and that of meat beyond the labourer's means* L;-. It not be said that lhe people were starving and incapable of work as long as they had the potato to fall back on. The effect, therefore, of the notato was to stabilise the standard of life at l 1 a lower level than would have pre - | vailed had no such substitute (or other | food been available,” he said.