This one's fairly long. But here are the highlights:
1) The Eagle found out that the "Alaska" wheat followed the same pattern: A person finds a plausible "miraculous" wheat that at first glance will produce a lot more, makes an amazing story about it, sends the story and a circular to newspapers, starts selling it to whomever believes it, until the Post Office or the USDA stop the fraud. EXACTLY THE SAME THING HAPPENED WITH MIRACLE WHEAT AND K.B. STONER. The Alaska wheat sold for $20 a bushel (20 times more than regular wheat), and THAT was a scandal. Even more so with Russell foolishly selling this fraudulent wheat at $60 a bushel. Everyone knew the huge implications of finding a wheat that produced a lot, including becoming very rich.
If the WT was "divinely guided", then why did the entire society fall prey to a con artist?
September 27, 1911
MIRACLE WHEAT HAS AN ALASKAN COUSIN
Brought $20 a Bushel Until Petulant
Government Got Out Fraud Stamp.
FARMER ADAMS' BONANZA.
30,000,000 Acres Still Waiting for
Marvelous Seed Found by Mysterious Stranger.
Eagle Bureau, 608 Fourteenth Street.
Washington, September 26—This is the sad
story of a little grain of wheat. No, that's wrong. Not a little grain—a
whopping big grain—a whole head of whopping big grains. To quote Holmes' Dr.
Watson, it was “simply marvellous." [sic] Not as marvelous, perhaps, as
Pastor Russell's Miracle wheat, because that sells for $60 a bushel, whereas
the wheat of this tale brought only $20, and was, therefore, only one-third as
marvelous. But it was wheat with a big W; wheat that was going to revolutionize
husbandry, make a multi-millionaire out of the humble farmer and fill the grain
elevators of the world until they groaned in agony and finally burst scattering
their golden bounty to the four winds and feeding the wide, wide world forever
and ever. All these benevolent things might it have done had not the United
States Government, in a moment of petulance, stamped “Fraud” in big letter all
over the rosy dawn of a new agricultural era and turned a Utopian future into a
pathetic past.
This was “Alaska Wheat” – near relative of
the “Seven Headed Wonder,” “Egyptian Mummy” and other wheats of high degree,
which perform all kinds of feats except when the experts of the Agricultural
Department come to watch, in which case they seem to become victims of stage
fright and are unable to give any better account of themselves than the plain
farm varieties that go into our daily bread. Alaska wheat had fine prospects
until the government stepped in. Its discoverer and promoter is said to have
reaped several thousand dollars from it, at the rate of $20 per bushel. His
tale had a pleasing beginning in mystery. His head of wheat came to him out of
the great and little known Northland, where everything is big – the nuggets of
gold, the beds of coal, the trees of the forests, the Kodiak bears and the
mountain that was not climbed by “Doc” Cook.
Mysterious Stranger Gives Marvelous Wheat
to Farmer Adams of Idaho.
Abram Adams, farmer, of Julietta. Ida., is
the hero. Farmer Adams had been raising wheat off and on for years down home,
but when he met a mysterious stranger while returning from a trip to British Columbia,
and when that stranger handed him a single head of wheat, his eyes grew big
with wonder and admiration. “I just picked it up in Alaska,” said the stranger.
The year was 1904, a memorable one for Farmer Adams, for he carefully carried
that head of wheat back to Idaho, put it in the earth in the fall of the year
and then paced up and down restlessly until the springtime should read the
riddle for him.
The history of that mysterious head of what is told in the records of the
Postoffice [sic] Department, in that particularbureau [sic] which Is devoted to
detecting fraudulent users of the mails. In the year 1908 articles began to
appear in newspapers here and there, and that in at least one widely circulated
weekly from the pen of Oscar F. Day, concerning a "marvelous" wheat
discovered by Farmer Adams. Two hundred and twenty-two and a half bushels to
the acre was its record! Agricultural folks who read these articles wrote by
next mail to Farmer Adams, asking how about it. In return they received printed
circulars, with halftone engravings and big type and the word
"Alaska," with an exclamation point after it, and the information
that a limited supply of this prodigy of nature could be obtained from the
Adams-Hobe Seed Grain Company, price $20 per bushel. It was the “cereal marvel
of the world," to quote from this Idaho farmer's literature. According to
his tale he had devoted a lot of time to perfecting this wheat. Afterward he
admitted to the Government that he had not, but had simply planted the single
head received from the mysterious stranger in British Columbia.
53,000 Pounds of Wheat at $20 a Bushel.
Now, what happened to that head of wheat
was this, according to the circular: It harvested seven pounds in 1905. Farmer
Adams treasured that seven pounds until the spring of 1906. Then back to the
soil it went. Presto! In the fall of 1908 he reaped 1,545 pounds. Step up,
gentlemen! This is the marvel of the age. Only a few left, etc., etc.! Into the
earth (always according to the circular, went that 1.545 pounds of cereal
marvel, so that the year 1907 yielded 53,000 pounds. Not quite such a good
record, gentlemen, we admit. But think of the hailstorms we had. Besides,
53,000 pounds at $20 a bushel was a pretty good little nucleus for a mail-order
business.
By this time Farmer Adams' wheat was
attracting not only bucolic, but scientific attention. The Department of
Agriculture. the Ohio Agricultural Station, the Colorado Agricultural College
and Professor Elliott of Washington State College all addressed themselves to
the American farmer on the subject. Unfortunately, they all said it was a
fraud. On September 28, 1908, the Agricultural Department was unkind enough to
write to the Postoffice Department: “This wheat is an ordinary variety, grown
in numerous places in mountain valleys, and is of low grade for flour and is
only an ordinary yielder."
Post Office Department Takes a Hand
So the Postoffice Department sleuths
investigated. They found that the Adams-Hobe concern was owned by Farmer Adams
and his son-In-law, O. K. Hobe—who was perfectly willing to put his O. K. on
Alaska wheat. The first two crops, it also appeared, had been planted in Farmer
Adams' garden, where the soil was very fertile and drilled thin. For the two years
the wheat had been sown in ordinary fields the yield had been no better than
that of other varieties, and in some places not so good. Farmer Adams admitted
in an affidavit that when the wheat was sown outside of his magic little garden
it yielded from 25 to 30 bushels per acre—not 222½ . It also developed that his
circulars had been prepared by Mr. Day, who had written the newspaper and
magazine articles, and that the Adams-Hobe Company was doing its mail order
business with the East and South; practically none in the West.
On November 25, 1908, the Postoffice Department
told the postmaster at Julietta to hold up any more mail that might come for
Farmer Adam’s concern, and then notified the farmer that it was from Missouri
and would have to be shown a few things about the cereal marvel before he could
get his letters.
Farmer Adams came to Washington in a hurry
and began to admit things. He admitted that his wheat, planted under ordinary
farm conditions, yielded only about thirty bushels per acre, and that it was “not
what was hoped for” He admitted that the claim of 222½ bushels per acre in “large
tracts” was not true, and that the only large yield was the crop of 1906. But
to back up his claims for Alaska wheat he brought down from Brookline. Mass.,
F. M. Slagle, who averred that he had knowledge of wheat, and believed that the
Alaska grain would be a great yielder; better than other varieties.
Experts Find Nothing Marvelous in Alaska
Wheat
They sent Adams and Slagle over to the
Bureau of Plant industry, in Tama, Jim Wilson's department, to show Dr.
Galloway and his experts what the cereal marvel could do. Now, it takes a
mightyiIndustrious plant to startle the Plant Industry Bureau, which on January
20, 1909, advised the Postoffice Department that there was no evidence to show
that Alaska wheat was anything but the well-known Seven-Headed Egyptian, or Mummy,
wheat, already cultivated in a small way in the Northwest. It appeared to be analagous
[sic] to Little Club in yielding qualities, which at best is ranked about half
way between the best and the poorest of milling wheats. Farmer Adams was told
that if he could give Alaska wheat its right name, state that it was to be
ranked with Little Club, both in quality, average yield and breadmaking properties,
the department would have no objection to his selling it.
On February 25, Adams made an affidavit to
the Postoffice Department, in which he agreed to allow the mail that had
accumulated at Julietta to be confiscated, promised to destroy the circulars
that he had on hand and also promised that if any new ones should be issued
they should be in accordance with the views of the Agricultural Department.
Bobs Up Again at Rate of 206 Bushels to the
Acre.
But Alaska wheat was not to be thus
summarily cheated of its bright future—as a mail order proposition. On April 5
following, the Agricultural Department tipped off the Postoffice Department
that a circular was going out over the name of the Alaska Wheat Seed Grain
Company, of Julietta, Idaho, and St. Paul, Minn. It was the same old
friend—Alaska wheat, now running as high as 206 bushels to the acre in Idaho,
and selling, gentlemen, for the small sum of $20 per bushel. E. H. Hobe, brother
to son-in-law O. K. Hobe, was running the St. Paul office. It was a perfectly
good circular, with pictures and promises and injunctions like this:
DON'T WASTE TIME
Start Your Fields to Bringing You Big Money.
30,000,000 of Acres are Waiting for Alaska Wheat Seed.
Well, the Post Office Department acted sort of short and suddenlike. On April
19, 1909, it clapped a fraud order on the company and put an end to the mail
business. The 30.000,000 acres are still waiting. Not only was it a fraud,
declared Assistant Attorney General R. P. Goodwin, but it was a violation of
promises made to the department, because the company had submitted one
innocuous circular to the Government authorities and then issued an entirely
different one to the public. Mr. Goodwin decided that the scheme could be
treated "only as a deliberate and intentional scheme to defraud a
credulous public."
So ends the story of Farmer Adams and the
bead of wheat presented to him by the mysterious stranger from British
Columbia. In one of his circulars Farmer Adams admitted that he had heard of such
a thing as Miracle Wheat, and Seven Headed Wonder, and Egyptian Mummy, but he
did not claim to know anything about them. All he knew was Alaska wheat. Simple
arithmetic shows that Miracle Wheat must be three times as good as Alaska
wheat, because it costs three times as much. Just what the Post Office
Department may or may not do to Miracle Wheat its hard hearted officials will
not say. But over in the Bureau of Plant Industry even the stenographers giggle
when you ask about it.
