Potatoes - a Fable

In the early days of last century a strange blight fell upon the remote town of Ballyspudulike.

Things were quiet there, and had been for a long time. The town was surrounded by bogs, but somehow there was a few hundred acres of good land ideal for the production of potatoes, and as a result the entire population of 800 ordinary souls had become very dependent upon the potato as a staple part of their diet. There were four farms around the town which was famous for the left-handed widgets it made and sold across the whole of the country. Mind you there wasn't a huge demand for left-handed widgets so the town wasn't that wealthy but it kept the men as busy as they wanted to be with money in their pockets and potatoes on the table.

The farmers however were less than content. It was hard work digging up the potatoes and taking the to market everyday so they were very interested in the proposition put to them by a stranger, Mr Oliphant by name, who had bowled into town one day.

"I'll buy your spuds from you at a guaranteed price, and I'll guarantee to buy all your spuds, and take them to market for you" he told them and the four of them signed up instantly. Soon Oliphant's Potato Emporium Company was up and running. Everyone was happy for a couple of years - Mr Oliphant set up a warehouse where he stored the excess spuds when the crop exceeded demand and kept the potatoes in good condition all year round - so there was never a time when the people of Ballyspudulike had to go without potatoes, and as a result they ate more and more of them.

The men of the town became healthier and produced more left-handed widgets and more children. The farmers responded by ploughing more land and planting more fields of potatoes. Ballyspudulike had never been so wealthy.

Then things started to go wrong. There was talk of building a factory to make more left-handed widgets and it was going to bring people in from the neighbouring towns to work there, and worse than that there were times when the Oliphant's Potato Emporium Co's warehouse almost ran out of potatoes because of the town's expanding population and waistlines.

Mr Oliphant could see that if the population of Ballyspudulike kept on growing there would be a crisis. But Mr Oliphant was a shrewd business man. He knew that a crisis meant an opportunity and saw the time was right to make some real money.

Over night he doubled the price of the potatoes he had in his almost full warehouse. At first the farmers complained, but when he pointed out that he would pay them the new price for their potatoes and would be passing on the agreed percentage of all future profits to them they soon settled down.

The people of Ballyspudulike on the other hand were furious, but they still had to buy the potatoes as they still needed to eat.

The town council met and discussed the problem.

They talked about not buying potatoes from Oliphant's Potato Emporium Co., but the farmers weren't interested in selling to them direct and going back to the hard graft of shipping the potatoes to town every day.

They talked about ploughing up some more land and growing extra potatoes for themselves, but no one could see the point as they had a problem today, not next year when the potatoes would be ready, and anyway the unploughed land was pretty...

"I know what," said the town mayor, "lets show Oliphant's Potato Emporium Company that we can live without potatoes, lets start making more bread!". It was unanimously agreed and the bakers were told to double the amount of bread made every day.

Sure enough people stopped buying so many potatoes, and started eating a lot of bread.

A month later the chickens died... of hunger, the baker had bought the corn they ate to make the bread. Because the chickens were dead there were no eggs so there were many rumbling tummies and people bought more bread and potatoes to compensate. The response from Oliphant was to put up the price of potatoes even more as demand was increasing.

The council then decided that people were eating so many potatoes because they were working too hard and set limits on the number of left-handed widgets that could be made. The town's economy started to collapse and it wasn't long before the population of the town had halved.

Oliphant's Potato Emporium Co was only selling half as many potatoes as before, but at twice the price, so Mr Oliphant wasn't worried. He was hated in the town, but he didn't care, he was now a very rich man in deed.

The population of Ballyspudulike continued to plummet.

Then one day the few remaining inhabitants went down to the Oliphant's Potato Emporium Company building to find a notice pinned to the door "Closed - permanently". Mr Oliphant had left town - taking almost all of the people's money with him.

The farmers didn't care, they retired to the South of France.

The few remaining folk had no choice but to leave Ballyspudulike and emigrated to America leaving the town and its fertile fields for ever.

The rest of the country wondered why they couldn't buy a left-handed widget anymore, but otherwise not much more was thought about Ballyspudulike.

As for Mr Oliphant - well what do you think he did next?