138 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Maine can do, and we cannot show them unless we can get down 

 to business. We must send our apples out in proper packages. 

 We cannot send them with a dozen good apples on top and the 

 rest of inferior quality. It was a surprising thing, at our hor- 

 ticultural meeting, to learn that a man had gone to Boston and 

 bought a barrel of choice Maine Baldwins, and shipped them 

 down to Augusta, and when he opened the barrel it contained 

 hardly ten per cent of choice apples. If a barrel of those 

 apples should be opened in Chicago or London, it would not 

 help out the reputation of 2\Iaine apples. We want barrels 

 going over there with "Maine" branded on them to be filled 

 with apples that will be creditable to Maine. They had an ex- 

 hibit up there in Boston and seemed to want to develop the 

 plate business. I cut the most of those prizes out. I said. "We 

 are not selling our apples in plates. We have got to teach our 

 fruit growers to put them up in packages." The West hasn't 

 got any better apples than we have ; they cannot get the flavor. 



Another thing came to my attention in Boston a few weeks 

 ago. The Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agricul- 

 ture had seven or eight \\'ealthy apples on his desk, highly col- 

 ored. Secretary Martin from Vermont said, "Can you color 

 apples like that down in Maine?" I said, "The same sun shines 

 in Maine that shines in jNIassachusetts, only it shines in Elaine 

 before it shines in Massachusetts. 



The more meetings we have with boards of trade, to get our 

 farmers and orchard men down to business principles, the 

 quicker we will develop j\Iaine. 



I want to thank you, gentlemen, for the courtesy that this 

 Board of Trade has extended to the Dairymen's Association. 

 There was a question about going to Portland or Norway. I 

 said, Portland is the place. We have the accommodations and 

 the facilities, and our dairy interests are too large to go to any 

 small place. If the boards of trade in other places are able to 

 entertain us as w'ell as the Portland Board of Trade, there will 

 be no trouble but that they will be successful along the line of 

 agriculture. 



