54 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



of my farm I discovered that they were badly infested with scale. 

 On some of the young trees the scale was so thick it was utterly 

 impossible even to see the bark. Millions of young scales were 

 constantly moving about on these trees, birds were lighting into 

 them and flying over my own farm from the borders, and the 

 wind perhaps had been carrying them to a certain extent. 

 There was infestation on all sides from the neighbors who 

 have only a few trees and yet have no interest whatever to 

 spray them. I am glad to say that in New York State we 

 have at the present time a similar law to that in the West, 

 where it is obligatory upon every owner of trees to spray them, 

 and if a complaint is entered, the state authorities now have 

 power to step in and oblige the owners of these trees to spray 

 their trees or the State can do it and assess the cost upon their 

 property. I am very glad to say that New York has this law 

 and I trust not far in the future it will be the legislation upon 

 the statute books of every state in New England. 



Now comes another phase of this discussion, and that is. 

 How is it going to be possible for us as fruit growers to get 

 higher value out of our products? This, I think, is one of 

 the most difficult problems which we have to meet today. In 

 the first place we can never bring to ourselves the lessened cost 

 which we feel that we must secure in our business until we or- 

 ganize. We need to organize along these co-operative lines in 

 buying the supplies for our orchard work. We need to organ- 

 ize in associations or unions and instead of buying small quan- 

 tities of spraying material and fertilizers buy together as an 

 organization and in so doing we shall get all the materials 

 which we have to use at the lowest possible cost. Now this is 

 one way in which we can reduce the cost of production and 

 receive a little larger value from our product. 



Another very important problem is how to get our products 

 more directly before consumers, and this is a difficult problem. 

 We have heard a good deal of criticism, of course, against the 

 commission merchant, and a good deal of it is just. Yet at the 

 present time we could not do business without the commission 

 man. It would be utterly impossible to move the products of 

 our great country, especially our fruit, without the aid of the 

 commission man. And yet when we put it through that channel 

 we find that the commissions wdiich we have to pay take off a 



