66 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



fruit men. The banks are officered by orchard owners. The 

 :ouvenir cards represent some kind of fruit or some phase of 

 fruit growing, — perhaps two apples taking up the entire space 

 on top of a flat car, or a man hauHng a single pear out of his 

 orchard with a team of horses. The hardware stores are full 

 of every contrivance for the benefit of the fruit grower, from 

 cement coated nails for his apple boxes to the latest type of box 

 press. Every orchard section and every railroad has its adver- 

 tising booklet, ornamented with apples in colors, and even the 

 ladies' hats, instead of looking like a dish pan or a coal hod, 

 as they do with us, looked like a peach basket or an apple box. 

 I can see in this universal interest in the orchard business both 

 an advantage and a disadvantage, — both a hope and a menace. 

 On one hand, it is bound to push the industry forward, it has 

 already done so, and will always do so with any industry, 

 when many men engage in it in a single section. What one 

 man does not think of, another man does, and the business as 

 a whole is wonderfully advanced. On the other hand, if the 

 time comes when this industry fails or is seriously crippled 

 (even for a single year), the whole country is affected, and 

 disaster is almost certain. 



My third impression was in regard to their laws. They are 

 certainly sweeping, yet everybody believes in them and sup- 

 ports them. Two examples will serve to illustrate them. At 

 Wenatchee. we were most royally treated by Mr. Mike Horan 

 (a Massachusetts boy, by the way) who is known as the "Apple 

 King of Wenatchee" and who took us all through the valley in 

 his automobile. As we were passing a large orchard, I noticed 

 a big pile of apples, several hundred boxes, piled up near the 

 packing house. They were close to the road and looked per- 

 fectly good and I said to Mr. Horan, "Why don't they market 

 those apples?" "Oh," he said, "they are defective ones and we 

 are not allowed to. You could buy that pile of apples, but 

 }-ou coulfln't send them outside of the State, the law would not 

 allow it. They can be made into apple butter, vinegar, or 

 champagne, but cannot be sold in a fresh state."' Think of that! 

 Fancy what our New England growers would think, and say, 

 if the State should step in and not allow them to market their 

 windfalls and wormy apples! Another day I was talking with 

 a commission man in Seattle about their inspection laws. He 

 told me that they were frequently visited by the state inspectors 



