A PECULIAR APPLE SITUATION. 39 



these favorable conditions other matters seem to demand our 

 attention, and more and more they will be coming before us 

 until they are settled in a practical way. To perhaps the most 

 important of these, attention is now invited. 



DIFFICULTIES AND LOSSES FROM THE PRESENT SYSTEM. 



Good authorities on the subject claim that the State in 1907 

 produced as many as 2,000,000 barrels of marketable apples, 

 although it is not claimed by any one that anywhere near that 

 quantity of apples were sold from that crop. Anyway, it is 

 safe to say that as the young trees come into bearing there will 

 be still more fruit in the future. Our seasons are short for the 

 picking and no end of difficulty was found in securing help 

 enough to harvest the immense crop. In many instances it was 

 not possible to get it harvested before injurious frosts came. 

 Much fruit was lost in consequence. The growers were met 

 then by the need of good storage of some kind. Few of them 

 could safely store more than one or two hundred barrels of 

 apples. The remainder of the crop was stored in sheds and out- 

 buildings and much fruit was injured for market after the 

 farmers had been to the expense of harvesting, while many per- 

 mitted the apples to remain on the trees. Putting it in another 

 way, there was probably safe storage for less than one-half of 

 the crop grown that year. The only other outlet was to force 

 the fruit upon a dull market, from which many proved to be 

 sufferers. 



So large has the industry already grown that the farmers at 

 the present time are not in a situation to handle the crop econom- 

 ically. At present the larger part of the fruit crop must be 

 sold before the cold weather sets in or it will be frozen up and 

 ruined. Forced upon an unwilling market at this early season 

 the farmer is obliged to sell at a low price. The buyers know 

 the fruit must be sold before the cold weather and the farmer 

 is helpless. There are so many apples the buyers can get all 

 they can take care of. If they can not find them in one locality 

 they can go to another, where fruit is found in abundance. 

 This condition keeps the price down and the farmers are com- 

 peting against themselves very much to their disadvantage. 



This condition is made still worse by the fact that a large part 

 of the marketable fruit grown is of the late keeping varieties 



