STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 79 



fruit, and if a man is going into the high class trade that is a 

 necessity. 



We bought one hundred and fifty acres. I should like to 

 emphasize that point particularly. I believe the one great diffi- 

 culty with the apple business in all this region is that the people 

 are not in it on a large enough scale. Of course we were 

 obliged to go into it large enough so that we could afford to 

 hire a first-class foreman and put him in charge, because we 

 could not take charge of it ourselves. I believe nothing would 

 put the fruit-growing interests of Maine and New England 

 upon a better footing than to get people interested in the grow- 

 ing of fruit more largely. 



In fact, the curse of our orchard industry is the fact that men 

 are engaged in it on such a small scale that they cannot afford, 

 or at least do not afford to give it the attention that it demands. 

 I believe that if men would set out five or ten acres, to place it 

 at the minimum, of good commercial orchard, in a very few 

 years they would find themselves becoming enthusiastic over it. 

 You cannot get enthusiastic over a few old Baldwin trees up in 

 the back lot that you only visit once a year to see if there is 

 any fruit on them. But you cannot keep from getting enthu- 

 siastic over five or ten acres of Baldwins giving you the returns 

 that some men are getting. I do not believe there is anything 

 that would put the industry on a better footing than to get fifty 

 men in each of the New England States to put in twenty or 

 thirty acres of orchard. It is simply the old story of the Irish- 

 man who was seen dropping a fifty cent piece down through a 

 crack in a board walk. Somebody asked why he was doing 

 that. He said he accidentally dropped ten cents and it wasn't 

 worth while to take up the walk for ten cents and he was drop- 

 ping fifty cents to make it worth while to take the walk up. 

 Most of our orchards are ten or five cent orchards. If we 

 could only make them fifty cent or dollar orchards, it would 

 give more of an impetus to fruit growing than anything else we 

 could do. 



I will try not to weary you in the matter of details. I simply 

 want to give you a few of the experiences that we have had 

 that may be of practical interest to those of you who are intend- 

 ing to start an orchard. We started out this last spring rather 



