96 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tion, we may get good prices, but it is a gamble pure and simple from 

 now on, and to many of us it is but a part of life's great lesson ; we 

 prospered year after year until Ave got the idea that we were pretty 

 smart — taking to ourselves all the credit, when as a matter of fact our 

 good fortune was being handed to us on a platter, so to speak, by a 

 kind Providence. From now on it looks like the ''survival of the 

 fittest." 



The situation is going to be helped more or less by the expected de- 

 cided diminution in fresh plantings, which I hope will really amount 

 to a complete stoppage, and by the fact that many orchards are going 

 out from age, while many others will be either badly neglected or cut 

 doAvn. Thousands of peach trees are being cut down in Kew York 

 this fall and I understand the same is true of every other state, and 

 the old expression : "the more the merrier" certainly applies very nicely 

 here. 



It is a strange paradox that while hundreds of cars of fine peaches the 

 past season failed to return freight charges to the shipper, and hun- 

 dreds of thousands of half bushel baskets of fine fruit were sold to 

 the consumers in the large markets for from 15c to 25c per basket, 

 and in some cases the fruit actualh' got into the Five and Ten Cent 

 Stores, some of my friends in Boston, New York and other cities tell 

 me that they were unable to secure any nice peaches for less than 

 11. 00 to l|1.25 per basket. When such a thing is possible in a season 

 such as the last, there is an Ethiopian in the wood pile and no mistake. 



I expect to see these same conditions confront the apple and sour 

 cherr}- growers, as these fruits have been planted everywhere and far 

 more extensively than the peach. 



You will probably see an apple crop in the United States within the 

 next ten years, so large that it will be difficult to give the fruit away 

 to say nothing of selling it at prices that Avill permit the grower to 

 break even on his expense. I am hoping that this will be "within the 

 next ten years," but it is mighty likely to occur within five. 



You may think that I am a pessimist pure and simple, but I do not 

 wish to be so regarded. I can not conscientnonsly refrain from speak- 

 ing the plain truth and warning innocent people who are being mislead 

 and victimized by hundreds by attractive pictures in the newspapers 

 and magazines portraying the easy life and overflowing purse of the 

 average fruit-grower. 



The only inference to be drawn from these glowing accounts of Farm 

 Life in general and Fruit-growing in particular, is that the whole busi- 

 ness is very simple — in fact a "cinch" — that all that is needed is a 

 few acres of land somewhere, sufficient money to purchase and plant 

 the trees and patience to wait two or three years before they can begin 

 draAving checks. The "check draAving" time always comes sure enough, 

 but to tlie majority it will be a very long road to "big profits." 



One mistake yery often made by persons who think they have "heard 

 a call" to go into fruit raising comes through their undertaking a 

 twenty-five or fifty acre orchard ])roposition witli a five or ten acre 

 capital. You can't sweep back the tide with a broom, and it is much 



