WINTER MEETING. 187 



good market, ready and willing to take all our fruit at remunerative 

 prices, and one that will continue to grow and widen as the years roll 

 by. And if they now, with but four millions of population, consume 

 the surplus products of oar orchards, what will be the demand when 

 they reach a population of twelve, twenty-four or thirty-two million of 

 people ? At twelve millious, which they will certainly reacli by the time 

 orchards planted now will come into fall bearing, the demand from a 

 numerical standpoint will be three times what it now is. 



There is, however, another phase to the question that should not 

 be overlooked. Whenever and in proportion as you lower the price 

 of apples, you induce and increase the consumption. From the first 

 settlement of these northwestern states up to date, fruit (with but few 

 rare exceptions in local spots) has been a very expensive luxury. 



Permit me to ask you, good, kind, generous farmers of Missouri^ 

 about how many bushels of apples you would store away in your cel- 

 lars for your wife and children to eat during the winter months, if you 

 had to give from four to eight bushels of wheat in exchange for one 

 bushel of apples? I will venture to say, not many ; and yet this is the 

 rule, and a lower price the exception, in these states. Could they ex- 

 change at two bushels of wheat for one of apples, the demand would 

 doubtless be four-fold what it now is. 



In time, as the country develops, when new and competing lines- 

 of railroads are built to the great centers of natural wealth to carry 

 out the rich ores of the mines and the wheat and stock from the moun- 

 tains, valley and plain, returning with train-loads of fruit, as they wilU 

 instead of small, broken shipments and express packages as they now 

 do, these worthy people and their children may enjoy eating big red 

 apples from Missouri that will not cost more than two, possibly one 

 bushel of wheat for one of apples. When that time comes, and we 

 believe it surely will, then will not only Northwest Missouri, but all of 

 our grand old State — the fruit garden of North America — be taxed to 

 its utmost capacity to supply the demand. Of course, there are other 

 fruit-producing States aside from Missouri, also other vast regions ta 

 be supplied with fruit, not under consideration in this paper ; but no 

 other state of the Union as a whole is so highly favored with gjod, 

 cheap, fruit lands, soil, climate, water, and everything favorable to the 

 cheap production of superior fruit, and no state can possibly compare 

 with Missouri in location for a present and ever-growing market for 

 her fruit. 



This year the orchards of red apples in Northwest Missouri netted 

 their owners from $50 to $100 per acre, and yet the same kind of land 

 can be bought at prices ranging from $25 to $50 per acre. Can you 



