Smnmcr MeetmiT. 173 



".i> 



Icnow something about my success. Now I will tell you that I have 

 lieard men talking since I came here that have had five times the suc- 

 <:ess I have had. We have been planting trees and planting trees, and 

 we have got a large number of trees, and of course grow a good many 

 apples, but when we come to count the number of trees per acre, 

 it doesn't amount to half as much as what some of you grow. I will 

 A'enture to say there are a dozen men in this audience that have had better 

 rsuccess than we have, and nobody says a word about it. 



Now in counting up our fruit, of course we have to keep count 

 for every cent we pay out and every cent we take in, and every bushel 

 we grow, and I find, in looking" over our books, that our first crop 

 Ave grew on an eighty, and we have been growing apples ever since, 

 and have had one total failure in twenty-five years. And yet, I find 

 that our trees have averaged a little over 50 bushels per acre. In twentv- 

 three years we have grown some 451,000 bushels, I think, or about 

 that, and in counting right up with the number of acres, I find it has 

 averaged about 50 bushels an acre. 



Some of you perhaps know a good deal about deep plowing. We 

 liave succeeded in making a living in the last twenty-years we have 

 -grown apples, and we are satisfied with that, but we have not come 

 lip to as many bushels per acre as some of these other men. I was 

 just talking last evening here with a gentleman from Wathena that 

 l^eats me all to pieces. He had his apples out there on the corner of 

 that table, and you just ought to look at them and "talk to him. He 

 can tell you more about growing apples profitably than I can, and T 

 liave no doubt that Major Holsinger has got some equally as good, 

 and that there are others present here who can tell you more about 

 it and who have had more experience in all kinds of fruit than I 

 liave had. 



I started out with the theory that a man ought to measure his 

 own abilities and to confine himself to about that means. If he thinks 

 lie is capable of doing a whole lot of things he is not always able to 

 clo it. I started out thinking that I ought to to be able to raise Ben 

 Davis apples, and I went at it, and I have made a good living, and 

 some of these other men— these young fellows — have raised dozens and 

 dozens of varieties and all kinds of fruit, and I could not do it. I am 

 -giving all of my attention to growing apples and only three or four 

 varieties of them, and I haven't a bit of doubt that I have had more 

 failures — I could tell you more about our failures than I could our 

 successes — a good deal more. 



This last year has been a remarkable year. I have learned more 

 lessons in the last year, than I have in any other one year since I have 



