Winter Meeting. 279 



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to be put up at Kansas City, during this coming year. We have often 

 told them that if they could give us a storage that they could guaran- 

 tee to give us (at the end of 2, 3, 4 or 5 months after putting our 

 -apples in storage) our fruits back in the same condition that they 

 took them, there would be hardly any end to the amount of storage that 

 could be used. This I understand can be done and will be done by 

 this new cold storage company. 



The work of the Society has been to awaken just such a working 

 and reasoning power in all our fruit growers, and results are be- 

 ginning to show all over the State. The apple buyers in their hunting 

 for apples last fall were located in an hundred different localities over 

 our State. The fruit-growers were well posted as to demand and 

 supply by the reports collected and sent out through the Society, and 

 ^most of them acted upon the information and secured good prices for 

 their apples, and it brought millions of dollars into the State. If any 

 failed to be informed on the subject, it was their own fault, for the in- 

 formation was published far and wide. I know that the fact sent out 

 to the world, that we had a good crop in many parts of our State, and 

 that most of other states had a very light crop, was worth more to our 

 •State, ten times over, than all the Society has cost the State in all of 

 the forty-four years of its existence. 



If there ever was a time when we should come down rig-ht to 

 business principles in all our planting, growing, pruning, cultivating, 

 spraying, packing, marketing and storing, it is at the present time. 

 Business methods in all our fruit-growing, studying our adaptation, 

 knowing our soils, utilizing every item of experience, watching what 

 nature does under our dealings with her, dropping all prejudice, remov- 

 ing all jealousies about our plan, eyes and ears open to the silent voices 

 of our trees as they grow, hands ever ready to respond to her call, 

 brain ever alert to reason, and think and see, and above all, to "draw 

 conclusions from what we see," not wildly, not blindly, not ignorantly, 

 but intelligently reading nature aright, and we shall soon see the great- 

 est development in all our fruit interests that we ever dreamed of. 

 To this end we must ^vork and think, and study, and results will surely 

 follow. 



L. A. GOODMAN. 



