230 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ALTON-SOUTHERN 



$1.25 per barrel on the trees, while we were glad to get 75 cents for 

 ours packed and delivered in town. Is this because their apples 

 are so much better than ours, or because they have their reputa- 

 tion better established than we? 



Mr. Riehl — This is owing partly to the fact that our apples are 

 not as good as theirs, and partly because we haven't got them in 

 such quantities as they have in Southern Illinois. We grow too 

 many kinds of fruit and cannot give apples the attention which 

 is required to ward off the attacks of curculios. And nowhere 

 in this vicinity are there enough apples grown to pay buyers to 

 build packing houses and engage in handling them. Down there 

 they grow them by the hundreds of acres, and the Eastern fruit 

 dealers know that they can go there and get all they want. 



Mr. Pearson — It is a fact that buyers in St. Louis will not 

 touch apples that are brought in there on the steamer Spread 

 Eagle; these apples all come from this section and buyers say 

 they are not good. 



Mr. Connor — It is true that the apples grown here are not 

 good. All who have been buyers here know this, and many of 

 them have ceased handling them as it don't pay. There are yet 

 a good many apples grown about Upper Alton, and Mr. Ed. 

 Rodgers, who handles them, is about the only man hereabouts 

 who is making any money out of apples, but he has to sell cheap 

 and buy accordingly. 



Mr. Riehl — There has been a great deal of talk about the 

 Keifer Pear, and it is generally condemned as a very poor fruit 

 for quality, and consequently for market, being only good for 

 canning, but I am not ready to grant this. This pear has a ten- 

 dency to overbear, and then the quality is apt to be poor, but 

 when thinned so the pears become of good size and properly 

 house-ripened, it is a very good pear. Its season of ripening is 

 very much in its favor, as it ripens when the varieties usually 

 grown have entirely disappeared from the market. These qual- 

 ities are bound to make it a good pear for market. Wish I had 

 1,000 trees in bearing. 



J. M. Pearson — I, too, had some very nice Keifers grown on 

 young trees. I tried to sell them early in the fall, but when 

 people learned of what variety they were, they did not want them 



