322 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



sometimes happens that the market becomes overstocked with perishable 

 varieties, or the over-abundance of the crop reduces prices too low for 

 good paying rates. 



The losses to the grower are not so much from the above causes as 

 from the large quantities of defective and poor fruit, which annually go 

 to waste and are not only no profit but a positive injury to the grower. 

 How shall this great loss be avoided? 



I answer, first, by increasing the quantity grown. You will say this 

 is a strange way of removing an evil by increasing it, but I think it is the 

 true way. How is it with you here in Alton ? You have some extensive 

 growers, and many more who grow small quantities ; yet, with all your 

 boasted skill, with your advantages of soil, railroad and river facilities, 

 you are but small growers when compared with those of other places in 

 our State. 



Quincy ships more fruit than Alton. Ipava, a small town in the 

 interior of the State, grows more small fruits than are grown in this 

 vicinity. Many places in your State are doing more than here, and why? 

 Now for the remedy. At Ipava they have a canning house, owned and 

 controlled by the fruit growers, and they find it pays. Farmers have 

 become fruit growers, through its influence, and the business has assumed 

 a settled, fixed character; lands have advanced in value through their 

 success. They sell from their fields when it pays, and when it does not 

 they can. Just so in Quincy and other places. 



In several places fruit-drying houses have been erected, and have 

 utilized that class of fruits which were a loss before. How is it in Alton? 

 No canning house, no drying house. It pays elsewhere, why not here? 

 It has been claimed, and I think with truth, that the soil around Alton is 

 particularly adapted to fruit culture; one thing is certain, this Society 

 believes it to be so, and has by long earnest effort acted upon that belief. 

 Yet we can not say to those who are looking to this point as a place to 

 embark in fruit growing that we are prepared to encourage them. 



Canning and drying are money-making processes, and should be 

 taken hold of at once. The want of these establishments causes annually 

 a great loss to fruit growers. Will not some one fill this want? As it 

 now stands we must grow more fruit, and force, by the show of quantity 

 grown, some one to step forward and utilize it. 



Reliable statements were given at the State Society meeting recently, 

 showing clearly that a large profit resulted, in each and every case, to those 

 engaged in the drying of fruit. I believe it would pay now, that within 

 easy reach of your market there is enough fruit annually lost to keep a 

 small establishment running to a good profit. 



Dr. Long said the essay accorded with his notions, and he wanted 

 to see the time come when we should have among us a great drying and 

 canning establishment, one that would use up our surplus fruits. 



Mr. McPike spoke encouragingly of such an enterprise. 



