50 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE, 



ADDRESS. 



By Hon. John A. Roberts. 



This association, in its forty years of work, has had a great 

 influence upon the business of orcharding-, in the state of Maine, 

 and its influence is increasing from year to year. I wish, in a 

 very brief time, to take a survey of orchard interests in this 

 state, as I view them at the present time, and then I want to 

 speak a minute upon organization work, to see if some of the 

 problems that confront us cannot be worked out more economi- 

 cally, and at a more rapid rate. 



The orchards of this state, of which there are many thou- 

 sands, as a rule are small. We have many hundred orchards 

 that number 50, 100, 150 or 200 trees. We have very few 

 large orchards, and we find, as I view it, this condition of 

 affairs : While there are many growers of fruit who give 

 excellent care to their trees, — cultivating, pruning, fertilizing, 

 looking after insect pests and diseases, and doing everything 

 possible, we find on the other hand a large percentage of men 

 who are neglecting their trees. Those men are a drag upon the 

 business, and if there is any influence that can be brought to 

 bear upon them to do better work, that is what we are after. 



Again, when we come to the handling of the fruit, every- 

 thing seems to be disorganized. Some sell their fruit to specu- 

 lators, some to commission men. One ships fruit here and 

 another there. There is no system in the matter of marketing 

 our fruits. And again, there is no system in the matter of 

 packing and branding our apples. There is no common agree- 

 ment among the men who pack apples, the shippers and the 

 buyers, as to what a No. i apple is. Even under the law 

 which was passed last winter, we find that one man will con- 

 tend that a certain barrel of apples is a No. i class, while 

 another one, who has been in business perhaps an equally 

 long time, will contend that it is not. There is no standard. 

 Everything seems disorganized. I do not know as I should 

 use the term "disorganized" because there never has been any 

 organization. So the situation of the fruit industry in this 

 state is that we have very little system. But if we are to suc- 

 ceed and make Maine really a good orchard state, raising good 



