88 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



number of years by and by you become the sole owner of a 

 five acre tract or ten acre tract that would support you to the 

 end of your days if the apples were to sell at the prices at which 

 they have sold in the past. But they will not. To any of you 

 who have an interest in a western community orchard, who 

 have paid two-thirds of your money, I say, in Heaven's name 

 quit, and save the few dollars still due on it, because the time 

 has come when those things will not work out to our great satis- 

 faction. And yet while we may criticise the West in a way, it 

 has been a teacher and a great teacher. Following the boom in 

 the West, Virginia and Maryland and West \^irginia have 

 gone to planting apples. In Virginia and Maryland there have 

 been large plantings of three thousand, five thousand, ten thou- 

 sand and twenty thousand trees, and the Governor of Maryland 

 told me last December that there was one set of men in the wes- 

 tern part of Maryland planting eight thousand apple trees on 

 one tract, to be sold out to outsiders if possible and if not to 

 be carried on to development. The worst of all of the apple 

 orcharding of the past ten years has been the great number of 

 inexperienced people who have gone into the business. They 

 have been made to believe it was a great opportunity, with a 

 slight investment of capital, with little or no hard work or 

 care, to plant an apple orchard, and in a few years it would 

 come into bearing ; and look at the markets — apples selling at ten 

 cents apiece, or $2.50 to $3.50 a bushel box. 



There is a craze in New England at the present time on this 

 apple industry. Now I am not afraid of the countryman who 

 stays on the land because he loves the land and loves the trees, 

 who believes in the things that good Mother Nature gives us, and 

 is going into the apple business. I believe he will succeed. But 

 there are hundreds and thousands of men, now in the cities and 

 in the factory villages, and all over this country, that are being 

 tempted by the beautiful fruit they see on the market and the 

 high prices of the beautiful fruit, by the wonderful shows like 

 this one in the hall and the big shows in Boston and elsewhere — 

 to run into this business believing that it means success every 

 time. They are willing to take land that they can get anywhere. 

 They think if they buy a little land and can buy some apple 

 trees, and can put the two together, that they will have an apple 

 orchard and success. And they need to stop and think a little. 



