90 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



are afraid, and so the western men today are putting their 

 apples in storage or selHng them on the market for what they 

 can get. You can go to New York and buy Hood River apples 

 that are not bringing the growers there thirty cents a box. I 

 have seen them within a week, Spitzenburgs, that would not net 

 the growers back in Oregon thirty cents a box in the orchard. 

 The problem that is before us, is to produce the beautiful apples 

 that we are beginning to Sihow now and sell them at a price so 

 that the common people can consume them in the quantities that 

 we are producing them. In the Pacific Northwest only one 

 tree in five is in bearing, and yet they do not know what to do 

 with their product. Multiply it by five and what are they going 

 to do? Why, they sa}^ when the Panama Canal is done we are 

 going to load them on ships and send them to Europe. Europe 

 will soon get filled. It will not give a market at any such high 

 prices as in the past. 



At present you have to pay pretty fair wages, you have to 

 spray wdiere you never liad to spray before, and you have to 

 cultivate, and then you must have newer and cleaner and better 

 packages costing more money every year ; and yet you have got 

 to dispose of the apples that you have already planted trees for, 

 or are planning to plant for, you have got to sell them at the 

 same old price. Can you do it? Are we willing to do all the 

 things that are necessary and then take the moderate reward? 



This apple growing proposition is no easy get-rich-quick 

 sicheme by any means. We began to think it was. We have 

 seen the fancy prices of apples on the fruit stands and we have 

 got the high price craze. Rut we are at the top of it. The 

 five and ten cent apiece ajoples and the $3 a box and the $5 

 and $8 and $10 a barrel apples have had their day. We have 

 learned to grow good apples. Science has taught us and the 

 West has taught us how. We have learned to pack good apples. 

 We have got more common honesty in the apple barrel than 

 was ever there before. There is a place for some more in the 

 middle of the barrel yet, but we have made a great forward 

 step. The passage of a United States law regulating the packing 

 and grading of apples is a long step forward, and we are mak- 

 ing strides along every line, but we must not think that we are 

 going to get a very mucli greater reward for our labor on the 

 apple than wc are on any other line of agriculture or horticul- 



