104 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



perhaps $3. You have got to get but a small per cent of fancies 

 to increase the income per barrel. 



Dr. Twitchell: I was thinking, out of a hundred barrels, 

 how you would pan out — your number 2's ? 



Mr. Conant: It would depend wholly on the per cent of 

 fancies you grew, the quality of the lower grades, whether you 

 would be robbing your lower grades to get this fruit, but if 

 you are really growing fancy fruit, you can sell some fancy 

 fruit and yet pack No. I's and good No. 2's, without robbing 

 those other grades. For instance, one of our growers last year 

 graded fancy Baldwins from his orchard, quite a large per cent 

 — I am not able to give you just the figures, but a large per cent 

 were graded from this man's orchard, and yet when we came 

 to figure up his lower grades, I's and 2's, he had then a higher per 

 cent of No. i's than nearly any other member in our associa- 

 tion. I remember that very distinctly, and it is quite an inter- 

 esting fact, that he packed a lot of fancies and yet his No i 

 grade ran higher than any other member of the association in 

 that particular variety: 



Prof. Hedrick : Some six or eight years ago, in our state, 

 men at Cornell University, who were talking marketing, and 

 the extension workers as well, were all advocating the box 

 package for apples, especially for fancy apples, and for some 

 two or three years a goodly number of the growers did attempt 

 to put apples in boxes and sell them. So far as I know nearly 

 all of them have stopped. Now I don't want to discourage, in 

 the least, the box apple proposition in this state. Your orchards 

 will average smaller, as I said in my talk. Your fruit is better 

 colored. It has more fancy than ours. And yet, I am inclined 

 to think that I would like to discourage any effort that looks 

 toward getting $3 a box for apples. It is all right for the 

 individual, but if we are going to attempt to get a fancy 

 price for any considerable quantity of our apples and sell 

 them only to people who live on Wall street and do that 

 sort of thing, five cents at the fruit stand, we are going to 

 discourage tremendously the use of apples by the common people. 

 As I look at it. the grower ought to be content with a big crop 

 and fair prices. Let the consumer have them at a fair price ; 

 he ought to exert his efforts in every way possible to gradually 

 increase the consumption of apples everywhere — among the 



