STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 9I 



$i.6o| is per tree. Vary those figures as you will, of course, 

 under different conditions, the fact still remains that those items 

 have all to be counted. They are all in the wash somewhere. 

 When a man says to me, "I don't charge anything for my team, 

 I have to keep a team anyway," he is not honest with himself. 

 Unless we can make this business pay all these charges and 

 give fair returns upon the investment, we better get out of it, 

 it seems to me. I have here 60 cents per tree, interest money, 

 which, allowing 40 trees to the acre, gives $24 an acre, and this 

 makes a good investment. If I could grow apples upon a large 

 scale, pay these charges which I have indicated here and sell 

 the apples to cover same, I have a good business because I have 

 my six per cent on my investment, and it pays. 



If the yield is but one barrel a tree, and that is as good as 

 we are now getting in the State of Maine, you see where we 

 find ourselves as business men. Take the lean years with the 

 fat, take every poor tree in the orchard as we must, count the 

 whole of them, and while individual cases that I know of have 

 exceeded this, yet I believe that I am safe in saying that the 

 average of the State of Maine does not exceed one barrel per 

 tree. I have one tree that has averaged two barrels and three- 

 quarters for five years ; and there is another in the same row, 

 as large, seemingly as flourishing and as healthy, that never 

 has produced a barrel in any one year. I wish somebody could 

 tell me why. I don't know. I have puzzled over that tree to 

 find, if I could, the cause. There is a Baldwin tree in the field 

 that has not produced over half a barrel in any year since I 

 have been there. Another has given me an average of almost 

 two and one-half barrels. Now I have to count those poor bear- 

 ing trees with the others. It would not be wise for me to take 

 that good bearing tree as the measure of production, but I must 

 count every tree that is in bearing condition. Then I have to 

 count the lean years with the fat. There is an orchard across 

 the lake, a mile and a half from me, that last year produced 

 1350 barrels of apples, and this year 90 — a few years ago 2000, 

 later 30. How are you going to figure the business? 



We have bulletins, giving the cost of production of last year's 

 crop, which are misleading, because last year's crop was an 

 abnormal one. See where we are this year. The town of 

 Monmouth last year shipped between forty-five and fifty thou- 



