92 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



sand barrels of apples ; this year it won't ship ten. How are 

 we going to figure the production of our orchards. Upon either 

 year? No, but take an average of ten years. I have only eight, 

 and therefore my figures are not complete yet. My proposition 

 is only a small one, I know, but still I have been keeping these 

 figures to find out, if I can, what I am doing, and I am ready 

 to stand behind the proposition. 



All this being so, what is the first thing a man faces in the 

 business? He settles down to this question of cost of produc- 

 tion and says there are three things to do. I must increase pro- 

 duction per unit, I must reduce cost and I must improve quality. 

 Am I not right? I know of no other incentive, no other place 

 for us to find the incentive. We have been told, and we know, 

 that our apples are not as good as they ought to be. Go into 

 the stores anywhere in the State of Maine and you will find 

 the Oregon apples, or the extreme western apples, in the mar- 

 ket. You ask for Maine apples, and they may have some; if 

 so, they are in a box or barrel back somewhere and you do not 

 like the looks of them. Remember that nine-tenths of all Maine 

 apples are sold by the growers to be packed by the buyers, there- 

 fore the farmer is not responsible for the pack of that barrel. 



We must find the incentive, brothers, which will force us to 

 study these three points I have indicated, applicable in the 

 business world, and certainly with us. How may I increase 

 production of my trees? How may I improve the quality of 

 the fruit ? How may I at the same time reduce the cost to me ? 

 Those are the three great questions which confront us and 

 which surely must be solved. While studying this question of 

 quality we should eliminate varieties which have been popular 

 in the past and are not today. We have wiped out in the 

 premiums of recent years varieties like the Black Oxford. As 

 years pass others will have to go, because they have had their 

 day and have lost hold on the consuming public. We must give 

 more attention to those varieties which the market wants. I 

 am just going over the ground which Mr. Bassett emphasized — 

 those varieties which the buyer wants, for what pleases the 

 eye satisfies the consumer. There are only three or four varie- 

 ties that are popular — the Baldwin, the Mcintosh Red, the 

 Greening and the Northern Spy, where it can grow to perfection. 



