378 BOARD OF AGEICULTUEE. 



taken care of— trees sprayed, etc.,— produced a good quality and quantity 

 of fruit, but Indiana attracted but little attention from buyers this year, 

 because wliere one orcliard had been sprayed and tal^en care of, 100 

 orchards have been neglected, and the product was knotty and undesir- 

 able. That is the class of fruit that buyers are not looking for. Owing 

 to scarcity of fruit this year, everything found a market, even very in- 

 ferior stuff demanded a fairly good price. But to show you the difference 

 between an orchard taken care of and an orchard neglected, I know of 

 one orchard that produces a crop in the neighborhood of 10,000 barrels 

 in Virginia, largely consisting of York Imperial, that sold at auction to 

 the highest bidder. I bid on it myself, and thought pretty liberally, too, 

 $2.65 per barrel, but it sold for $3.35 per barrel. The value of the or- 

 chard was largely in the fact that they run pretty straight to one variety. 

 There was a block of fruit of sufficient magnitude to enable men to go 

 there and take care of it, packing and putting away for the winter trade. 

 Another thing that has changed somewhat the situation of marketing 

 the crop of apples in Indiana, is the fact tliat the consumer today malves 

 his purchases different to Avhat they were made fifteen or twenty years 

 ago. Take largfe cities. The consumer must buy every day, as the aver- 

 age consumer has no storage room outside of his ice box. Wealthier 

 people have no storage room in the cellar, and poorer class of people— a 

 great many— have no cellars; consequently, tliere is a constant demand 

 throughout the winter, and this must be supplied from day to day, and 

 a crop of apples in Indiana is easily marketed, and represents its face 

 value in dollars and cents, and that value is just as staple as a crop of 

 wheat. It has settled itself down to a basis where there is a fixed price 

 set on apples in the fall of the year, and as the season advances the price 

 changes as the situation justifies, but it is possible to raise and market 

 any sized crop in this State. You hear a great deal about apple growing 

 in Missouri. Their soil or climate is not superior to Indiana. Indiana 

 has the advantage in both soil and climate, because their fruit matures 

 and must be picked a little earlier than ours. Our fruit matures about 

 the right time. Ben Davis in this State takes on a very high color, and 

 this season the highest colored apples on market were produced in In- 

 diana. The average color was superior to that of the fruit produced 

 by any other Statie in the Union. You have marketing facilities in the 

 State of Indiana that are valuable. You are located where you can i-each 

 the foreign market, reach London, to much better advantage than those 

 western States, because when you go west of the Mississippi River your 

 freight rate is much higher. In addition to that, you are right in the 

 center of a large population, and you have an outlet to the south, east; 

 you have the nortli and northwest. You are very fortunate in your loca- 

 tion, and if you had apples in sufficient quantity to attract buyers, the 

 prices paid for apples in Indiana would be higher than they were frprp 

 these more distant points for reasons mentioned. 



