PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 41 



take this opportunity to tliank the society tor the honor conferred 

 upon me by my election to tlie office of President of tlie society. And 

 now, fellow members, we are reminded that another year has passed 

 and whatever of success or failure of the fruit industry in our state, 

 is a matter of history. 



The fruit grower ever optomistic whether his lot be cast in the 

 stony lands of the south, or the limited valleys of the North, or our 

 own fertile hills, is always looking forward to a better time to come. 



Thus we find the fruit growers forgetting the extreme drouth of 

 the past season and making his preparations to cultivate, prune and 

 spray, and try by all known methods for greater success, the coming 

 year. 



During the past five months it has been my privilege to visit 

 many of the orchards of the West and South, and after hearing the 

 praises sung of each locality, and viewing their conditions of climate, 

 soil, and market conditions, I came back to Nebraska more than ^ver 

 satisfied that in Nebraska we have the best conditions to grd v ■•.nd 

 market a crop of fruit with profit to the grower. 



In the South much of the land is very stony and making it hard 

 to cultivate, and making all down apples worthless, — except for 

 cider. A year like the past, this one feature would mean quite a 

 loss, as many apples which fell on the ground were marketed at a 

 much better price than cider stock. 



In the West much of the orchard land has to be irrigated, and so 

 ^n addition to the work, the Nebraska orchardist has to do, the process 

 of watering the orchard has to be done, and as one man expressed it, 

 "You have to move more soil with a shovel than you do with a 

 plow." 



In all localities the orchards have their pests, but right here at 

 home, in Nebraska, we have nothing that the others do not have, and 

 very many things we do not have that other localities do have. 



Another important feature of the fruit growing proposition, and 

 by no means one of small importance, is the marketing, and market- 

 ing takes in and embraces picking, packing, freight, and so forth, from 

 the producer to the consumer. 



Nebraska is naturally situated in the best place to utilize the 

 markets of the East, West, North and South, by virtue of her geo- 

 graphic location, having a diversity of markets. When one 

 is overcrowded we can send our surplus to some other place. 



The only feature we lack, as I can see it, is to have the rail- 

 roads give to the Nebraska fruit grower a similar rate, that they 

 give to other localities, so as to enable our growers to secure more 

 equitable division of business. 



Still by constant working along this line, we may reasonably 

 expect to gain the desired result in time. 



