8 STATE HORTICULTimAL SOCIETY. 



not a bank in town but that has on its directorate members who are 

 either actual farm owners or who are in very close touch with farming 

 interests and know the language of the farmer and the fruit grower and 

 understand the fruit growers' needs. 



Grand Rapids is happy to welcome you because you are a body of 

 representative substantial citizens and prominent among those who are 

 working to liuild a greater and more successful Michigan. You are 

 producers adding to the wealth of the countr}- and contributing by 

 your enterprise to the needs and demands of the people broadly. Not 

 many of our citizens, I fear, appreciate as thej' should the vast wealth 

 you are bringing to our state and the strategic position occupied by the 

 agriculturist and horticulturist in all that makes for our prosperity and 

 business success. If I were to look for a baiometer to foretell business 

 and world conditions, I would turn not to Wall Street with its great 

 banks and its great millionaires, but rather to the men of the soil and 

 men engaged in agriculture. Each one of us benefits through your 

 prosperity or suffers by the lack of it. When you prosper, we prosper 

 likewise. When you have trouble making both ends meet, we do also. 

 The farmers represent half of the country's buying power and the sooner 

 America makes it easier for the farmer and horticulturist to prosper, 

 the sooner will the country reach normal conditions. 



In looking up the word horticulture I find that Webster defines it 

 as "the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables and flowers and 

 ornamental plants," and so I am impressed with the fact that in addition 

 to being counted among the substantial business people of our state, 

 you are also to be classed with the scientist and artist. And when I 

 consider the tremendous obstacles that you must regularly confront in 

 fighting plagues of insects and of fungus diseases, I feel that all of you 

 must be made of heroic stuff and be men and women of stalwart, cour- 

 ageous character. Therefore, in welcoming you most sincerely, do we 

 feel that you are among the verj- finest and best of our citizens. 



We are citizens together of a great state, great in population and 

 steadily growing. Michigan now stands seventh, whereas, in 1900 it was 

 ninth. In the last ten years JMichigan increased 30% while the United 

 States as a whole had a growth of 14%. We have a population in excess 

 of 3,360,000. This alone is a very considerable market and you may 

 very well ask whether you are meeting to thr full tlic opportunity in 

 Michigan as a market for your products. 



The value of the farm products in JMichigan last year amounted to 

 over half a billion of dollars, which means that the 1 90,047 farms aver- 

 aged §2,903 per farm. This sounds good, but it is not as good as Oregon, 

 which last year with its Hood Kiver ^'alley apples as its greatest asset, 

 averaged 84,042 per farm and California, practically all fruit and with a 

 scientific marketing system, yielded $5,566 per farm. Michigan with 

 its natuial fiuit belt soil and its climate has a chance to be first not only 

 in small fruits, wheie it now leads, ])ut in apples also, where it is behind 

 other states like Oregon. 



I look out from my window into the attractive windows of a grocery 

 store and of late boxes of beautiful apples that have been on exhil)itioii 

 in the windows of that store, but they have not been Michigan ajiplcs. 

 They were shipped two thousaiul miles to compete with th(^ apples of 

 uur own state. This hurts the Michigan ))ride and the Michigan pocket- 



