1884.] QUESTION BOX. 163 



Question. What is the best method of irrigating or 

 lessening the effects of drought? 



Mr. Hale. Thorough cultivation. 



Mr. Ayer. My friend Mr. Bill talks about his losses in 

 cranberry culture. Go with me across the Connecticut river 

 to the towns of Saybrook and Essex, and you will find people 

 who will tell another story in regard to cranberries. Some of 

 them have made good profits, and will make them year by 

 year. So has our friend from Bristol, Mr. Norton. So I do 

 not think that because the locality of our friend Bill is so 

 marked a failure in cranberries, every locality "would fail. 



Mr. Bill. I did not suppose that this convention would 

 hear from me again tonight; I hoped that I might have 

 something to say to-morrow, but when my friend there, who 

 came from the town of Saybrook, just opposite from where I 

 reside, but who has gone into the northern part of the State, 

 and who knows no more about the town of Saybrook that he 

 was born in, or about the way the cranberry was cultivated, 

 than the man in the moon, undertakes to talk about cranber- 

 ries, I want to say that there is not a man there who has got 

 back a dollar of what he has invested. The only cranberry 

 bog in that town is D. C. Stevenson's. He has got $30,000 

 invested, but he does not get $30.00 worth of cranberries a 

 year from that bog. When he talks of cranberries down 

 about the mouth of the Connecticut river, I will say that I 

 know more about that than he does ; I have put my money 

 into it, and he has not. You go into the town of Essex ; 

 there was a cranberry bog west of the village that at one 

 time paid a dividend, but to-day it is nothing but an open 

 common. I would not reach down upon this floor and pick 

 up a crushed peanut and give it to the owners for that bog, 

 or take it as a gift. I have been delegated here by a higher 

 power than this convention to stand up in the presence of the 

 farmers of the State of Connecticut and say to them, " Never 

 be fools like myself and put your money into worthless bogs 

 expecting ever to get back a dollar of it again in cranberry 

 culture ! " I have heard about that little bog of Mr. Norton's 



