No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 259 



to grow a crop of wheat or corn and haul it to the elevator. Another 

 thing, there is not an awful margin between No. 2 and No. 3 ; and that 

 is one of the reasons why skill and excellence and care pays a larger 

 premium in growing fruit. To begin with, to harvest a crop properly, 

 we must have the fruit well grown; it must be thinned and as early as 

 possible after the June drop, for every day that the fruit remains on 

 these trees it is sapping that much of the energy and vitality of the 

 tree that should be preserved to perfect these specimens left. 



We find it a decided advantage to have varieties and succession of 

 fruit. One of these advantages is you caii keep the uniform help 

 throughout the season. The most of our fruit is sold to grocers and 

 consumers; very little through commission men. We get up a trade 

 and hold it, starting with strawberries and lasting the entire season. 

 We have early apples, peaches, pears and plums, so that it is a con- 

 tinuous performance from the time the strawberry begins until next 

 spring when the last storage apples are gone; and having trained 

 help we get better work and more careful work, because the steady 

 employment will improve them. The question was asked in regard to 

 preventing the scars pinched with the ends of the fingers. There is 

 nothing that helps as much as object lessons. I had some new pickers 

 one year and we started on Grimes Golden which shows the bruises 

 rapidly. I picked up half dozen apples which were picked with the 

 ends of the fingers and 1 told the pickers to look at them the next day. 

 The result was a little black spot. That meant a great deal more to 

 them than any words 1 could express. I think it pays to make a point. 

 We had two or three peach trees in the sour cherry orchard and not 

 spraying the sour cherries for scale we neglected the peach trees and 

 the result was we had a lot of curled leaves. I took occasion to 

 call the attention of the new men to it and the old men too. It don't 

 hurt auy of us to be reminded of what we know, and there is no way 

 in the world that you can impress the importance of things I think 

 as by showing the results. 1 think one of the things the apple growers 

 want to do is to grow apples of quality and the next thing is to get 

 them direct to the consumer with as few go-betweens as possible. This 

 won't apply to all. Those who are growing large quantities of apples 

 in a commercial wav, who don't do anvthing else and have not the 

 transportation to reach the consumers direct will do better to sell in 

 carload quantities. But there are a great many of us Avho could do 

 better by .storing our own fruit and going direct to the consumer, and 

 that will appeal to the consumer and customer and will be likely to 

 get more for you. That is the opening for the Eastern apple, and if 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York will live up to the opportunities in 

 this direction and take pains and care to grow the best they can grow 

 and put them on the market in distinctive packages and with a dis- 

 tinctive label so that the customer may know when he gets them and 

 realizes that they come from Pennsylvania, Ohio or New York, we 

 can drive out the Western aj^ple from our market; and we must edu- 

 cate Ibose who know (piality by appearance only, because we can beat 

 them in quality and very nearly equal them in appearance; and if we 

 put in the orchards the skill and expense that the Western grower 

 does, we have the market at our door which will take up firsts, seconds 

 and everything. I have solved this problem by building a cold storage 

 house in which the apples are stored as soon as gathered, all the win- 

 ter apples being put in there without sorting, and, by the way if you 



