No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 387 



The large fruit grower can afford to do this. The small fruit grower 

 cannot. 



I have been extremely fortunate in this regard, having spent 

 the last twenty years in Washington. I have been able to secure 

 the help of these men in my own individual work as I could not 

 have secured it otherwise. The Government has a small experi- 

 mental orchard plot on my place, where they have been experi- 

 menting three or four years. They tell me what fertilizer is to be 

 applied, the cover crops to be i^ut on the land and tell me how to 

 treat the trees. 



The result of that experiment on my place has been an eye- 

 opener to me. A year ago the fruit growers in the immediate 

 neighborhood around Winchester held a field meeting in my orchard 

 along in September, It was a most satisfactory meeting, and we 

 were very much gratified indeed, that a great number of ladies 

 came out from the city of Winchester. 



When Dr. Waile A^anted the exj)erimental block in my orchard 

 1 told him I would rather he would take some other man's orchard, 

 because 1 did not want to be bothered. But, owing to certain con- 

 ditions he thought he found there, he wanted to secure my place. 

 The benefits have been so far in excess of an}- trouble that it would 

 not do to mention it. After that meeting our fruit growers began 

 to see things. 



After we started picking apples it occurred to me to try an ex- 

 periment. Our apple pickers, about fifty in number, were just or- 

 dinary laboring men, some could not read or write. Men who 

 came down out of the mountains to help pick apples. I said to 

 Dr. Waite, I am going to get all my laborers over here and let 

 you lecture to them just like you did to the fruit growers. Dr. Waite 

 has a ver^' peculiar facility for expressing himself, so that an.^ sort 

 of intelligence can understand him. When the lecture began J saw 

 at once that the men were intenselj^ interested and every one of 

 those men are better apple pickers- to-day from that experience. 

 They asked intelligent questions and seemed to understand what 

 was going on. So much for expert information. 



The small fruit groAvers get anxious about selling, they do not 

 know what they will get for their fruit. They want to sell just as 

 soon as they can. One of my neighbors will sell his apples on the 

 20th of August no matter wliat the price. If three or four more 

 do that it breaks the market for the rest of us. It is customary 

 with us to sell the fruit on the trees before picking time, usually 

 contracting for the sale in August or September. 



One year when ten or twelve of us had about 25,000 barrels, and 

 we tried to organize, all we could get the growers to do was to 

 sign a paper agreeing not to sell their apples before the first of 

 September. After seven or eight or ten of us had signed up con- 

 trolling 20,000 or 25,000 barrels of apples, we carried that paper 

 around the neighborhood to get some others not to sell their apples. 

 The other growers said "No, we will not do that. We won't sign up 

 with you because we may not be ready to sell when you are ready 

 and we do not know whether we want to take the price you do 

 or not." 



