PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 23 



becoming harder each year to secure papers from, and the attendance of, 

 the best of horticulturists at our meetings. Especially is this the case 

 with noted men of other states whom we would gladly have with us and 

 who would do us good. They all have some reason why they can not 

 accept my invitations. [I must make honorable exception, from this, of 

 our esteemed Mr. Willaed of New York, who nearly always responds, 

 and even says he is sorry he can not come of tener. ] 



I believe the main reason of this is the fact that these men can get 

 more or less pay for time used in such ways, either from agricultural 

 papers or from the managers of these institutes. I think that already 

 they are paid at least their expenses in this state, and I am of opinion 

 that Mr. Garfield's bill is in part at least to provide for better pay for 

 them in the same sort of service. At least, it would be entirely proper to 

 use part of the fund in that way, and doubtless Mr. Gaefield has found 

 in his institute work the same difficulty, in some degree, of which I speak 

 — he can not get the best of service without paying for it. 



I make no objection to the passage of this bill — on the contrary, am 

 favorable to its enactment — but use it as a text for these remarks about the 

 condition that confronts your secretary every time he sets about the prep- 

 aration of a programme. 



It is far from pleasant to me to occasionally hear it said, "I do wish we 

 could have one more such meeting as we used to hold." I feel that it 

 reflects upon the earnestness of my efforts to secure such meetings, though 

 perhaps it is never so intended by the speaker. Our meetings are certainly 

 as well advertised as they were ten years ago, and are as well attended as 

 those I first knew of. But it must be conceded, I think, that there is not 

 the ardent interest in them that was felt in the society's early days. It is 

 largely so, too, in many of the local societies. The novelty of the fruit- 

 growing business in our state has worn off, and in the place of the enthu- 

 siastic men who founded this society, and disclosed to the world the capa- 

 bilities of Michigan as a horticultural region, has risen a generation of 

 fruitgrowers who know nothing — who care for nothing— but the dollars 

 that may be had from a crop of peaches or other fruits; who investigate 

 nothing and so have nothing to impart to others; who see no more in their 

 calling than the average farmer sees in his corn crop and his pig-pen. 



" It is the same old story, at these meetings," I sometimes hear them 

 say, " and the men who talk most are the ones who cultivate least and 

 grow the poorest fruit." The severity of this commentary lies in its meas- 

 urable truthfulness, at least in some localities I wot of. So lagging is the 

 interest in some places, in society work, that in one place, to induce attend- 

 ance of those who would be benefited most, the society president offered to 

 give a premium of strawberry plants to all who came at a cetain time. The 

 attendance at that meeting was marvelous, and the indiscreet but generous 

 and enthusiastic president had less strawberry plants but more wisdom as 

 a result of his effort to better his fellows. It somehow seems to me that 

 something of this kind occurred near Benton Harbor. 



I am very well aware that one half the world has to carry the other half, 

 and I do not expect to immediately reverse the order so long established; 

 but only to remind you of these conditions that make the harder our efforts 

 to keep up the work of these societies. 



That work is to be made yet a little harder by the enactment of Mr. 

 Garfield's bill. No one can blame Mr. A. or Mr. B. for preferring to take 

 pay for a paper or a lecture at an institute rather than to do the same work 



