No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 489 



take them," but the farmer said, "These are mine. There is your 

 bushel," and kept the small potatoes. The buyer is willing to pay 

 you for good potatoes and if you have any culls, sell them as culls 

 and get that much extra. We generally pack about three grades 

 of them and then have some culls besides. This winter we have a 

 good many cull apples. We pick out nice uniform apples first in a 

 basket to face the barrel with. In fact we would rather not have 

 the extra large ones along with some not so large. If you have 

 some big ones there and pack a few little ones with them, they will 

 be noticed at once. The first grade is two and a half inches in 

 diameter and up, and fairly good color. So have that barrel marked 

 ''Fancy." You want to have on it the name of the variety and the 

 .name and address of the grower. I use three colors of ink for my 

 stamps. The best is marked "Fancy Rome Beauty, grown by U. T. 

 Cox, Proctorville, Ohio." Fancy, will indicate that that's my best 

 grade, and it is stamped on there in blue. The next grade is stamped 

 in red. We call them "Choice Rome Beauty apples, grown by U. T. 

 Cox, Proctorville, Ohio." If you can't read the writing you can 

 tell by the color what grade of apples you have in the barrel, they 

 are perfectly free from scab. They are nice. We have another 

 grade, smaller than that, sometimes. Some drop that are not wormy. 

 We pick them up and take them into our local market and sell them 

 right there. Sell them as drop apples and some of you would be 

 surprised to know what we get out of them. Last year we got $2.25 

 for drop apples without the barrel. In addition to that there are 

 some scabby ones and we put them out in a different grade and 

 just call them Rome Beauty. They are marked in black. There 

 will be some one coming along presently who will want to buy some 

 of these apples for home use, or a little cider, or I don't know what. 

 I believe it is a detriment to ship them to a city market. I believe 

 it is a detriment to the trade to have any of them in there. The 

 Rural New Yorker had a picture of something like that. We are 

 ruining the trade of this country by doing so. If it says good apples 

 on the head of the barrel, there should be good apples in the barrel. 

 It is said by some foresters that we ought to have a consider- 

 able part of this country in forests. Why shouldn't the apple tree 

 or some kind of fruit tree take the place of the forest trees to a 

 great extent? We can do a great deal to extend our apple markets 

 to foreign countries. The western growers are getting big prices 

 but they cannot grow any better apples in quality or color than we 

 can. If we had those same men transported over here in this coun- 

 try with practically the method they are using out there, I believe 

 we would have as good apples as they have. I believe there is 

 something else needed. Not every man can pack apples. I believe 

 we need an association to pack the fruit and have the name of the 

 association and their guarantee on the barrel or box. Then the 

 buyers would not need to spend days and weeks in buying those 

 apples. They would just simply come to the manager of the asso- 

 ciation and say, how much will you take for your apples this year 

 the way you are putting them up? It would be cheaper for the 

 buyer to have them packed in this way than if he had to go and hunt 

 them up, so I am looking for the time that the people get educated 

 to grow, grade and pack these apples. I don't know if you people 

 have done anything in that way. We are making preparations down 

 in Southern Ohio at present.*^ They sometimes return as high as 

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