494 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



MR. ROBERT M. EL DON: I think the growers ought to become 

 good politicians. I think that we don't take enough interest, no mat- 

 ter what the subject and I think we are especially slack in the fruit 

 interests. The man who represents us, no matter where he goes, 

 should be a man who is fully alive to the fruit interests of this 

 county. I have yet to learn whether they have ever said anything 

 favorable to the industry or whether they have ever been approached 

 by fruit growers or individuals to claim their help. I don't think 

 we take enough interest in it. They are just as able as those fel- 

 lows who get what they want. Now I am not criticising anyone in 

 particular, or anybod}^ who represents Adams county. The good 

 people who want good laws can get them if they go after them. 

 There is cause for the distrust of the American people. It seems to 

 me that the legislature ought to be honest. Those that are not 

 honest ought to have something direct applied to them. President 

 Roosevelt says that you cannot get anything by wishing for it but 

 you have to go after it. If the people w'ho attend to these local 

 elections of ours are not people to associate with, let us go and boost 

 it up. 



MR. E. C. TYSON: I would like to say in regard to your question 

 that Congressman Lafean assures me that he is very must interested 

 in the fruit industry of this country and in fact, said that he was 

 willing to be responsible for any suitable bill that was presented. 



MR. U. T. COX: How about personal letters? I think a personal 

 letter will have more influence than representatives from any or- 

 ganization. I cannot say what will be done with the vote from 

 our Congressional district, but I know our Congressman, and also 

 I know the Congressman in West Virginia and both of them per- 

 sonal friends. I think that has more to do with it than anything 

 else. 



PROF. STEWART: I think that both of these suggestions are 

 good, the legislator as well as the postage stamp, and one of them 

 does not interfere with the other. It is an easy matter to do both 

 and I think there is probably no one thing any more important to the 

 fruit growers everywhere and particularly here in Adams county, 

 than just this matter of an honest fruit package throughout and if 

 Adams county can grow such fine fruit as w^e see here they ought to 

 be protected in it. They will be putting out a first class article. Thejj' 

 don't want somebody else to buy these apples and use them for 

 facers and destroy the reputation that Adams county may make. 

 Now that is just looking at it from the Adams county standpoint, 

 and we cannot have it said of the fruit business that it is dishonest 

 and that such things are practiced regularly upon the consumer of 

 apples as have been reported in the Rural New Yorker recently. 

 Readers of that paper asked the editor where they could get a 

 barrel of Baldwin apples, honestly put up and he told them. Now 

 I may say, that apples, if we can really make them honest, the con- 

 sumption of apples is increasing and the price of apples is the only 

 one of our fruits so far as I have been able to make a study of it, 

 whose average price is increasing. I recently got the quotations 

 from the Rural New Yorker, taking the matter monthly since 1880, 

 and exam.ined the average price of fruits to determine whether the 

 price of fruits was going up or down and it is going down in every 

 cilass of fruit that I studied except the apple which is going up. 



