138 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



TRANSPORTATION, THE GREAT QUESTION FOR THE FRUIT- GROWER. 



TO-DAY. 



There is such a small margin between success and failure in all 

 departments of business that even with, the advantages given by the 

 railroads give us, success is not assured. There should be a commit- 

 tee on transportation whose work it should be to secure a different 

 classification for our fruits ; this seems to be the only way we can get 

 the reduced rate. For the express rate it is hard to give advice. If 

 there is no competition, it requires a strong pressure to bear upon the 

 company to get any concession, and yet it has been my experience that 

 if we can show up in a strong light that success or failure of the cause 

 rests upon their concessions, we are very liable to get them. 



A full crop of fruit and very low prices are a great help to the fruit- 

 grower, because it gives all classes an opportunity to get plenty of it 

 and acquire a taste for it. This increased consumption is just what we 

 are working for with might and maio. So then, friends, when fruits 

 are so low that they hardly pay, we have the fact that thousands are 

 eating who otherwise would not. But if this thought can be impressed 

 upon our railroads, that there are thousands hungering for the fruits 

 which are going to waste, we could get the means for transportation to 

 these very markets. To this end we must work. 



Our Agricultural College was the theme of a strong plea for its 

 separation from the University and removal to a more favorable loca- 

 tion in my report at Brookfield, and, although I had few friends on my 

 side then, I am glad that to-day we have hundreds and thousands of 

 them over the State, who see no success for our college or its horti- 

 cultural department until it is separated from the University. A strong' 

 plea was made at our meeting in Ohillicothe, and some very strong 

 words were used and some strong resolutions passed. Our horticul- 

 ture department is simply being starved to death in the midst of plenty^ 

 If $30,000 or $40,000 per year is not enough for the Agricultural Col- 

 lege and Experiment Station to make a better showing than it has done, 

 then there is no use of giving them any money. Some of our fruit- 

 growers have made more and better experiments and produced better 

 results with a few hundred dollars, than the college has with its thou- 

 sands. To-day there seems to be no line of work laid out for the 

 future, and any man with any pride at all would be ashamed if he could 

 not show some results after three years or five years of work and a 

 hundred thousand dollars spent. It seems to me that this Society will 

 keep this matter before her fruit-growers until we see an entire separa- 

 tion of the College, and a removal to some more congenial place where 

 there can be some systematic plan of experiments carried on in all the 

 departments. 



