THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 43 



has grown away beyond the conception of the most of us, and the apple is 

 beginning to take its proper place. It is the one all-the-year-around fruit 

 supply that the family in village or town may have, or that the land owner, 

 the farmer who has suitable lands may have to offer on the market the whole 

 year around. No other fruit can approach it in that particular, its long 

 keeping qualities, its ability to be handled in more ways than any other 

 fruit product can, its beauty of late years, that is, as we have learned to 

 improve it, thereby adding very greatly to its distinction and demand every- 

 where. So that the apple as a great commercial crop in America is just 

 beginning to take its place. That you have not appreciated it in the past 

 is plainly evidenced to one who travels across your state as I do occasionally 

 two or three times a year, along the line of two or three of your main lines 

 of railway, and see the tremendous neglect of your apple trees. The God 

 of nature has been wonderfully good to you to allow you to set trees in the 

 land and then, without any apparent care whatever, give you as much good 

 and wholesome food as does come from those apple trees; and if you will 

 awaken to the real possibilities of the apple, I know of no commercial interest, 

 either agricultural, horticultural, or in any other of the commerical walks 

 of life, that will offer as good rewards for intelligent, patient labor as the 

 handling of the apple tree. 



Now I have not come here with any fixed address or any fixed plans of 

 telling you how to handle the commercial apple orchard. You are a lively 

 lot to ask questions I notice; so I imagine whatever we get out of this talk 

 will be when I have a chance to ''sas back" to some of your questions more 

 than in any other way. But I have made a few notes here of some profitable 

 branches of the subject which I want to touch on. Speaking of your lack of 

 care of apples — I mean the general lack; not of the members of this society 

 who care for them thoroughly and well, but of the general care of apples, 

 which holds true in -New York and New England and all over this great 

 country of ours. It is because the apple is so wonderfully responsive to 

 just being put in the soil that it takes care of itself. I often think when 

 I see the way the apples are handled, that the men with apple love in their 

 hearts and apple brains in their heads are lacking, a good deal as the old 

 darkie on my place in Gorgia told me a few 3'ears ago. 



A Thomas E. Watson come over there — who was afterwards candidate 

 for vice-president on one of the great national tickets; he came over there 

 and made them an address; he was a very able and good man, and talked 

 three hours, and told stories, and stirred them up about the Populist Party 

 and what it might do for them. The next day they were down about the 

 barn at the noon hour discussing his lecture, telling of the stories he told, 

 and repeating some of his arguments, when one of the old darkies, who was 

 wiser than the rest of them, says: "Oh, suah, j'o' niggahs don' want to 

 lose yo' heads an' go off after this Pop'list Party, You'se gwine vote de 

 Republican ticket if yo' want to; or better yet, vote the Democrat ticket 

 with you'se friends an' neighbors; they are the men that pays de taxes. 

 Yo' vote fo' dese Pop'lists an' yo' done git in trouble, De way dat Tom 

 Watson talks, dem Pop'lists has done walked off anyhow." The darkies 

 all laughed. I had to go away at that point. Later I said to this old darky: 

 "I heard your advice to those folks, but said one thing that I didn't quite 

 understand. When you said the Populist Party had walked off, what did 

 you mean?" 



"Don't yo' un'stan' dat, Cap'n? I'se heard that when folks is queer, 

 they say they'se done walked off." 



