58 State Horticultural Society. 



There are more people in this country who do not get enough apples, 

 than there of those who get too many. It is your business as apple ship- 

 pers to reach them, and by so doing, you will not only increase your own 

 prosperity, but will also make apple growing a source of greater profit. 



1 am also aware that some of the apple growers are suspicious of 

 the apple shippers because they meet annually in convention and pass 

 resolutions about the immense apple crops all over the United States and 

 Canada, and the consequent low prices. But I tell my friends that this 

 does not signify anything, that it is simply a harmless diversion and 

 affords the members an opportunity to blow off surplus steam, and 

 that besides they want to have a good time away from home where their 

 wives and the members of their church can't watch them. 



The apple growers are guilty of the same offense when they attend 

 the horticultural meetings, especially the older members and the bald 

 headed men, who ought to know better ; some of them come to St. Louis 

 not only to blow off steam, but foam as well, "Anheuser-Busch" for 

 instance. At our last meeting which was held in this city early in June 

 there came with me an old apple grower from Wright county, who had 

 never been in a large city before. At home he was regarded as a very 

 respectable and pious old man and a model apple grower. We had 

 hardly been in St. Louis two days when I saw him one evening, with 

 my own eyes, occupying a front seat at 'a variety show down on Market 

 street, and during the night he would talk in his sleep about buy- 

 ing a brewery and an automobile. As he spoke in a low tone of voice, I 

 may not have caught the last word correctly, but it was either automobile 

 or order more beer. According to my observations there are very few 

 millionaires among the apple shippers, so they are not getting rich off 

 the apple growers. As a rule they are too honest and pay too much for 

 apples, and then they are not skinflints like men in other lines of busi- 

 ness. When they occasionally get the best of an apple grower and make 

 big money they spend it like a prince. They are high rollers and there 

 is nothing small about them. 



Therefore, not many of them after they have rendered their last 

 account sales or made out their final statement, leave enough of this 

 world's goods to enable their families to erect them beautiful or costly 

 tombstones on which to put the inscription, "Here lies Peter Jones, who 

 in life w^as a good apple shipper and tolerably honest commission mer- 

 chant." 



But some bright Missouri apple grower will say if it is best policy 

 to sell apples at harvest time to apple shippers, "why don't you do it 

 yourself?" I do whenever I can at a reasonable price. I am always 



