180 State Horticultural Society. 



the program. We can grow fruil ; but how to protect it and get it 

 on the market, are the questions that confront us now. This year 

 brought us great surprises and many disappointments. Last June 

 our crop was pronounced perfect by all who spoke of it at Moberly 

 As late as August 15, Judge Patton of Arkansas said at St. Louis, 

 ''You have a crop of perhaps fifty-six million barrels. The per cent 

 of waste or by-products will be the smallest average grown in many 

 years, if I am correctly informed." The rest of us gave consent. 

 We thought it was true and felt good. But in one more month — 

 what a change! Scab fungus, bitter rot and codling moth, what 

 havoc they had wrought in many localities, but not in all. Ex- 

 periments and practice, more this year than any other, have for- 

 ever settled the question, "Shall We Spray?" in the affirmative. 

 After what we have seen in our orchards this year and shall hear 

 tomorow night from Prof. Faurot, if there remains one who doe^ 

 not believe in spraying, he should quit the apple business and go 

 to peddling lightning rods. If by not spraying at all, or not 

 enough, or if we quit too soon, we brought these difficulties on, we 

 ourselves are to blame, and must not do so again. 



If buyers combined against the producers, gobbled up the cold 

 storage, and the output of barrel and box factories, the remedy 

 must be sought elsewhere. Such seems to have been the case. 

 To those who had good crops no buyers came. They could get no 

 cold storage space, and soon the price of barrels was so high many 

 could not purchase, while others could not obtain them at any price. 

 Only those who grew apples on a large scale could make anything 

 this year. Poor men and widows, with small orchards, had to sell 

 for ten cents a bushel for cider, or be swindled by a sharper and 

 get only about one-fifth of the value of the crop. But we are not 

 alone in our misery. 



Here is a wail from Iowa : "Apple growers seem to have had 

 as much trouble with the commission men this season as they did 

 with the railroads. When it is not some one who wants your money 

 it is some one else. 



"The commission men are said to have a pool, or something 

 very closely resembling a pool. They did as the pork-packers are 

 said to have done — skinned the seller at one end and the buyer at 

 the other. In other words, they took two whacks at the apple crop, 

 one coming and the other going. 



"The remedy ! May be it lies in following the lead of the cattle 

 men who have backed the commission houses of their own. Let the 

 apple growers, like the manufacturers, sell through their own agents 

 direct to the consumer. Stranger things have happened." 



