Winter Meeting. 203 



and fancy stock. The packing is done by experts employed by the 

 unions, thus insuring an absolute uniformity of grade and pack, 

 which would be impossible if the individual growers, each with a 

 different ideal, and subject to the temptation of occasionally put- 

 ting in fruit of doubtful grade, should do it himself. It is thus that 

 the reputation of the associations is maintained. The buyers know 

 nothing of the individual growers and their orchards, unless inci- 

 dentally, but make all purchases through the association. And 

 when they contract for a carload or 50 carloads of a certain grade, 

 they know absolutely what they are going to get — as absolutely 

 as does the merchant who orders a carload of 'Tillsbury's Best" 

 flour. This is one reason, among others, why such fruit com- 

 mands a premium above the usual market price; and it attracts 

 buyers even from the markets of the East. 



But some one says, "the large orchards of this Mississippi 

 Valley section cannot be handl-'id by these intensive methods." 

 Perhaps they cannot; and again, perhaps they can. And another 

 says, "Ben Davis and its tribe, which constitute a large propor- 

 tion in this section, will not pay for the extra care in question." 

 I nod assent, with apologies to Ben Davis. Yet this difficulty, if 

 real, is not insurmountable. But I believe the principle of inten- 

 sive culture of high class varieties, well adapted to the conditions 

 under which they are grown and the purposes for which they are 

 desired, is the right principle, I make no plea for small orchards 

 as such. The immense orchards of the section in question are 

 grand in their conception, but are they, as a rule, all that is to be 

 desired in the execution and the results that follow? 



The annually repeated confession of many growers that comes 

 to me times without number, that "I had so much to do that I 

 couldn't cultivate or couldn't spray," or couldn't do this or that, 

 or something else that their ideals demand, is only another way 

 of saying that many orchards are too large. This is why I said at 

 the outset that the "bigness" of the fruit growing industry is out 

 of proportion to some of its other features. And so if I were plant- 

 ing an orchard, I believe I would measure its size, not by acres 

 nor by the number of trees, but by my own ability and resources 

 for taking the very best care of what was planted — not for senti- 

 ment, but as a matter of dollars and cents in my own pocket — for 

 I am fully convinced that the solution of the problem of more suc- 

 cessful fruit growing lies in the adoption of more intensive meth- 

 ods of culture, and the greater profitableness thereof in closer un- 

 ion and co-operation among the fruit growers. 



