164 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and is admirably adapted to renewing the essential nervons matter of 

 the brain and the spinal cord. 



Some statistician has computed that in the United States 2,250,000 

 pies are eaten every day, and each year 819,000,000, at a cost of 

 $116,000,000! Now, just think of the time spent in making these ex- 

 pensive luxuries, and of the tired, weary women who make them ; of 

 the host of lean dyspeptics caused by their use, who have no appetite 

 for wholesome food, who spend sleepless nights, grow prematurely 

 old and die, when they should be in the prime of life. Think of all 

 this evil, and, as a remedy, cut down three fourths of the pie counters 

 and in their place use more freely of the rich, luscious, bloom-dusted, 

 life-giving fruits, fresh from the lap of good old Mother Nature. 



Is there any danger of eating too much 1 No, not if it is good, 

 ripe fruit, eaten regularly; the danger is in eating too little. Right 

 here in our own State, which stands third in the production of fruit, 

 many firmers are buying their apples, more are doing without, and 

 only a few are growing a full supply of standard fruits and berries. If all 

 the commercial orchards and berry plantations of Missouri were evenly 

 distributed among the farmers, and all would use the fruit freely, as 

 they should, there would not be enough for home consumption. Oc- 

 casionally I have had men tell me they did not care for the finer fruits, 

 such as strawberries, but I felt sure it was only because they were too 

 lazy to grow them. You couldn't afford to trust such a fellow in your 

 strawberry patch ; he would eat a peck at one feed. 



But some one may raise the question, is there not danger of over- 

 production ? No, not one iota have we heard of it from boyhood. It 

 is the old hobby-horse that has been ridden by a few pessimists for 

 the last forty years, and they will continue for all time to come and 

 shout themselves hoarse on overproduction, notwithstanding the fact 

 that there has been a large increase in orchards in the last forty years, 

 yet the demand is greater than ever, and the average price higher than 

 it was forty or one hundred years ago, and the owners of large com- 

 mercial orchards this year found themselves in possession of a 

 Klondike mine without the perils of a trip to Alaska. The limited 

 area of successful fruit-producing countries, the opening of foreign 

 markets, all the orchards to be replaced at least once in every twenty- 

 five years, the vastly increased consumption of fruit brought about by 

 rapid transit, and better methods of packing and handling, to my 

 mind, preclude the possibility of over-production. In one day the 

 past season twenty-eight car-loads of California fruits were sold in the 

 New York market. A few years ago it was thought remarkable when 

 two or three carloads of this fruit was sold in the same market. That 



