156 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



as good fruit as they did fifty or one hundred years ago. It is so today in 

 Michigan and t ver\where else. You should not overlook the importance 

 of sprnying in order to keep the foliage in such condition that it may not 

 only develop itself, but develop the entire organism of the tree, fruit and 

 all. 



Mr. J. J. Harrison of Ohio: My opinion is that there is no section of 

 the United States so favorably located, particularly for the production of 

 peaches, as this lake shore region. In my travels in California, two yeara 

 ago, I tried to investigate the question whether they could compete with 

 the east in peach-growing, and I fully f:(atisfied myself that they could 

 not do so, even if they could get them on the market in good condition. 

 They are so far from the market that they are in the grip of the railways, 

 the freights are extortionate, and they do not stand any chance with 

 the eastern peach-growers, if they handle their peach orchards as your 

 worthy president does his. I don't know of a single orchard I visited in 

 California which was in every respect in as good shape as Mr. Morrill's 

 orchard today. The trees are all pruned with a certain idea — to get them 

 low-headed, broad, and open, and his cultivation is perfection. I really 

 think you have the best show for making money, considering your great 

 markets, of any section of the United States. 



Mr. VanDeman: I hope you will pardon me, but there is one thought 

 more in connection with the matter of marketing, which is well worthy 

 of our attention. When you go into commercial fruitgrowing, it is money 

 you are after, and the biggest money is in the fancy market. You know 

 that California sends peaches and plums and cherries and other fruits 

 clear across the continent, and they beat you here, right on your own 

 ground, in Chicago, Milwaukee, etc. How do they do it? There is 

 nothing very mysterious about it. In the first place, they take pains to 

 produce the high-grade fruit we have been talking about, and then they 

 fix it up in the nicest packages they can devise, and they wrap every 

 pear and every peach, every fruit except cherries, in tissue paper, and 

 some even have their brand printed on the tissue paper; and this 

 fruit they send here and with it capture the' fancy marliet. The way to 

 beat California is to beat her at her own game. If it pays them to buy 

 tissue paper and wrap their fruits, it will pay you. I would like to know 

 if there is anyone here who ever tried wrapping fruit in paper and send- 

 ing it to the market in fancy stjde? 



Mr. Morrill : I don't believe any have tried in it Michigan. 



Mr. VanDeman: I wish you would try it. It won't cost very much to 

 send a box or two to market and see the difference in price. I don't care 

 if you charge double price for the tissue paper and wrapping, and so on. 

 Charge everything to the expense of the venture that you like, that your 

 conscience will permit, and then make an estimate, after you are all 

 through. I tell you solemnly, gentlemen, it will pay. Mr. George Powell 

 of New York has been doing that, and he is going to do a great deal more 

 of it. A number of growers about Newark, N. J., have tried it, and they 

 say it is an idea which has been very valuable to them. If Mr. Morrill 

 will wrap some of his nice peaches and send them to market in fancy 

 packages, he will get the biggest kind of pay for them. One man said he 

 cleared a dollar per barrel above all expenses on every barrel of pears 

 that he wrapped, without difference in (juality. Fruit which is wrapped 



