PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 265 



My cellar is 32x44 feet, and is divided into three sections. The sections 

 are tilled with bins three and one half feet wide and fourteen feet long, 

 and as high as a basket can be turned, say seven and one half feet high. 

 When one bin is full, another is made next to it and filled, and another^ 

 until the section is full; then the section at the other end is filled in a like 

 mannei', and finally the center is filled in the same way. Windows are on 

 hinges. From the beginning of storing till very freezing weather, the 

 doors and windows and ventilators are opened nights and closed when- 

 ever the temperature is higher outside than inside. This method has 

 worked well so far. A few years ago, when the cellar was full in the 

 manner described, the fruit was shipped in the spring. Mr. Pleune, who 

 had charge, reported that the apples kept equally well at the top, middle, 

 and bottom; except that at the top, where changes of temperature were 

 more operative, the fruit specked a little, and at the bottom, where apples 

 touched the board fioor, they were somewhat withered. I had feared 

 that those at the bottom might be injured by the pressure of such a 

 large body of fruit, seven or eight feet deep. Waste by decay was about 

 one barrel to a car-load. The cellar is now full, and they are keeping 

 well. 



Successful marketing is as important as successful growing for com- 

 mercial purposes. 



Shall we sell in autumn or later? That depends on the price in autumn, 

 on how many are selling then, and whether the grower has facilities for 

 storage for the winter months. If all sell in autumn, prices will be as low 

 as a glutted market will make them. Distribution in times of sale is kin- 

 dred to distribution in places of market. Growers should study the mar- 

 ket reports from various places; should consult the reports from the de- 

 partment at Washington, to ascertain where the apple crop is small; and 

 last but not least, associate in organized form for market purposes. As 

 one doing business on a large scale can purchase, sell, and obtain better 

 freight terms than others, so can many combined and acting as one get 

 the same advantages, and these in proportion to the volume of business 

 done. 



Why not employ associations on a smaller scale to utilize the lower 

 grades of our apples? Does it nbt seem practicable for several fruitgrow- 

 ers to join in building a factory for evaporating, for jelly, and for 

 vinegar? While it might not be urged as a profitable investment for 

 revenue, yet it would save that which otherwise would be lost or dis- 

 posed of to less advantage. Growers in western New York are wise, or 

 very unwise, for they have a large number of evaporators in some form. 



Apple culture has many conditions of success; it may have many 

 causes of failure. Success or failure depends largeh^ on the men who 

 are engaged in it. It is to be made a success in the future as the con- 

 ditions of success are observed; a failure, in the measure in which they 

 are neglected. The present has been the most fruitful year in the history 

 of the apple crop in the northern portion of the United States. It serves 

 to stimulate faith. It indicates the possibilities of the future. Such a 

 series of years of failure in this crop we may never have again. Our 

 orchards may have been storing, in these years of small fruitage, for 

 3-t 



