PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 305 



oreliard, I took tliem into tlie orchard. Now, a man, perhaps, with a 

 small orchard, can not get the president of a railway or steamboat line to 

 go and look over what he is doing, but you can through an association 

 of men all working in the same line. Tell the railway men you want 

 the very best service they can give; that their trains must leave at an 

 hour that will accommodate your business, leave at an hour that will 

 suit the markets, giving prompt and quick delivery, and that you are 

 willing to pay for it because you will get enough more out of your fruit; 

 but do not ask the railways to be everlastingly lowering their rates — 

 ask them to keep up with their service, and you go on with your quality, 

 and the money you will receive will be enough to compensate you for your 

 labors and the railways for theirs. Work in harmony with the railways 

 and whoever has to handle your fruit; consider him a partner in your 

 business, and make a friend of him; let him understand what you are 

 doing and how you are doing it. Do not ask favors, but simply justice, 

 and you will not have any trouble with the railway men. Kailway man- 

 agers are bright, sharp, shrewd, honest business men, as a whole, and 

 wish to do business man-to-man fashion. I do not own a dollar of railway 

 stock, and never did and never shall; but I have found railway men as 

 good men to do business with as any on earth, if they are met right, but 

 the trouble has been that we fruitgrowers have handled our business 

 wrong-end-first, and then cursed the railway man and the commission 

 man because they did not make it pay. It didn't deserve to pay. 



Then, as to the markets to which you ship. Stick to the markets, stick 

 to the same markets; decide what markets to use and then follow them 

 up year after year; make a name and reputation and hold by that market. 

 You can not afford to ship one time here and one time there and one 

 time somewhere else, because somebody else says those markets are good. 

 You will not be known there. Follow up the same markets. I have 

 retailers to whom I could not sell a peach during my first season, but they 

 have had the fruit and they know it is good, and they take it and pay for 

 it day in and day out. We have customers who retail as much as a hun- 

 dred bushels of fruit per day six days in the week, and in cities not half 

 the size of Grand Rapids. The trouble has been with too many of us, in 

 the past, and some in the present, that we were trying to do a $10,000 busi- 

 ness with a ten-cent head and with a ten-cent management. Now, you 

 must reverse that thing and get a |10,000 head on the start with a ten-cent 

 business, and work it along up. We should think more and work less. 

 I said yesterday something about judicious laziness. We need a little 

 judicious laziness on the part of the fruitgrower. Not that he must not 

 be alive and alert at all times, but he does not need to work so hard and 

 think so little — he should think more and work less. 



We have been talking about peach-growing from its commercial stand- 

 point, but there are thousands and thousands of town and village and 

 country homes in Michigan that have not full fruit supply, and hundreds 

 and thousands of farm home's that lack many of the comforts and 

 luxuries of life that they ought to have, largely because their possessors 

 do not know how to provide them. While we are commercial horticul- 

 turists, and are considering our business from its money standpoint, we 

 should not lose sight of the blessings that horticulture may carry into 

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