68 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



which in the past the regular fruitgrowing regions were able to supply, the 

 ' farmers have gone into the business and have a surplus. We find that 

 occasionally one has a good fruit farm. In the great city of Cuioa.:40 they 

 have found their outside order markets had been provided with a surjjlus, 

 more than the public demanded. Consequently the prices in many cases 

 have been below the cost of production. 



Now, we have a different condition of affairs which has arisen during 

 the last year. Wheat is doing better, meats are doing better, butter is 

 doing better, eggs are doing better, and the general farmer is riakiiig more 

 money than he has the last two or three years, and there is light ahead. 

 In sections with which I am acquainted, many of those people who rushed 

 into small fruits particularly, just in time to meet the tidal wave that 

 overcame their fields of small fruits, did not pick the fruits but let them go 

 to waste. This fall you see some very fine wheat fields where there were 

 nice berry fields last spring. It simply illustrates the unsteadiness of the 

 average farmer. We are not quite cautious and calculating enough, we 

 are not quite well enough informed in regard to things that are beyond 

 our particular horizon, we are likely to draw conclusions from what we 

 see in our own neighborhood. We do not read the periodicals carefully 

 enough, we do not attend meetings and listen to reports from other sec- 

 tions closely enough, and these things have led us into error many times. 

 I am expressing my own opinion, which I believe the history of the past 

 twenty-five years has proven. I believe that the history of the next ten 

 years will write a whole lot more of the same thing. It appears to me 

 that there must be a new order of things; that people, if they expect to 

 succeed in horticulture, must study the situation more carefully, must 

 not go on buying thousands and thousands of peach trees to set where a 

 peach tree can not possibly thrive — and the same as to any other fruit, 

 but peach trees particularly. People are setting them all over this stale, 

 in all sorts of locations — they are setting them anywhere from swamp to 

 hilltop, setting them where they have no right to expect peaches o pay 

 very well, only perhaps to in the end disgust them with the business. 

 If you are hoping for the future you must care for it. I think we are 

 going to see in the next ten years a lot of history written on the peach 

 question, and it will be a history of despair to a great many men. It will 

 be the turning point. It will cost them loss of land, or come very near it. 

 Now, for a man who has been in the nursery business, that is a cruel thing 

 to say, but I believe it is right. We must do the work with a little morf.' 

 steadiness, we must figure more carefully, we must understand what we 

 are going into before we go into it. 



I do not think I wish to talk very much on these subjects, because I 

 can not do it without running into the topics of the programme, and then 

 you will get the details of all of it. But there is one thing more thai I 

 might say. The men who go from ordinary farming into fruitgrowing 

 must adopt better methods than they have been accustomed to; they must 

 take into their work a better understanding of details, more minutiae, 

 greater care and deeper study than they have ever attempted in ordinary 

 horticulture. You will have nearly everything to contend with. By the 

 time you are fairly into it you will find mysteries of cultivation opening 

 up to you that you never thought of, perhaps; you will find the conflict 

 with insects and fungous troubles everlasting; you will find that mistakes 

 are expensive. You can ruin an orchard in a day, or you can make a 



