496 • ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



limit when he buys $1.74 worth per year? (He probably pays double 

 this when transportation and commissions are added to these farm 

 values.) 



Value of Fruit as Foods. — Fruit is usually spoken of as a luxury 

 and is said to have little food value except as a tonic, to be taken 

 much like peruna and apple jack, because we like it. The public is 

 coming more and more to recognize fruit as a necessity. Fruit prob- 

 ably has a great value in keejnag the system in condition to digest 

 other food but fruit growers have generally underestimated the 

 value of fruit as a direct food. It is their province to educate the 

 public as to its food value. A pound of grapes contains as much 

 total disgestible nutrients as a pound of potatoes. Apples contain 

 two-thirds as much as potatoes and twice as much as squash. You 

 can frequently buy a pound of digestible food in apples as cheaply as 

 in potatoes. The kind of food is somewhat different, the fruits being 

 lower in protein. 



Development of Commercial Fruit Growing. — I believe that the 

 wonderful growth in the consumption of fruit in the United States 

 has not yet reached its limit. ^Ye have hardly begun to produce 

 fruit as a business. A large part of our present fruit is grown by 

 men who care for the corn crop first. These men are corn growers, 

 not fruit growers. But there is developing a class of men who make 

 fruit growing their business. In times past we grew fruit for the 

 kitchen ; it was primarily for home use. Our fathers planted one or 

 tw^o acres of apples, and set them on land least suited for growing 

 grain or around the house w^here they would be handy. If the 

 orchard produced enough for the winter's supply and for cider they 

 Vvere satisfied. They had no particular quarrel with the codling 

 moth. This gave more cider apples, and sometimes the farmer was 

 perfectly willing to have more cider and fewer baked apples. You 

 all remember in your boyhood days when you went to certain trees 

 for your eating apples — and what apples they were! Better than 

 any that grow today — because you were the boy with a boy's ap- 

 petite. You selected only the best that were left after the worms 

 and disease had taken their share. We may remember the enormous 

 yields that some tree gave some year, but generally the trees were 

 not held to a strict accounting. These old orchards were made up 

 of many varieties. A variety for every day in the year was some- 

 times considered ideal. . 



A very large number of these old orchards are still in our State, 

 in fact they are still in the majority, but they are disappearing. The 

 sooner they are gone the better for our fruit interests. They fur- 

 nish breeding places for insects and fungous pests, and when they do 

 give the owner a crop that he has never earned they interfere wdth 

 the sale of a better product. 



The growing of fruit as a business, as many men are now coming 

 to grow it and as more will do now that we are getting adjusted to 

 the new conditions, is entirely a different proposition. Now our fruit 

 farms vare manufacturing plants — they must produce enough to pay 

 dividends; but w^e are not satisfied with a profit, we want the best 

 profit, and if there is any way of getting more profit the question is 

 well worth considering. 



The tendency is to get this greater profit by higher care in every 

 detail, but we are not wholly adjusted to the new conditions and 



