146 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I don't believe him. I have faith in the latent honesty and business 

 ability of our eastern growers. 



The western growers went there mostly from the east and crossing 

 the Rocky Mountains did not especially work a miracle in honesty or 

 business ability. But their disadvantage of high priced lands and their 

 distance from market have worked out to their advantage. My home 

 town is only a few hours from Chicago — the largest distributing market 

 in this country — and, since we can ship anything to Chicago and get 

 something for it, most of us are raising anything, shipping everything 

 and are getting a little of nothing and then, to cap the climax, are 

 trying to lay the blame on everyone except the right party — ourselves. 



Next to the disadvantage of distance from market, the other disad- 

 vantage that works out to their advantage is the inflated price of land. 

 This compels the western grower to practice intensive cultivation, as 

 compared with our extensive cultivation. An Illinois farmer sold 

 his 110 acre farm and invested the entire price in 10 acres of apple 

 and pear orchard in Oregon and on that orchard he was hiring as much 

 help and using almost as many horses as he formerly used on his big 

 farm in Illinois. Think of it! No wonder that he produced the very 

 finest fruit that sold at the highest price. If you and I would let about 

 three-fourths of our land lie in grass or simply rest and then on the 

 balance of the land devote all of our usual energy and brains, we might 

 not produce quite as many bushels of fruit, but we would have nearly 

 as much of a much higher quality and our profits, reputation and happi- 

 ness would be increased many fold. 



When you stop to think that the price the western grower pays for 

 transportation alone to my home market would be a big profit for me 

 in my business and that I do not get it, simply proves the statement 

 with which I started — that I am not a good business man. I wish that 

 I could drive home to you the insult, if you have any manhood in you, 

 that that man gave to us when he said we would not do these things, 

 lie did not say we couldn't; he did not say that we lacked natural ad- 

 vantages, but he said Ave lacked nerve; that we lacked the western 

 spirit of "get up and get." That statement rankles in my breast and 

 it ought to in yours, God gave Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and 

 all this grand country Avonderful opportunities and if we fail, no one 

 is to share the blame with us. 



The western apple excels in what I call "finish" and in addition 

 to freedom from insect and fungus injuries, that finish is largely due 

 to high color. Just as long as attractivenesses to the eye is the first 

 standard by which the buyer selects his purchases, richness of color 

 will be an essential. While our best fruit authorities may disagree as 

 to the possibilities of increasing color in fruit by the application of 

 potash, phosphoric acid or other chemicals, no one can deny that the 

 one great cause for color is sunshine — God's great gift to man. While 

 the west may have a little more of sunshine, on account of their dry 

 atmosphere, do we not have sunshine here in the east? The chief point 

 of difference lies in the fact that the method of growing trees in the 

 west is such as to make the greatest possible use of that sunshine, while 

 we in the east are so anxious to get an immense amount of bearing wood 

 on our trees and also crowd our trees so that they interlace, thus 



