FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 147 



making our orchards appear more like a forestry proposition. Their 

 trees are low and with open heads — vase form. In our greed we leave so 

 much brush in our trees that a sparrow can hardly fly through them. 

 We overwork our trees and then starve them. They restrict their trees by 

 severe pruning and thinning of the fruit so that the trees can do their 

 best and keep it up. In trying to discourage us the western land agent 

 says we could not have their kind of open heads, that "The sun scald 

 would kill our trees." Don't you believe it. The only disease we need 

 fear in the east is "dry rot" and the most violent form of this disease 

 is where it attacks the man rather than the tree. 



While we must be more thorough in our spraying, we must practice 

 more intelligent pruning and thinning of fruit if we want the high 

 grade that is skimming the cream from our own markets. I know that 

 some of my eastern horticultural friends are issuing words of caution 

 for fear that we will prune too much, and thus "upset the balance" 

 or do something equally unwise. Did you ever stop to consider that our 

 "forestry" methods have been standing us on our heads so long that we 

 have lost all thought of any "balance?" What, pray, will restore the 

 "balance" to a starved root system, but to restrict by pruning the heavily 

 loaded top? An overloaded and starved team are first relieved by re- 

 moving a part of the load. Where you find one grower who has made 

 the improbable mistake of pruning his .orchard too much, I can show 

 you thousands of growers in leading fruit sections who do not prove 

 enough and hundreds of others who do not prove at all. 



When the western grower sees an imperfect apple on his tree in the 

 growing time, he realizes that that fruit can never grow to be any- 

 thing but a cull and it is at once taken off to make room for other 

 fruits. They grade their fruit on the tree and they know that it takes 

 as much of the vitality of the tree to ripen a cull as it does to put the 

 finish on a perfect fruit. In the east the practice is to leave all the 

 fruits that set until harvest time, then paw them over on the packing 

 table to find enough fairly good specimens to face out the barrel. What 

 happens after that we blush to relate. You say it costs money to thin 

 apples. Does it cost any more, or even as much, to pick off the extra 

 fruits and break up the clusters in June, dropping the little culls on 

 the ground, than to wait until harvest time and then pick the whole 

 mess (and, by the way, that is a very good word) carry them down 

 the ladders, pour out on the packing table, sort them and put the culls 

 in the cider lot or in a more improper place? 



Not only do we fail to grow as good fruit as we might, but we have 

 had no system of grading and packing. Why are people not eating and 

 cooking more apples? Have they lost their taste for apples? Why is 

 the demand for bananas, oranges, grape fruit and western apples in- 

 creasing while our own superior quality apples go begging a market? 

 You know the reason. The man who buys a barrel of our apples buys 

 them under a suspicion and pays a price accordingly. All business is 

 and must be based on one principle — confidence. The average eastern 

 pack of fruit does not commend the respect of the consumer and the 

 man who starts out to pack honestly and then market in the old way 

 generally finds himself in bad company and too often suffers as did 

 "old dog Tray." 



