6 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



GROWTH OF THE WESTERN MARKET. 



During the past thirty years vast improvements have been made in the 

 vrest, and the adaptability and material interests of different locations have 

 been proven and developed. Railways have opened to settlement a vast agri- 

 cultural country ; cities of metropolitan magnitude have been built, and com- 

 merce sustained by contributions levied upon agriculture, while the surplus 

 products of the soil have found a greater or less remunerative market among 

 the great army of non-producing workmen engaged in other pursuits. 



When the first Michigan fruits were sent over the lake, the little village of 

 Chicago numbered about 200,000. Now Chicago claims 800,000 inhabitants 

 and will soon make the figure a round million. Chicago, the "Garden City,'^ 

 has absorbed its cabbage fields and swamps and now demands the choicest 

 offerings of horticultural and poniological products from every country and 

 clime to supply the daily demand. The instinct of the human family to 

 partake of the first and best fruits, has been manifested by every country and 

 people, from the good old days of Adam and Eve, down to the present gener- 

 ation of prairie pioneers. Coming from regions in the east, the fruits indig- 

 enous to the home of their fathers have been planted in the new home 

 only to blight and die if exposed to the bleak winds and low tempera- 

 ture of the open country throughout the northwest. All of the tree fruits 

 planted by the early settlers throughout the timbered regions of the 

 middle states flourished and produced fruit in abundance until the removal 

 of the forest opened a passage for the fierce winds from the polar regions of 

 the far northwest. The influence of the great lakes in the protection of 

 certain areas of country is becoming more clearly defined by the curved linea 

 of the deadly blizzards which, coming from the northwest, are repelled by 

 lake Michigan, but returning from the southwest, invade the southern central 

 part of our peninsula, thence onward over lakes Erie and Ontario, which again 

 afford protection to the favored regions in northern Ohio and western New 

 York. 



THE DEVELOPMENT A NATURAL ONE. 



Commercial fruit growing in western Michigan is but the natural result of 

 the climatic conditions of our location and the lake influences, which have so 

 far protected this "infant industry" and must always exist independent of 

 governmental subsidies or the leveling propensities of our people, which 

 prompts them to cut down, drag out, and destroy the last remnants of our noble 

 forests. 



LACK OF EFFICIENCY IN MARKETING. 



In connection with commercial fruit growing the questions of remunerative 

 markets, transportation and distribution are worthy of more consideration 

 than the limits of this paper will allow. Different systems are being adopted 

 at large fruitgrowing centers for the distribution of perishable fruits. The 

 fruits of California are placed in all of the eastern markets by a combination 

 of growers, whereby their own agents procure the lowest train rates in cars 

 built especially for the fruit trade. The whole country east of the Rocky 

 mountains is districted, and a full supply of California fruit is constantly 

 offered for sale in every eastern city where a local supply of better fruit does- 

 not prevent competition. 



