SUMMER MEETING AT OREGON. 55 



probably of the prune, plum and raisin grape, and we have a 

 market here at home. What fruits we ship the railroads and 

 express companies carry at reduced rates. We can raise all the 

 necessaries of life right here at home, while the orange belt of 

 California has to ship a great deal of theirs from Missouri, such as hams, 

 corn and potatoes. We can all live without oranges, but none can live 

 without the substantials. A few years ago there were 170 car loads of 

 apples shipped from the depot at Forest City alone. There are eleven 

 shipping points in Holt county. Even allowing that the orange sells for 

 a third or even a half more than our apples in our market, then compare 

 the cost of their land, the constant labor necessary in their orchard, the 

 wrapping their oranges each in paper and the long distance they have to 

 ship (as there are so few used that they have to ship them, as it were, all 

 over the world,) to find a market. I say compare all this with the small 

 amount of labor we give our orchards with a market right here at home, 

 not over a few hundred miles away; unless they sell their oranges for 

 more than double as much as our apples in our market, they do not 

 realize as much as we do off our apples. 



As we are nearly as far north as apples will do well and the popu- 

 lation north and northwest of us is daily increasing, as the apple is a 

 healthy diet, every family will use more apples every year. With the 

 increase of consumption we will always have a market close at home 

 though the raising may increase tenfold. I would certainly prefer a good 

 market apple orchard in Holt county to an orange orchard in California. 

 You can't keep oranges but a few weeks, so they have to be shipped to 

 the commission merchant and then wholesaled to retail dealers, which 

 adds to the cost. If they are not sold soon they rot and are sold very 

 low. This all comes off the producer. We can take a car of apples 

 and sell it out in almost any small town, and ihey will keep Irom six to 

 ten months. Families and retail dealers will buy from five to a thousand 

 bushels. In 1882, Messrs. Pope & Shawbut, commission merchants of , 

 Mankato, Minnesota, shipped forty-eight car loads from Forest City, 

 Holt County, Missouii. They shipped fifty-five or sixty carloads from 

 this neighborhood, all for their own trade. In 1886, the firm of Crowell 

 & Martin, of Sioux City, Iowa, shipped thirty-eight car loads from For- 

 est City, Holt County, Missouri; they altogether shipped sixty car loads 

 that year from this part of the county for their own trade. Now there 

 are about 115 or 120 car loads of apples to be disposed of by two firms 

 alone. Now, how many cars of oranges would it be safe for them to 

 ship in so short a time? Could they store them away and sell in the 

 spring same as apples.-* I think they would be rather a mussy msse- 



