ADVERTISING THE APPLE 133 



THE GENTLE ART OF GETTING OTHER FOLKS' MONEY. 



In the gentle art of getting the money of other folks, the land boomers 

 of the Pacific Northwest are post graduates; they can sell more land on 

 faith inspired in the other fellow, than any company of men on earth. I 

 like the scriptural definition of faith as given by the Apostle Paul, in his 

 epistle to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for; 

 the evidence of things not seen." There is more money invested in lands 

 in the Northwest on the substance of things hoped for, than in the visible 

 evic'ence of things yet seen, as it shall be my endeavor presently to 

 prove to you. 



I am not unconscious that this is dangerous ground; there is enough 

 Nebraska money invested in irrigated fruit lands, and in lands which 

 the owners hope may sometime be irrigated, to make of this an exceedingly 

 delicate topic. When my first modest efforts to advertise Nebraska as 

 worthy of consideration as an apple growing state were put forth, they 

 were greeted with the merry hoot; even professors of horticulture in your 

 university thought it not beneath their dignity to publicly denounce the 

 presumption of a layman who should call into question the dominance of 

 the Northwest in an industry in which you won capital prizes in world 

 shows when that far country was still the habitat of the Indian. It took 

 nerve, but nature has been kind to nie and I eat celery frequently as a 

 nerve stimulant; hence the venture, with which some of you are fa- 

 miliar. 



You are not here, however, to listen to relation of personal experi- 

 ences; most of the members of this society have been in the game of ad- 

 vertising the apple for many years before my modest attempts in this 

 direction; my chief purpose is to point out, if possible, some of the par- 

 ticulars in which you have failed in the commendable effort and other 

 means by which you may possibly succeed. 



If the men who are making land values on paper over night in the 

 Northwest should be transplanted to Nebraska, and see your orchards 

 laden with fruit in the autumn, they would be able to do with this goodly 

 land precisely what they are doing with that, — persuade the prospective 

 investor that it is a potential paradise. Life is not all apples in Washing- 

 ton, nor roses in Oregon; they have sand and rust and codling moth; 

 scale and canker and crown gall; every pest known to the world of hor- 

 ticulture is to be found in that country; difficulties which test the courage 

 of the bravest exist there; why do they succeed? Chiefly because they 

 have that faith which is the evidence of things not seen and the sub- 

 stance of things hoped for. Those who are not getting rich selling apples 

 (and their name is legion) are hoping to get rich selling apple land to 

 such as are possessed of both faith and money. You hear much of the 

 fortunes which are being made in apple growing in the Pacific Northwest; 

 my observation, extending over some thousands of miles of travel and 

 personal investigation covering several years, leads to the belief that more 

 fortunes are grown by raising the price of land than by raising apples; 

 and to prove this contention I shall presently cite to you some authority 



