90 Nebraska State Horticultural Society. 



Even if he does understand caring for his fruit patch, he will not take 

 the time to cut the sunflowers in it until his corn is laid by and his 

 small grain stacked. 



Last summer I called on a number of men, who planted orchards 

 last spring, and in looking over the trees the weeds would have to 

 be parted to tell whether the trees were dead or alive, and in some 

 cases, if the trees were not making the best showing, either the 

 nursery man or the climate had to take the blame. 



If a farmer's wheat is affected with wheat rust, chinch bugs or 

 the Hessian fly has made ravages on his field, and his crop is a failure, 

 he can tell you the cause, but if his orchard is affected with blight, 

 scab, or borers havin riddled his trees, he will tell you, that fruit 

 can not be grown in Nebraska, because soil and climate are not favor- 

 able. 



The tree man or nursery agent has a reputation among the people, 

 as bad, if not worse, than any other salesman, that travels over the 

 country. When he starts work in a locality where he or the company 

 he is working for is not known to be perfectly reliable, the people will 

 whisper one to another, that there is a tree man in the neighborhood 

 and they avoid him as much as possible, because they are afraid that 

 if he gets them cornered they will surely be swindled, and you can not 

 blame them, for they have been swindled, and are still being swindled. 

 Not by the nursery man, but by tree jobbers. You will always find 

 him in a new part of the country that is just being settled up. He 

 will stay until the people learn to know him. 



The first year or two he floods the country with a lot of worthless 

 goods, or if he does deliver fair trees they do not satisfy the people, 

 because he generally misrepresents the goods, by claiming too much 

 for them. He has all kinds of schemes to encourage the people to take 

 hold of his proposition. One man will go through the country selling 

 grapes at so much per acre, which is almost always from two to five 

 times their actual value, and sometimes carries another man with him, 

 who agrees to buy the grapes after they are grown at a fancy price, to 

 be made into wine by the same company that sell the grape vines, who 

 according to the agent's story, has a plant for that purpose in connec- 

 tion with the nursery. And he will even draw up a contract to that 

 effect. 



Another will sell a peach orchard to a man for a fair price in 

 cash, making his victim believe that the price he is paying is only one- 

 half the actual value of the goods. The agent is to take one-half of the 

 third crop for the last payment on the trees. 



