130 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



He is at the mercy of the grower. He simply preserves by canning the 

 fruit as he receives it from the producer, so, if the fruit is medium or 

 poor the canned goods would be poor and medium and must be sold to 

 the man with the lean purse, who can only give a lean purse in turn to 

 the man who has produced the fruit. Here again, I Avish to emphasize 

 my former statement that the best interest of the consumer, canner and 

 grower are one and inseparable. The grower can bring smiles or frowns, 

 praises or cursings from the lips of his colleagues. He can increase 

 rapidly the demand for canned fruit or he can retard it; and when he 

 comes to realize his power and the profit that is within his easy reach, he 

 will no longer look upon the canning factory as a dumping place or con- 

 sider that am'thing is good enough for the cannery ; but will take as much 

 pains and have as much pride in growing and sending good fruit to the 

 canning factory as he would to the retail grocer, his best friend or his 

 own table. The canneries want a firm, dark red strawberry, a solid bright 

 raspberry, a scarlet tomato, a blue plum, a yellow pear, and a good sized 

 yellow peach. They want them because the consumers want them, the 

 consumer wants them because he has found them to be good, and such 

 goods may be grown in almost unlimited quantities at a good profit to the 

 grower and canner, at the same time giving the best of satisfaction to 

 the consumer. The question of what to grow for the canning factory is 

 surrounded by a set of local conditions dependent upon soil, labor, roads 

 and distance. The matter of soil has been so ably treated with reference 

 to its adaptability for the growing of fruits and vegetables by the agri- 

 cultural department at Washington and by our own beloved college and 

 experiment station that I shall simply refer you to their very valuable 

 bulletins on this subject. Labor must be considered and the man who 

 has crops to gather in sufficient quantity during the whole season to give 

 steady employment will be better able to deal with the labor problem 

 than the man who only wants help occasionally or who has but one thing 

 to market. The economical use of labor in cultivating, picking and 

 marketing must be considered by every man who grows fruit and 

 vegetables for market. 



The wagon, road and distance cannot be ignored for they are real 

 problems that add to or take from the profits. A good wagon that will 

 hold one hundred bushels of tomatoes can be taken to the factory by the 

 same man and team that would commonly haul twenty-five bushels and 

 thereby greatly decrease the expense of production and increase the profits. 



There is so much to this road problem, I can but mention it in the 

 economical handling of fruit. We need better roads, we want better roads, 

 we demand better roads, and we will have better roads for the benefit of 

 our dumb animals, for the benefit of our families and for the increasing 

 of our profits by decreasing the expense of transportation. 



There is an increasing demand for canned goods, we have the soil, 

 climate and quality of fruit, we have the labor and skill, we have the 

 money and enterprise, and there is good money to be made in the business. 

 During the next ten years we ought to add at least one hundred canning 

 factories to what we already have and they ought to be built in the small 

 towns and villages of our State, and those towns and centers that realize 

 the present opportunity and seize upon it intelligently will be sure to 

 profit thereby. 



