406 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



a clippiug in a papei- tliis week in wliich tlie oi)p()rtimity is so great 

 that I am not sure but some of our fruit growers Lad not better go 

 into this instead of fruit growing. 



MILLIONS IN IT 



|A brilliant plan for getting rich is being worked out by an en- 

 thusiastic promoter. Only the chance to buy stock in it (''tele- 

 graph your order!" ) remains. The comj>any is to operate a laige 

 cat ranch near Oakland, California. To start with, the promoter Avill 

 collect about 1,000,000 cats. Each cat will average twelve kittens 

 a year. The skins will run from 10 cents each for the white ones 

 to 75 cents for the pure black. This will give 12,000,000 skins a 

 year to sell at an average of 30 cents apiece, making a revenue* of 

 about |10,000 a day gross. A man can skin tift}' cats per day for 

 |2. It will take one hundred men to operate the ranch, and there- 

 fore the net profit will thus be |0,800 per day. The cats will feed on 

 rats and a rat ranch will be started next door. The rats multiply 

 four times as fast as cats. One million rats will give four rats 

 per day for each cat. The rats will feed on the carcass of the cats 

 from which the skins have been taken, given each rat a fourth of 

 a cat. The business will be self-supporting and automatic. The 

 cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats, and the company 

 will get the skins. Telegraph your order. 



My county, "Little Orleans," is less than twenty by twenty-five 

 miles in size, yet it produces more apples than any place the same size 

 in the world, and has thousands of acres of young orchards not i)ro- 

 ducing yet, "but soon." Five shipping i)oiuts in western New York 

 ship more apples than the entire states of Washiiigton and Oregon. 



Our county has seven cold or chemical storage houses with a ca- 

 pacity of 313,000 barrels, which did not begin to lake the apples 

 produced this year when a light crop. What will the fruit groAvers 

 do with their apples when a full crop. This year many of the apples 

 were sent out of the county to be stored, as long as storage could be 

 obtained. AVlien no more storage could be secured, apples were sold 

 at a loAV price. Some storages that had promised to take growers' 

 apples suddenly gave out the notice, "Storage all taken, no more 

 room." One storage that gave out this report had an agreement with 

 a western buyer not to rafse the price of apples and they Avould both 

 get apples cheap and the Avestern buyer Avould store 20,000 barrels 

 with this storage. This buyer takes annually from our town for a 

 couple months Avork enough clear money to buy one of the best farms 

 in the county. It is reported noAV that the storage Avas not filled. 

 Many growers could get no storage, so sold out and Avhen they 

 finished drawing could have secured from 50 cents to 75 cents 

 per barrel more for their apples than thc}^ sold for earlier. This 

 Avas a clear loss and could have been saA^ed if there had been storage 

 room. 



My storage bill this year is over $2,000 besides the extra cost of 

 drawing apples to the storage and the loss of time Avaiting to unload 

 when at the storage. During the busy tiiue, an hour or more of 

 waiting to unload is quite a frequent occurrence. Then again the 

 loss on a crop stored in the ordinary storages from the practice of 

 the storage men in always expecting to handle all the apples stored 



