No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 415 



any more grapes for some time. Now, the man or woman in New 

 York, or fc:?avanuah or New Orleans who attempts eating York 

 Imperial apples in the fall, does not buy any more apples until 

 he or she is forced to do it. We want to have a ripe apple on the 

 market in the fall season even if we sell that apple at cost. We 

 shall be educating the people to use our later apples when they do 

 become ripe. 



But this has nothing definite to do with the Eastern Fruit Growers' 

 Association. Two years ago a number of fruit growers from our 

 section went to Washington and appeared before the Comnrittee of 

 Agricultirre to further the passage by Congress of a bill giving the 

 Secretary of Agriculture authority to quarantine against infested 

 nursery seedlings. There seemed to be inadequate methods of de- 

 tecting the imported brown-tail moths. We felt, in our section, that 

 if a nest of brown-tail moth should get scattered we could not alford 

 to spray against it. 



W^hen, however, we reached AVashiugton, we found only a handful 

 of fruit growers from two or three sections. We put up an aigu- 

 lueut before the Agricultural Cormrritlee which was admittedly strong, 

 but we could claim before that Committee to represent only a hand- 

 ful from the fruit growing industry. We learned that a number 

 of your people, I think se\'eral of you gentlemen from Adams county, 

 had been down to Washington furthering the passage of the so- 

 called Lafean Bill, standardizing packages. We were in favor of 

 the Lafean bill. Your people went down to push the Lafean bill, we 

 to push the Simmon bill. If we had all been there backing both 

 bills, we might have got favorable reports. It, therefore, seemed 

 advisable that some form of interstate organization be effected, and 

 last year at the Hotel Ealeigh, Washington, the Eastern Fruit 

 Growers' Association was organized. Many of you have copies of 

 the constitution with the minutes of that meeting last year. In 

 concise terms, the idea of the Eastern Fruit Growers' Association 

 is, that the organization is a legitimate lobby in the interest of fruit 

 growing in Virginia, W^est Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Dela- 

 ware and District of Columbia, and to further legislation which will 

 help our fruit growers. 



If any matters come up before the Agricultural Committee, the 

 officers of the Eastern Fruit Growers' Association are expected to 

 be advised of that fact and arrange for hearings at which all the 

 fruit growers can be represented. There are certain interstate prob- 

 lems which affect this whole territory that neither your state society 

 nor the Maryland State society, nor the Virginia State society, can 

 alone successfully solve. 



The second annual meeting has just been held this week in Wash- 

 ington, and in this connection I would like to beg the pardon of 

 the Adams county society. -When we arranged for the Washing- 

 ton meeting I told Mr. liUptou I thought there would be no con- 

 flicting dates this week. It was unfortunate that we should have 

 picked out a date that made it impossible for any of our people to 

 be in attendance. 



At the meeting at Hotel Kaleigh on Tuesday and Wednesday of 

 this week, the matters discussed were as follows: It was decided 

 that in the following line of work laid down we might more profit- 

 ably c«mfine the membership to the five states, Virginia, West Vir- 



