6^6 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



to pay such excessive freight rates, having otliei- conditions to con- 

 tend with, we liave had to grow tlic best fruit possible, grade it, 

 padc it in the best possil)le ])ackage. tlie Georgia peach and six basket 

 carrier upon the market in June and Jul}', has been the greatest stim- 

 ulus to the peach growing in this country, and it is spreading out all 

 over the country. 



Question: Those wise men in the west, where do they come 

 from? 



ME. HALE: They came from Connecticut and Pennsylvania and 

 New York. They went far away from home before they got their 

 eyes open, and I am sorry for them, and yet it is necessary for men 

 t<> get into trouble to help the rest of us out. The qucsti«m of the 

 brother on my right, where did those people come from — they wer^ 

 people who had no faith in the Pennsylvania soil, who had no faith 

 in the New England soil, and so they went away off arid bought 

 land. They have been buying it the last few years at |300, |4()0, 

 |500 and 11,000 an acre, and there is better land within ten miles of 

 where they went away from, that can be had for |15 to $50 per 

 acre. 



To go back some years ago, a man in my neighborhood sold his 

 farm land at flCJ an acre, to go to Florida, to get ricli groAving 

 oranges. He bought land in Floiida at |200 an acre, and in the 

 course of time, the man who bought the .flO an acre land from him 

 sold it to me, and I bought it for |25 an acre, and I planted peaches 

 and apples thereon, and last year I sold apples from his |16 an acre 

 land, which he ran away from, they w^ere retailing in the store of 

 New England at 75 cents and a dollar a dozen, and his oranges from 

 |200 an acre land were retailing in the same stores at 30 cents a 

 dozen and had to pay ten times as much for transportation to reach 

 the market. I say, God pity him. He is in a fix. That is just the 

 story that has gone on all over this country. Measure it in dollars 

 and cents, and his oranges, he had to pay 50 or 75 cents a box freight. 

 His oranges sold by the box for |2.50. INIy apples sold at |4, and I 

 paid ten cents freight to market. So that is the general story of the 

 growth and development of this ample industry in the far west, the 

 peach business in the south and middle west. There has grown up 

 a feeling in this country that there is a tremendous lot of money in 

 the orchard business. With this Avondeiful orchard development in 

 the far south and far west, and the growth of cities and towns, and 

 the wealth of the people and their understanding of the value of 

 fruit as food and all the talk of high retail prices, there has grown 

 up a tremendous atmosphere of the profital)leness of orcharding, by 

 western railroads and land boomers, and they were the ones that got 

 your friends away from here and all the east. There has been a lot 

 of yellow^ literature published in relation to orcharding in the w^est 

 and south on certain plans, and it is being circulated all over this 

 country today, and so there is a boom on in that direction, which 

 has been going on for eight or ten years, and now we have just got 

 it in the east, and the whole country is afire on orchard propositions, 

 but some of us are so green we won't birrn. The country is going 

 wild on this orchard proposition. It has already sprouted. It is al- 

 ready planted in the hearts of western promoters, who have got to 



