No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 609 



question of good roads or the possibility of the development of high 

 class roads is an imijortant consideration. If we haven't within ac- 

 cessible distance what seems to be markets enough to take up the pro- 

 duct we intend or hope to produce, then the matter of railway lines 

 of transportation is important. 1 recollect some years ago at Wash- 

 ington the Agricultuial Department recommended a certain gentle- 

 man to me for advice as to the handling of a product of an orchard 

 in the south. It seems he was largely interested in the cotton goods 

 trade in New York ; a man that handled cotton goods by the millions 

 of yards. When they began to establish cotton mills down in the 

 Caroliuas and through the south, his firm and others became inter- 

 ested in those mills, and it came about that he had to go to the 

 Carolinas once a month, and on one trip he went hunting into the 

 mountains of Noith Carolina. He thought, wouldn't it be a nice 

 place to have a bungalow, and so in the broad way of doing business, 

 he got an agent to buy him a tract of land, and then he built his 

 bungalow, which you and 1 would call an elegant mansion, and as he 

 loved to see the apple tree blossom, he decided he would have an 

 apple orchard. And so he hired men to clear the land, and he hired 

 a horticulturist to look after the planting, and got a nurseryman who 

 was glad to sell trees, so he had his apple trees planted and by 

 and by they came into bearing, like Surface trees do, but it wasn't 

 but a little while until his orchard was filled with good red apples. 

 What should he do with them? He asked- the Agricultural De- 

 partment at Washington, and finally somebody put him onto me, 

 and he hired me to go and look the thing over. We got on the train 

 and I went to bed and went to sleep, but the next morning in the 

 dining car I broached the subject of his orchaid, and he told uie 

 about it. We got to Salisbury, N. C, then off on a side line and got 

 off at a little station and drove twenty-five miles up the hill. That 

 was the first start oft". I said, ''How many trees have you?" I sup- 

 posed he had three or four hundred. He said, "I have about thirty 

 thousand trees loaded with apples." (Laughter.) Twenty-five miles 

 up hill ! We got oft" at the station, and we were met by an elegant 

 pair of Kentucky hoises and a buckboard, but the road was so rough 

 that it took us four hours with that team to get up to that orchard. 

 An ordinary farm wagon might take forty hours. Of course, to got 

 material up there to pack 3'our fruit in and haul to the statiun — It 

 didn't take me long to tell him his only chance was to put up cider 

 mills and build a pipe line and run his cider to the vinegar station at 

 the railroad station. That is a true story, but it is an exaggeration 

 in the orchard business. So a thing grows on us. Don't get very 

 far away from the railroad station, or a good 'line that will carry you 

 quickly to maiket, because while good Pennsylvania apples may be 

 worth money in Pennsylvania today, they may be worth more in 

 Chicago or Denver next week, or Boston week after, or Atlantic 

 City or ^Minneapolis. The markets today are way out, possibly across 

 thousands of miles of ocean. 



Another big feature in this possible development of orchard busi- 

 ness, has been the development of railioad lines, the development 

 of the refrigerator car, co-operative w^ork, so the location of the land 

 for your orchard along right lines is one of the biggest elements. 

 The preparation of soil, of course, means clearing off biush that may 



39—6—1911 



