610 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



be on it, and the best sort of plowing that can be done, sub-soiling 

 where there is hard underlying soil; a thorough preparation of the 

 land as for any garden crop. 



PEOF. SURFACE: Dynamiting in all cases? 



MR. HALE: No, dynamiting only in cases of hard sub-soil. 

 Dynamiting lor each tree. There is another fact. The v dynamite 

 people are slick advertisers. Our friends, the Dupont's have got 

 millions. They are glorious people, no higher class business people 

 in America than the Duponts, of Wilmington, Del., and that big 

 state road that Senator Dupont has given to the State of Delaware, 

 and it is a blessed monument to leave behind, but it is going to take 

 millions to build, and you cannot get those millions unless you sell 

 powder, or dynamite, and you see it in all the papers now, rip up 

 your land with dynamite. I told one of their managers the other 

 day I had a certain tract of land I was going to plant next spring, 

 and had expected to dynamite it. But this summer Mr. Woodchuck 

 began to work down there, and as I went about I saw Mr. Wood- 

 chuck, Mrs. Woodchuck and all the little chucks had been bringing 

 up some of the sub-soil, and they told me I didn't need to dynamite 

 in that light underlying soil and Dupont's manager said "darn those 

 woodchucks." Well, if there is a hard sub-soil, I would advise 

 you to dynamite under every tree. I have carried on dynamiting 

 in my Georgia farm. It wasn't a woodchuck ; it was a nigger, taught 

 me breaking up the soil under some particular tree, and I first tried 

 fifty or a hundred trees, and then five hundred, and last year five 

 thousand, and just at the present time we are planting 8,000 peach 

 trees, and every one is being dynamited, because it is hard clay sub- 

 soil. 



PROF. SURFACE: Does dynamiting shatter or merely batter? 



MR. HALE: I don't know the difference. 1 am not a ''scientist." 

 li breaks it up. 



MR. ROBERTS: That is simply turning the sword into a plough- 

 share. 



MR. HALE: You must be a Christian. There is the prepara- 

 tion of the soil first; then the laying off of the trees, for the distance, 

 the planting and so forth, is a local question. There is a temptation 

 to too close planting of the trees, the original trees, the trees that 

 will stay there. There is a general tendency to too close planting, 

 on account of this desire for a quick money crop, and the man in 

 need of funds is tempted to do certain inter cropping, that perhaps 

 he ought not to do. But the other thing more particularly, is the 

 interplanting of other trees too closely; the planting of the original 

 apple tree at 32 or 40 feet; so don't be led away into too close plant- 

 ing of the original trees, because if they grow as they ought to, 

 they are going to take up a great deal of ground. The spraying 

 machinery needs room; so be careful about close planting. 



Do you think you will have an over production of apples? If 

 any of you have gotten the apple orchards going, and have got irood 

 fair No. 1 apples, and expect to get any such price as apples have 



