356 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



have to go through some process of milling or killing before it is ready 

 for food. This is coming to be understood by the housewife. She is 

 finding that she can feed her family largely on fruit and keep them more 

 healthy than on any other food. During the peach season in the South 

 we employ a number of little darkies. They come without any commis- 

 sary, and we feed them. We issue certain rations to them, and they do 

 their own cooking. One boy came there with two of his sisters, put up 

 a camp, and for the first week came regularly for his rations. The 

 regular ration of meat is six pounds a week; he wanted ten. The young 

 lady in the oflice who kept the accounts told him he would not have 

 much coming to him on payday If he ate so much meat, but he said. 

 "You see, Miss, we is eating so much fruit we has to eat more grease 

 to keep us healthy." That, a reverse order of things, but shows how 

 one may look at it. 



Fruit is already finished as perfect food as it comes from the tree 

 and the vine, and people are coming to appreciate that more and more. 



Now, friends, I am afraid I shall ramble in my subject more than 

 Mr. Barnes would if he were speaking, but I can not help it. i am 

 afraid my discourse will resemble the furrow plowed by the old darkey 

 of whom Booker Washington tells this story: 



A farmer took one of the darkeys on the place out to a field he wished 

 to have plowed. He wanted the furrows to be nice and straight, so he 

 pointed to an old white cow that was standing at a knoll at one end of 

 the field, and told the man that if he would head straight for her he 

 would have a nice furrow. After a while he came back to see the result, 

 and found a furrow that wandered all over the field. He began to storm 

 about it, and asked the darkey how he happened to make such a fuiTOw. 

 The darkey answered that as soon as he began to plow the ojd cow began 

 to move, and he had kept the plow headed for her as he had been told. 



Now I shall try to head for Barnes' subject, and you must not blame 

 me if I finish up without a very straight furrow. But to go back to the 

 subject of fruit as food. You know the more beautiful fruit is the more 

 quickly we sell it, provided it is also good. People are demanding more 

 and better things all the while. In 1S90 I had charge of the horticultural 

 census of the United States. We had five special investigations that had 

 never been made before. The first was fioriculture. That is the one I 

 wish to speak of now. As there had been no start made in this line until 

 that time, I got the Secretary of the Interior to allow me to go back — if 

 not to the beginning of creation, at least to the beginning of this country. 

 We found out that previous to 1800 there were but three commercial 

 florists' establishments in the United States. In the next ten years not 

 more than ten were added to this number. In 1850 there were less than 

 200 florists' estal>lishments in the United States. From 1870 to 1880 the 

 number increased by hundreds, and from 1880 to I SOU by thousands. 

 After we had located the florists, we got out a schedule of inquiries and 



