358 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the population in Hartford, they eat in the season a thousand bushels 

 of strawberries in a day. In 1812-14, when they wanted to celebrate the 

 peace that followed the war of 1812, and were having a big blowout, 

 they wajited to make an enormous plum pudding, and could find only 

 seventy pounds of raisins in the entire city of New York. Now in Cali- 

 fornia in one county they raise 70,000 tons in one year. 



Our apple crop in 1896 was 70.000,000 bushels. Probably our next 

 good crop all over this country will exceed 100,000,000 bushels. Twenty 

 years ago Georgia had'nt a commercial peach orchard in it; there were 

 5,000,000 trees planted last year and 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 will be planted 

 the present winter if trees can be had. I know of one nursery alone 

 that has turned down an order for over 5,000,000 trees, and no nursery 

 in the South has one-half enough trees to supply the demands upon it 

 from Georgia the present winter. There are between 10,000,000 and 

 15,000,000 trees in that State alone, and they are planting more, because 

 the people all over the country want fruit of every class over as long a 

 season as possible. Apple planting is also on the boom in many States. 

 East and West, for there are hundreds of markets that are not well sup- 

 plied all the year around; and yet there is many a fruit gi-ower who will 

 tell you that fruit gi-owing does not pay. We have all over New England 

 today men with small farms who are growing a variety of crops, but 

 ask the average of those farmers if it will pay to plant apple trees, and 

 he will say that it does not; that they never get enough out of it in that 

 locality to pay. Their way of growing them is to stick a few trees in the 

 ground and let them gi-ow as they ca-n. They have no plan for harvesting 

 and distribution, and yet, had the apples that were going to waste in 

 New England this past year been collected in a group of orchards, there 

 would have been 1,000,000 bushels of good apples saved to the market. 



We farmers the country over have been trying to do too many things, 

 and not doing any of them well. We farmers are really manufacturers. 

 The soil is in a measure the empty factory with some of the raw material 

 in it. If we put in other raw material in the shape of seed and plants 

 and vines and trees, and put in also the proper labor, we can gi-ind out 

 a finished product, just as other factories do. Show me a man who has 

 undertaken to manufacture hardware and silk and a whole lot of other 

 things in the same factory, and I will show you a failure every time. But 

 the man who has put his heart and soul into manufacturing a good plow, 

 or a door hinge, a good piece of underwear or a good piece of silk dress 

 goods will succeed, because he puts all his energies into one thing, turned 

 out a good product and found a market for it. The trouble with our 

 horticulturists today is that they scatter too much. The average farmer 

 can not be a successful horticulturist. If his interest is in stock breeding 

 or in growing certain crops, he will insist upon it that he can not do 

 the pruning at the right time because something else interferes, and so 

 his fruit raising is q failure. Rut men who take the opportunities that 



