272 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



larly true in the handling and selling of fruit. I found while on 

 my Dakota farm I could take to market the same plums that my 

 neighbors were hawking about at one dollar per bushel and get two 

 dollars per bushel for mine. The trouble is our farmers do not 

 know that there is any other price or a better way. With a member- 

 ship of more than one thousand this society certainly ought to be 

 able to create a sentiment among our growers. I want to relate 

 a little incident by way of illustration. A number of years ago 

 when I lived at Lake City, when no one knew there was any value in 

 crab apples, I happened to be in Chicago one day and I saw a pack- 

 age of miserable looking crab apples in one of the largest grocery 

 stores in the city. I looked up the proprietor and said to him, 

 "What will you give for Transcendents by the bushel if they are 

 picked and handled like eggs and delivered to you in good condi- 

 tion?" Said he, "How many have you got?" I said, "Perhaps 

 I could ship you forty or fifty bushels." The very best apples were 

 then selling on Water street at $1.50 to. $1.75 per barrel. He said, 

 "I will give you $1.35 per bushel for crabs handled as you state, 

 f. o. b. at your place." I went home and bought an orchard for 

 just $5.00, and my wife marketed over one hundred bushels at 

 $1.35 per bushel, and when those were gone I went around and 

 bought them at fifty cents per bushel, and when I got through I had 

 shipped him 140 bushejs at $1.35 per bushel, and that was all be- 

 cause they were put up and marketed in good shape. This sugges- 

 tion of agreeing with other societies as to a uniform package is a 

 good one. There is money in all of these things, and our people 

 don't know it. 



Mr. Wedge : I think we are all interested in marketing our 

 fruit in the most profitable way, especially as the plum is coming 

 to be more and more grown and appreciated by the people, and we 

 ought to get them to the consumer in the most appreciable form. 



The President : "In regard to the quantity of apples grown I 

 think Mr. Loring has the figures very much below the record. Last 

 year we raised over a million bushels. It is something like the case 

 of the woman on the cars going out west. On one side of the car 

 was sitting a woman of uncertain age who had never been married, 

 and in the seat across the aisle sat one who had been married, and 

 this last one had a little box in the rack overhead which she would 

 take down every little while and hold in her lap, then set it on the 

 seat beside her, and then she would put it back in the rack, and 

 her actions showed that she was evidently very solicitous about that 

 little box. The old maid had been watching her and finally could 

 stand it no longer. She said, T am not the least bit curious, only I 

 would like to know what you have in that little box that you are 

 so anxious about.' 'Oh,' said she, 'alas, that little box contains the 

 ashes of my four husbands.' 'Four husbands, mercy on me!' said 

 the old maid, 'here I have been forty years hunting for one hus- 

 band and cannot find him, and here you are with husbands to burn.' 

 (Great laughter and applause.) It is only going to be a few years 

 before we are going to have apples to burn here." 



