242 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



pies rot under the trees for want of a market. This man also told 

 me that this demand for apples through the northwest, through this 

 territory, is continually widening, the demand is continually increas- 

 ing. This is my first point to make with regard to commercial or- 

 charding. If you raise apples can you sell them ? 



The next point of interest is the price the apples bring. I am 

 told by this same gentleman that the average price of apples whole- 

 saled by them to the retail dealer is $2.30 per barrel. Now the ap- 

 ples which they have shipped in and which they sold for that money 

 were largely produced in the state of New York — altogether, I may, 

 say, this year. A year ago you got large consignments from the 

 state of Missouri, but this year they were almost all from New York 

 and consisted of Ben Davis, Baldwin, Rhode Island Greening and, 

 scattering, a number of other varieties, a few barrels in a consign- 

 ment, the three varieties mentioned largely leading. I asked this 

 man, as I stated here yesterday, what the standing of the Wealthy 

 apple was in this market. He told me that the Wealthy apple, 

 whether kept in cold storage and put on the market in February or 

 March, or sold earlier in the season not kept in cold storage, outsold 

 any apple they could get in the city of Minneapolis put side by side 

 with Baldwins, Rhode Island Greenings or any of those standard 

 apples. I want you to get that into your heads, because this is a 

 Minnesota apple, is in popular favor and leads everything now 

 produced as a market apple that the common people want to buy to 

 eat and cook. So I am safe up to this point in drawing the conclu- 

 sion that if enough Wealthy apples can be produced in this territory 

 to supply the demand of the territory that you are pretty safe to get 

 from $2.00 to $3.00 per barrel for them. This point will be left so 

 far as the commercial orchard is concerned. 



From the days when Mr. Harris was going without shoes down 

 there at La Crescent in order that he might save up enough money 

 to buy a half dozen fruit trees until the present, it has been a constant 

 struggle, a continued research and persistent effort to make some 

 headway in this apple business. I want to say to you horticulturists 

 of Minnesota that I believe the dark days have passed away. I be- 

 lieve we can see daylight ; we know things we can do ; we are more 

 confident in our efforts brought about by experience. And while we 

 stiSl should keep on experimenting in the line Mr. Patten and others 

 are doing, yet I do maintain here today that we have arrived at that 

 point in the history of horticulture here in the northwest when it is 

 absolutely safe for any one to plant a commercial orchard. Now, I 

 want to make this point, that for as many as possess the proper loca- 

 tion it is safe to do so. 



