352 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of dollars that are sent away for fruit that should be purchased at 

 home. 



The tree business offers great inducements to unprincipled agents. 

 There are comparatively few persons who know the varieties they 

 need to plant, and still less, in fact, very few who can tell when they 

 get their trees whether they are true to name. They have to rely 

 wholly upon the agent with whom they deal, and, as this confidence 

 is so often misplaced and terribly abused, the purchasers after be- 

 ing duped to the amount of fifty or seventy-five dollars, besides the 

 work of caring for stock that is not sufficiently hardy to endure our 

 winters, are so completely disgusted and discouraged with their 

 experience and loss that they are uotonly decided not to try it again, 

 but their whole influence is against tree planting. This being the 

 case, is it not in line with the work we have adopted to see that these 

 people do not meet with this discouragement and loss? Shall we 

 not place information where they will get it? Shall we drop them 

 just at this critical time when they most need your council, just 

 when they are most helpless, just when they are being fleeced of 

 their hard earned dollars because they followed our advice? Shall 

 we be accessory to the swindle by keeping silent? 



We have, it is true, given good advice in this direction but it has 

 not reached the peple, it has fallen short of the mark; and while, of 

 course, there is not so much danger to members in this society, there 

 are thousands outside who need protection to one in the society who 

 doesn't need it. 



Some say we have adequate laws against fraud and we have only 

 to enforce them. These laws are all right in their way, but they af- 

 ford no protection in the tree business when, perhaps, the agent is a 

 thousand miles away taking in other communities, or, if he lives 

 among us and tells you he has the best tree on earth, that six of 

 those trees will bear fifteen barrels of apples every year, that a 

 cyclone can't blow them off the tree, that they will keep till spring, 

 that they are as hardy as the oak and that no one else can grow 

 them, he may make all such statements to sell you his trees and yet 

 run at large. 



The "budded trees," the "model orchard" and the "wine grapes" 

 seem to be drawing cards. One man told me he had bought a few 

 novelties from an eastern agent, and amongother things somepeach 

 pie plant,that he thought would be very nice and that was peach graf- 

 ted into pie-plant, having the quality of the peach and the hardiness 

 of the pie-plant. 



Now, if we had one or two reliable men in each county who would 

 promptly report to our secretary any one who was doing crooked 

 work in his county or community, we could well afford to give these 

 reporters the monthly magazine for this service, and the secretary 

 could get the papers issued there to warn the farmers and send 

 them literature to post them up in this line. Of course, all editors 

 who have any regard for square dealing- and their subscribers and 

 the community would be glad to do their part in this business, but 

 if any of them are so two-faced and devoid of principle as to sell out 

 their papers and the confidence inaposed in them for a few paltry dol- 



