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4 
TOP-WORKING FROM THE FARMER’S STANDPOINT. 429 | 
will it be if you expect to raise fruit without care and strict attention, 
That we farmers generally are in need of more information on fruit 
growing is not to be doubted. The great mistake is that farmers 
. commonly turn to the wrong source for information, namely, to the 
“tree agent.” This class of people consists largely of young men 
without the least practical experience in fruit growing and 
instructed to push and boom certain lines or varieties, mostly high- 
priced novelties. Asa result of their misleading talk, the farmer 
fills his yards and orchards with trees and plants for which he pays 
a high price, and which, without being of much value themselves 
take the place which other more common and really good trees and 
plants ought to occupy. People thus become disgusted with fruit 
growing and, far from acquiring reliable information, are misled 
and directed far away from the truth. Other farmers turn to the 
nurserymen’s catalogues for their information, and in many 
instances fare just as badly. Some reforms in both directions are 
needed, and the nurserymen will have to accept them sooner or 
later, the sooner they doitthe better for them. If there is much 
increase in antagonism between nurserymen and the public, the 
latter will not be the worst sufferers. Fortunately there is a strong 
element—and I believe this element to bein the majority—among 
the nurserymen, who are in full sympathy with a more liberal 
policy. To do the most good, nurserymen should have and deserve 
the implicit confidence of the public. Thus far there is more 
distrust than confidence, and only a small majority of the nursery- 
men possess this invaluable gift,and I know that those who do 
possess it also deserve it. 
Now, my friends, I want to ask your kind indulgence while I talk 
a few minutes about cranks. I am a crank but before I was willing 
-to plead guilty to the crimelI took alittle time to examine the 
history of some of my more illustrious predecessors, and I find 
that the cranks of one age, as a rule, have been the conceded 
reformers of the next. Christ was the greatest crank of His day, 
and they nailed Him to the cross and crucified Him. Yet the 
calamity He foretold has left His people without a city or a home 
for the last 1800 years. Galileo wasacrank, andthe good old mother 
church imprisoned him because he said this world of ours took an 
annual trip of about 570,000,000 miles around the sun, and revolved 
around its own center every twenty-four hours. They said that will 
never do, it will spoil all of our theology; because Heaven is above, 
and What-you-call-it is down below, and if the earth turns every 
. twenty-four hours that will raise What-you-call-it every day. But 
owing to Galileo’s great aversion to the christianizing implements 
of that day, he took it all back, and they turned him loose. But he 
whispered to a friend as he left the prison door, “The world still 
_moves.” And my sincere prayer is that it may continue to move, 
until it shall raise eternal What-you-call-it with every old calamity 
apple howler in the country, until he shall becomea successful 
fruit grower and top-worked-orchard crank. 
