MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 19 
Society. ‘We are invited and expected to make a display of fruits if 
we have them, and consequently if we do nothing in the way of show 
it will be admitting the arguments of those interested parties, that 
we cannot grow fruit in Minnesota, It was once said we could not 
grow ‘‘cawn” in Minnesota, but they have backed down a peg or 
two from that, and the story that we could not grow wheat and veg- 
etables. And now let the State aid us. It will cost but little, and 
will pay well, and we will make them back down from the proposi- 
tion that we cannot grow fruit in Minnesota. I for one have faith 
in Minnesota, and in our fruit growers and fruit growing. But it 
takes time, and we have much to learn. But we are improving, and 
year by year something turns up more and more suited to our cli- 
mate and soil. The introduction of the Wealthy apple, by Peter 
Gideon, Esq., is a triumph of itself worth more to the State of Min- 
nesota than all the fast horses ever introduced, and we are not to 
stop here. Other and more hardy apples will be found that will 
stand our climate, and bear good fruit. Stewart’s Sweet I hear 
highly spoken of, although I have not seen it as I remember ; but the 
show of new fruits, apples, plums, pears and grapes at our State 
Fairs, shows we are started on the right road. And when we can raise 
enough fruits to stop the importing of so much and save the million 
dollars that now goes out of the State for fruits alone, we shall have 
done much to relieve our State from hard times. In one year St. 
Paul alone has imported at a cost to consumers of $3 to $5 per bar- 
rel, over 34,000 barrels of apples; over 26,480 packages of small 
fruits, and nearly 20,000 packages of canned fruits, making in-all over 
$500,000 worth, at first cost, to our city alone. And what have 
we exported? 7,149 barrels of cranberries in 1873, and there is no 
reason why we should not have exported 70,000 instead of 7,000 of 
cranberries. And here again let me urge not only our Society but 
the State Legislature, to, by every means possible, encourage the 
growing of cranbérries, not only for home use, but for export. In 
the city of New York for 1870 over $10,383,000 worth of fruit was 
imported from abroad, besides as high as 667 car loads of strawber- 
ries from Delaware Peninsula alone, making 7,470,400 quarts; and 
one man in 1873 shipped to New York 125,000 baskets of peaches ; 
and in 1872 John 8. Coles marketed $22,500 worth of blackberries ; 
and this in a market that 85 years ago was much smaller than St. 
Paul is at the present time. As statistics will show, New York city 
in 1790 contained only 32,328 inhabitants, and city and county only 
33,131, and that year bragged of the enormous exports and trade, and 
was then, as now claimed to be, the first city for business and 
commerce on the the American continent. 
A COMPARISON—PROMISING FUTURE. 
Perhaps a few items will be interesting: In 1790 New York ex- 
ported 667,700 bushels of wheat, 28,000 barrels of flour, total ex- 
ports amounting to $2,516,197. While St. Paul exported in 1871, 
just 80 years after, 1,279,645 bushels of wheat, 128,118 barrels of 
flour ; and when it is recollected that New York at this time, 1790, 
had been an incorporated city for 100 years, or nearly, (1696)—and 
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