484 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



are coming to Minnesota. We expect Mr. Gardner to move up 

 very soon. I will ask Mr. P. F. Kinne, delegate from the Iowa 

 Horticultural Society, to come forward. This is Mr. P. F. 

 Kinne, representing the Iowa state society. (Applause.) 



Mr. Kinne: I must confess to being very glad to be with 

 you. This is the first occasion I have had of meeting with the 

 Minnesota horticulturists, and I am more than pleased to bring 

 greetings from the Iowa Horticultural Society. I feel some- 

 thing like a sponge that your druggist gets from the press, 

 dried out, and I hope that I may imbibe enough of your Minne- 

 sota pep and ginger to be in the condition of the sponge when 

 it leaves the apothecary's hands. I want to extend to all of you 

 a very cordial greeting from the Iowa society, and hope many 

 of you will be able to meet with us. (Applause.) 



The President: Our meetings couldn't possibly be a suc- 

 cess without the presence, aid and assistance of our good friends 

 Gardner from Iowa, Kellogg from Wisconsin and Harrison 

 from Nebraska. I am pleased to know they are all with us, and 

 I am going to ask them to say a word to us at this time. Mr. 

 Charles F. Gardner, of Osage, Iowa. (Applause.) 



Mr. Gardner: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: To 

 say that I am pleased to be here wouldn't be telling half of the 

 story. I have attended your meetings so long, ever since you 

 met at Lake City, that when I come here I don't feel like 

 going away to see somebody; I fell as if I were coming home. 

 I have almost had charges of desertion lodged against me and 

 being a regular run-away from our state society. You will find 

 in our reports a remark by our president at one time that he 

 got tired of hearing of the other society, that it was so much 

 better, and for his part he believed if he thought so much of 

 this society he would attend those meetings, and — he pretty 

 near said stay away from our society. But I didn't take that. 

 This society is a society that stands in the foremost ranks of 

 horticulture in the United States, and if there is anything I am 

 proud of it is that I am a member of it. When we come here 

 we know we are going to learn something. I never attended a 

 meeting of this society in my life but that I went home rejoicing 

 that the facts I found out I could go right onto my place and 

 carry them out. I want to say also that if there is a better re- 

 port in the United States than your report from year to year I 

 never saw it. I can say that. (Applause.) You take the last 

 report, for 1915, and bring out any other report of any other 

 state in the Union and you will find it is as good or better than 

 any of them. You see you have men here that stand way up and 

 know how to manage these things. You have a faculty of taking 

 a poor lone man like myself — especially your secretary — telling 

 him that if he don't come to this meeting everything will go 

 to rack and ruin. You make people feel that the meeting won't 

 be a success unless they get out to it, consequently you have a 

 good attendance. Don't think it is an easy job. I was presi- 



