APPLES. 293 



few words on the question of picking and selling apples. I 

 will tell you how they do it down in Houston county. The 

 farmers down there raise wheat, hogs and apples, and they 

 make more money out of their apples than they do on their 

 wheat and hogs. • Well, when they are carting apples, they put 

 the side bars on the wagons and fill the box up full, and they 

 put bags on top of that, and then the whole family piles on top, 

 and away they go to market. The result is that you can get 

 plenty of Duchess apples in La Crosse at 25 cents a bushel, 

 while purchasers would prefer to go out to the orchards and 

 pay 85 cents a bushel. There are hundreds and thousands of 

 bushels of apples marketed that way that are of little value, 

 while, if they had been picked and packed carefully by hand 

 and sent by express to Minneapolis, they would have brought 

 a dollar a bushel. 



There is nothing that pays like careful picking and putting 

 into neat packages, getting them into market so they look ex- 

 actly as well as when picked, or a little better. If you have 

 time, like Mr. Pearce, to take your pocket handkerchief and 

 polish them (laughter), you will find that everybody will want 

 them; but if you get them into market, and here and there 

 among them there is a small or knotty one, the package will sell 

 for the quality of the poorest one in the package. You want 

 to bear that in mind in handling every kind of fruit. I would 

 rather throw out one-third of my strawberries and let the chick- 

 ens eat them up than to market them, for I will get more money 

 for the balance than I would to market them promiscuously. 

 I always get more money for my berries than most of the fruit 

 growers in our section, on this account. 



Mr. Wyman Elliot : This question of statistics in regard to 

 fruit growing in Minnesota is one of vital importance to us. If 

 we had some statistics upon which we could rely at the present 

 time and during the coming year, we could make very good 

 use of them, but under the present methods of gathering stat- 

 istics in the state, they are almost valueless. Speaking of the 

 crop of apples that was grown this year, I think, with some of 

 the gentlemen, that the estimate made here by Mr. Harris is 

 far to low. I think we have one county alone that has pro- 

 dueed over 40,000 bushels, Fillmore county. I think that if 

 the statistics had been properly gathered all over the state, that 

 we would have nearer a quarter of a million bushels, than 

 200,000. 



