THE APPLE BUSINESS. 



417 



made arrangements under which the name 

 of every ship on which fruit is roughly 

 or irnproperly handled will be published by 

 the department all over Canada. Some 

 steamship owners say they will sue us for 

 libel if we attempt this, but we are ready to 

 stand a suit in order to effect the reform 

 necessary." (Applause). 



WHAT TASMANIA IS DOING. 



Mr. Powell also referred, in the course of 

 his address, to the question of transporta- 

 tion. "Tasmania does not," he said, 

 " produce anything like as good a quality of 

 apples as is produced in New York State. 

 And yet Tasmania, by her improved system 

 of transportation, can send apples 14,000 

 miles, largely over tropical seas, land them 

 in London in better condition than we can, 

 and get a better price." Mr. Powell con- 

 gratulated Canada on the fact that the 

 Canadian Government had done so much 

 towards securing improved facilities for 

 transport of Canadian apples by sea. 



YIELD AND DEVELOPMENT GUESSES AT THE 



CROP PROBABILITIES OF DEVELOPMENT. 



There was no point on which the members 

 of the convention diflfered more widely than 

 in their estimates of the apple crop of Amer- 

 ica. The president estimated the value of 

 the crop in the United States alone at some- 

 thing like three hundred million dollars. 

 This would be equivalent to two hundred 

 million barrels at $2.50 each. Mr. E. N. 

 Loomis, of New York, said the Fruitman's 

 Guide placed the merchantable product of 

 the United States at forty million barrels, 

 with the amount actually barreled and mar- 

 keted at twenty-five million barrels. Mr. 

 Powell, of New York, estimated the crop at 

 100,000,000 barrels. The Year Book of the 

 American Agriculturist, an excellent author- 

 ity, placed the bumper crop of '96 at seventy 

 million barrels. As Mr. Loomis said, it is 

 largely a matter of guesswork anyway, but 

 the figures given by the Agriculturist would 



seem nearest the mark. It does not seem 

 possible that the United States, in any one 

 year, has produced more than seventy 

 million barrels of marketable fruit. Even, 

 this would allow very close to one barrel per 

 head for every man, woman and child in the 

 United States, after allowing for the export 

 trade, and it is fairly certain that is the out- 

 side limit for the quantity of apples con- 

 sumed in the Llnion. But even at this figure 

 the industry is an important one ; and, one 

 point on which all agreed, and on which all 

 seemed justified in agreeing, is that th<f in- 

 dustry is growing by leaps and bounds, and 

 has before it almost unlimited possibilities 

 of expansion. 



POSSIBILITIES OF FUTURE DEVELOPMENT. 



But what has been accomplished is but 

 the beginning. It remained for George T. 

 Powell, of New York, to point out the pos- 

 sibilities of the future. 



" People predict the coming of a period 

 of over production," he said. " That same 

 prediction has been made every year for the 

 last forty years, and yet not once in all that 

 period have we had too many apples to 

 meet the demand. We can increase the 

 consumption at home by 100 per cent.; 

 Germany has just got a taste of our good 

 apples, and an enormous market in conse- 

 quence is opening up in the German Empire; 

 it is only a question of time until a demand 

 comes from Japan and China, and when 

 that time does come, even if our production 

 is double and treble what it is now, we 

 shall not produce enough to furnish our cus- 

 tomers in the East with one apple apiece. 

 It is merely a question of producing the 

 right quality of fruit and arranging for 

 proper distribution and marketing. Solve 

 that problem and we shall not produce too 

 much even when all our possible apple area 

 is producing to its fullest extent. 



" And to what extent may production not 

 be developed ? Just see what has been 



