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manifest in neglected orchards, a menace to the industry. 



Profit is to be found through attention to items over- 

 looked or thought unnecessary, especially through such 

 methods of protection, spraying, grading, packing and 

 branding as will insure better quality and greater uniformi- 

 ty in the pack. If spraying will improve size, protect from 

 fungus diseases and insure 97 per cent free from defects, 

 then thorough spraying becomes a necessity. If a clean 

 packing and grading law will insure a more uniform pack, 

 the certainty of a better price forces its early passage and 

 enforcement. The opening of the Panama Canal, and great 

 reduction in freight rates from the far Avest, is certain to 

 give the apple industry there a tremendous boom, and ob- 

 liges us to study problems from a different standpoint than 

 formerly. It necessitates also the adoption of that thorough 

 method of grading, packing and branding, under legal re- 

 strictions, which insures the western box apple its coveted 

 place in our local markets. 



It is not a question of what we would like but what we 

 must have. The life of the industry is in the balance and its 

 iriends must be alive to JDrotect. New England, which for- 

 merly dominated the industrial, political and moral thought 

 of the nation, finds itself set one side, in many respects, and 

 it behooves the workers to unite for specific action whereby 

 the combined influence of these six states may be centered 

 and their great agricultural interests made dominant. 



Establish the fact of a law in each of these six states 

 covering the grading, packing and branding of apples, with 

 ample provisions for inspection, and you at once add to the 

 selling price of every barrel. Individuals, and local fruit 

 associations, have by these steps gained a leading position in 

 the great markets at home and abroad. It becomes our duty 

 to unite all forces for the greater good to the industry as a 

 whole. In 1902 the Maine State Pomological Society con- 

 stituted your speaker a committee of one to take up this sub- 

 ject of legislation with the other New England states with a 

 view to uniting all organizations for uniform action. In 



