11 



classes. On the other hand it is only fair to the Western 

 folk to present one or two instances of the other side of the 

 (•;;se. When I was in Wenatchee I asked the inspector if he 

 could show me an orchard that was sold at a high price and 

 -^vas still running, that is. giving returns on the price. He 

 said, "Yes," he could. So he took me to a block of land 

 owned by a man named Schleidermantel. He was a Ger- 

 man, I suspect, partly from his name and partly from his 

 making money out of his orchard. lie had five acres for 

 ^v■lhich he had paid $3,000 an acre. He bought it at eight 

 3 ears, and it is now fourteen years old. He had been allow- 

 ing himself $500 wages for his work, which, of course, is not 

 a very high wage, but he had been putting that aside; and 

 then had made 10 per cent on his investment. It is hard to 

 believe that he could do that, but that is what they said he 

 had done and they had the tigures to prove it, paying himself 

 $500 and then laying aside 10 per cent interest on his invest- 

 ment of $15,000. 



Another case — the oidy other I am going to mention — is 

 down in JMedford. Oregon, a pear orchard. It isn't there 

 now, but might just as well be. It was an orchard of seven 

 acres of Anjou pears. The owner was several times offered 

 and refused $2500 an acre for it. He said repeatedly that 

 if he knew where he could buy more orchards like it at the 

 same price $2500, he would l)e ver.y glad to l)uy. He was 

 getting a good return on that valuation. But a few years 

 ago when the fire blight became very serious and when they 

 introduced more drastic methods of inspection, having 

 people cut out the fire blight when it appeared in an orchard 

 • — this man resented the work of the inspectors and pulled 

 out his orchard, and when I was there it was a nice field of 

 alfalfa and undoubtedly returning him something, but 

 nothing like, of course, what he could have gotten for a pear 

 orchard. The ins])ector who told me the story said there 

 wasn't any reason in the world why that pear orchard 

 should not be alive today, and giving practically as good 

 returns as ever on the investment. So there were two 



