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they were going to have a bumper crop again, so Mr. Jenks 

 and I started, at the behest of the Eastern States Field De- 

 partment, to interview some of the prominent peach growers. 



We started down in Connecticut and met such men as 

 Mr. J. Norris Barnes, Mr. A. T. Henry, Mr. Charles Lyman, 

 Mr. Stancliff Hale, and others of that character. 



All those men were discouraged, — a big crop coming 

 on, — expecting gluts, difficulty in securing labor and high 

 cost of everything, railroad congestion, etc., peach growers 

 in other states in a similar state of mind. We finally suc- 

 ceeded, with the co-operation of the Pomological Society of 

 Connecticut and other states to get some of these growers 

 together. 



We met at Hartford, had probably 30 or 40 of the most 

 representative peach growers from every .part of New Eng- 

 land there. It was the bluest meeting I ever attended. It 

 was almost the unanimous opinion that the peach industry 

 was on the toboggan in New England. Other peaches were 

 shipped in from New Jersey and Eastern New York, in large 

 quantities, this together with the difficulties of getting them 

 marketed, the gluts, etc., had been so discouraging in past 

 years that people thought rather of cutting down the or- 

 chards than the planting of new ones to increase their peach 

 business. 



However, that meeting appointed a committee to look 

 into the matter still further, to get an estimate of the crops, 

 to see what could be done, and to devise plans. To make a 

 long story short, they had a later meeting with this commit- 

 tee reporting, and then they appointed committees on pub- 

 licity, on marketing, on transportation, on finance and on 

 permanent organization. 



With the aid of the public safety committees, a wide- 

 spread campaign of publicity was inaugurated. Thirty-six 

 articles were sent to 250 daily and weekly papers in New 

 England. These articles contained recipes for peaches, the 

 uses of peaches, methods of preserving peaches, when the 

 peaches were coming on, and what varieties weere used for. 



