TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. 171 



I came here to see you some six years ago, and according 

 to my best recollection, there wasn't an apple exhibit in your 

 meeting. I think we are a little ahead of you yet, and I think 

 we can keep ahead. 



We want something else beside money, but we are going 

 to try to keep ahead there in Virginia, and wc are going to, 

 if it takes some time. We are going to advertise our stufif. and 

 we think we have got a pretty good proposition. 



Xow, it is approaching the hour of adjournment, but I 

 am going to risk tiring you just five minutes longer. 



Last winter a number of apple dealers from Chicago and 

 New York came to Washington to appear before the Com- 

 mittee on Agriculture and advocate the LaFean bill, which 

 was nothing more nor less than to standardize apple grading 

 and packing, making a standard barrel and box and packing 

 and grading, and I met Hale there, of course I ahvays 

 meet him where there is anything to be done for the fruit in- 

 terests of the country, and we appeared before the Committee 

 on Agriculture. W^e also met from fifty to sixty men from 

 Washington and Oregon, violently opposing that standardi- 

 zation of apple packing and packages. They had for their 

 personal counsel jNIr. Benjamin Poindexter, who has since 

 been elected to the Senate of the United States, and I under- 

 stand largely on account of the interest he has taken in the 

 fruit growers of his state, and they were opposed to any 

 standardization of apple packing and packages, and they beat 

 the bill. Now I don't know why. We have been taught to 

 believe that Oregon and Washington were the two states of 

 all the Union that wanted standardization, but apparently they 

 do not. I prophesied this, that the time w^ould come wdien 

 they would be knocking at the doors of the Capitol to get the 

 very bill through they were opposing at that time. 



Well, at that time the Oregon people were particularly 

 bumptious, as I thought, about what they were doing, and T 

 had secured some figures from the Agricultural Department 

 before I had gone up to the Capitol, and I made this 

 statement. I made the statement that Winchester, \irginia. 



