30 



farmers came to feel that anything which the western farmer 

 could produce he was bound to win on, and they have there- 

 fore the more assiduously stuck to truck and dairying, where 

 they were safe from that competition. But just as at the 

 " ^Rational Corn Show " last year it was a young man from 

 Connecticut who took the prize for the highest yield of corn 

 per acre in the United States, and who is now giving pointers 

 and selling seed corn to his western competitors, so I believe 

 that if the eastern orchardists will only try it, they can as 

 fully and easily upset the notion that the west has an absolute 

 and iron-clad lead in the production of apples. 



jSText to the question of land, and more important in some 

 ways, I should place the matter of the quality of IS'ew Eng- 

 land-grown fruit. I believe that there is no other section 

 where the flavor and aroma and juiciness and sweetness, and, 

 in fact, all those factors on which we base our estimate of 

 the quality of an apple, are more highly developed than right 

 here. This is not my own judgment alone, though I have 

 had many opportunities of comparing the fruit from this 

 region with that from other sections, and particularly with 

 the far western apples so generally found in full possession 

 of our best fruit stores. And almost without exception, when 

 our eastern apples were as well grown and had been as care- 

 fully handled, — which I am sorry to be obliged to admit 

 was not always the case, — almost without exception I have 

 had no hesitation in saying that the advantage in quality 

 lay strongly on the side of our home apples. Prof. John 

 Craig of Cornell, one of the highest authorities on such mat- 

 ters, one of the judges at Oregon's " ISTational Apple Show " 

 last year, and a man who has had frequent opportunities of 

 testing this matter, has repeatedly expressed the opinion, 

 both publicly and privately, that for quality eastern apples 

 were in the lead. The late Charles Downing held the same 

 view. He received apples from all over this continent where 

 they were grown in his day, and expressed the opinion that 

 the mountain regions of Virginia and North Carolina and 

 the orchard sections of higher latitude — ISTova Scotia, ISTew 

 England, etc. — produced apples of the highest excellence 



