NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 3 



instances where apples have played a very important part 

 in our existence. We can find apples in pies, we can find 

 apples all through our lives. I well remember going to my 

 dear old aunt's in the country, in a house where my grand- 

 father was born, and what boy has really had a liberal edu- 

 cation if he has not been given a straw and sent down 

 into an old cob-webbed cellar to suck cider through the 

 bung-hole of a barrel? Those are joys that come from 

 apples, and we have experienced them, but you have not 

 come here for that purpose. You have come here to learn 

 how to raise better apples, and how to make money out 

 of those apples. In the old days some rather had the 

 notion that all anybody had to do was to set out the trees, 

 and then sit down in the house and let the trees grow, and 

 then the apples would grow, and then they would fall off 

 on the ground and they would pick them up after they 

 had fallen off because it was too much work to pick them 

 off the trees ; most of them were only fit for cider, but occa- 

 sionally there would be a few that the man could get 

 enough to pay for carting them to the city. That was of 

 the days before you had a Pomological Society, and before 

 people had got where they appreciated the fact that the 

 trees were not to be depended upon to do all the work, but 

 that the man himself had got to work and use intelligence 

 in order to produce a crop that would be profitable. And 

 you to-day will undoubtedly find out how it is that they 

 raise this beautiful fruit that I see exhibited here on the 

 stage before me. 



There is one thing that I want to bring out particu- 

 larly, and that is the waste that comes where the cost of 

 distribution is so great that you have complaint on both 

 sides. We hear talk of the great cost of living and the 

 high cost of farm products, and then on the other side, we 

 hear about the small prices that the farmer or the producer 

 gets. What is the trouble? I think that one reason for 

 that situation is because so much monev and so much 



