SECRETARY'S ANNUAL REPORT. 



the; 1904 SITUATION. 



The Cleveland Leader says the crop of salable apples in the 

 L^nited States this year is acknowledged a little less than fifty 

 millions of barrels, which means something like 30,000,000,000 

 apples, or an apple every day for every man, woman and child 

 in the L'nited States. The editor remarks that these are tre- 

 mendous figures, and the most surprising fact about the apple 

 crop is that all of it might be grown in a single county in the 

 state of Ohio, provided that all the trees were well matured and 

 in good bearing condition. 



Here in Maine the crop is about the same as last year, though 

 some have placed the crop above a million barrels, and it is prob- 

 able that more than 500,000 barrels will go forward to market. 

 In some portions of the State dry weather affected the orchards, 

 but the general conditions were favorable, though the Baldwins 

 were generally of less size than usual. Insects and fungi have 

 been less injurious, and winds and storms dealt kindly with 

 orchards until late in the season. The early autumn frosts 

 injured some of the lowland fruit, and the later frosts were still 

 more injurious. There has been a scarcity of help, barrels have 

 sold from 30 to 42 cents, and worse than all the price of fruit 

 has been very low. As a result thousands of barrels of Maine 

 apples were not harvested at all, and thousands of those that 

 were were fed out to stock later in the season. 



THE MARKETS. 



There were fewer buyers than usual and these started out at 

 a dollar per barrel. Nearby fruits supplied the Boston market, 

 where the price was off for everything save a few varieties. The 

 outlet — in manv cases the onlv outlet — was to send the fruit to 



