132 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the basket. I will leave it to you if the same migiht not be 

 said of the eastern apple shipper? It was with us, and is yet 

 in some respects. The question of overproduction often 

 arises ; I myself have my doubts if this ever comes true, for 

 a number of reasons. There are and will be laws made 

 where we do not already have them requiring people to 

 spray and take care of their orchards. What will then hap- 

 pen? Take, for instance, here in New England you have 

 trees that are almost impossible to spray and are so infected 

 with other diseases that it will not pay to w-ork them over, 

 so the only remedy would be to dig them out and start 

 a new orchard, from which you would probably get quicker 

 returns than you would by doctoring tlie sick ones. Again, 

 new markets are being opened every year. I satisfied my- 

 self while here that it was not the good fruit that was hurt- 

 ing the market, but the inferior grade that was doing the 

 business. Again, the large acreage of apples being planted 

 in this country does not signify so much, for I might safely 

 say from personal experience that not one-half, or I might 

 go farther and make it one-third, will ever produce fruit, or 

 be brought to a paying basis, for the simple reason that it 

 is not apple land. You yourselves know that this condition 

 exists here as well as I know it exists in the West. 



On my former trip here a good many people asked my 

 advice about going West to start in the apple business. They 

 would like to have and are sending out inducements to you 

 every year. It is a large country and there is plenty of 

 room for those who have to go there to start in the business, 

 but my advice was, and is yet, stay at home and go into it 

 here. I doubt if one person in a thousand who goes west to 

 grow apples knows what he is up against. The miost of 

 them get the idea that all they have to do is to go to any of 

 those western fruit districts, plant the trees, and in five or 

 six years pick twent\--dollar gold pieces from them. That 

 is a mistaken idea, for a person who makes a success of the 

 business has got tO' work and work hard. Uncleared land in 

 any of those districts costs from two to four hundred dollars 



