TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 219 



seventy-five cents or eighty cents a basket, and then puts them 

 on the market at a dollar and a half. It stops consumption 

 every time. And the average retailer in the Connecticut mar- 

 ket puts a tax of about fifty cents a basket on top of what they 

 pay the growers for them. It is too much, and it stops con- 

 sumption every time. It injures both the grower and the re- 

 tailer. A few are satisfied with a reasonable profit, but most 

 of them want to double their money. I have seen peaches sold 

 at from sixty to seventy-five cents to eighty cents at the groc- 

 ers' and then seen them displayed in front of the store marked 

 at one dollar and a half a basket, and sometimes beside them 

 some marked at $1.60, some at $1.70, and in some cases they 

 have even tried to squeeze $2.00 out of the public for some of 

 the best of them. So I think the retail dealer, next to frost, 

 is the most serious foe that the peach grower has in the State 

 of Connecticut to-day. A reasonable profit of from twenty- 

 five to fifty cents a basket would be enough. It would help 

 consumption, and help the growers. 



Next comes the brown rot, which was under consideration 

 by Professor Stewart to-day. That practically is the next 

 most dangerous foe that we have. And that, I think, did more 

 damage in the humid regions of America last year than all 

 other diseases put together. The professors in the colleges are 

 at work on that problem, and they have given us a number of 

 suggestions how to control that foe, and I think in time we 

 are going to be able to overcome it altogether. So that is a 

 diminishing foe. 



The next in order would be the "yellows." That is a dis- 

 ease that some call contagious, but anyway it kills our trees, 

 and we do not know yet how to control it, except by pulling 

 the trees up and burning them, destroying them and getting 

 them out of the way. That disease was very serious all up 

 and down the Atlantic Coast, as far as New Hampshire, and 

 we had to wipe out millions of trees to check it. It ha? been 

 less prevalent in late years, because I think we have been 

 watching out for it a little closer. That scourge in eight or 



