MASSACHUSETTS FRUIT GROWERS' 

 ASSOCIATION 



Fourteenth Annual Meeting, March \\-\2^ 



t908 

 WEDNESDAY, MARCH U, 10 A M; 



The fourteenth annual meeting opened in Horticul- 

 tural Hall under the most favorable conditions and with 

 the usual number of members present. 



President C. A. Whitney called the meeting to order. ' 

 "We are very fortunate in meeting here to-day to be 

 favored with the chief executive of the City of Worcester, 

 .his Honor, Mayor Logan." 

 Address of welcome by Mayor Logan : 



"Ladies and Gentlemen: As mayor of the city of Wor- 

 -cester, I am very glad to welcome to our city the members 

 of the Fruit Growers' Association of Massachusetts. 



Now the business in which you gentlemen are engaged 

 is one of the oldest of which we have any knowledge as it 

 was begun in the Garden of Eden, and, if the record is 

 true, the growing of fruit got us into considerable trouble 

 then which has lasted ever since. 



As I understand it one of the objects of this association 

 is to improve the quality of fruit and incidentally to put the 

 .price up to the rest of us. I have one or two things to say on 

 this question. It seems to me that there has been a great 

 .deterioration in the quality of fruit sincel was a boy but I 

 am glad that you men are trying to do your best to improve 

 it. While optimistic in most things, in the matter of fruit I 

 Am pessimistic and I sigh for the fruit that we had when I 

 was a boy. The fruit we used to get (not buy, mind you, 

 used to taste so good. I can almost taste those peaches, 

 pears, plums and apples that our neighbors used to raise. 

 That was before the day of barbed-wire fences. 



I trust .your convention here will be successful and 



