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I take off my hat to the men who grew it. But the longer 

 I stayed there and the more I studied the matter, and in 

 particular the more I got behind the scenes and talked with 

 the growers, the more "comfortable" I felt and the more 

 sure I was that I should not need to offer that apology to 

 the fruit growers of New England. 



My second most vivid and lasting impression was that 

 every man. woman and child of those sections was interest- 

 ed in apples. I never saw anything like it ! Not only is 

 the whole coimty, of such a section as Wenatchee or Hood 

 River, one vast orchard, divided up merely by the roads 

 which run through it, but every business in the county is 

 conducted by and for the fruit man ; the banks are officered 

 by orchard owners ; the souvenir cards represent some kind 

 of fruit or some phase of fruit growing, — -perhaps two apples 

 taking up the entire space on top of a fiat ear, or a man haul- 

 ing a single pear out of his orchard with a team of horses ; 

 the hardware stores are full of every contrivance for the 

 benefit of the fruit grower, from cement-coated nails for 

 his apple boxes to the latest type of box press ; every or- 

 chard section and every railroad has its advertising booklet, 

 ornamented with apples in colors ; and even the ladies ' hats, 

 instead of looking like a dishpan or coal hod, as they do 

 with us, looked like a peach basket or an apple box. I can 

 see in this universal interest in the orchard business both an 

 advantage and a disadvantage, both a hope and a menace. 

 On the one hand, it is bound to push the industry forward, 

 it has already done so, and will always do so with an indus- 

 try where men engage in it in a single section. What one 

 man does not think of, another man does, and the busir-ess 

 as a whole is wonderfully advanced. On the other hand, 

 if the time comes when this industry fails or is seriously 

 crippled (even for a single year), the Avhole county is af- 

 fected, and disaster is almost certain. 



]\Iy third impression was in regard to their laws. They 

 are certainly sweeping, yet everybody believes in them and 

 supports them. Two examples will serve to illustrate them. 

 At Wenatchee, Ave were most royally treated by Mr. Ivfike 

 Horan (a Massachusetts boy, by the way) who is known as 

 the "apple king of Wenatchee" and who took us all through 

 the Valley in his automobile. As we were passing by a large 

 orchard, I noticed a big pile of apples, several hundred 

 boxes, piled up near the packing house. They were close to 



