132 



We used to have these same unbelievers with us whan 

 ^ve talked organization, and some of them hung back for 

 five years, but as we continued to get better prices, they be- 

 gan to believe there was something to it and came into the 

 fold. The first year after the Hood River Apple Growers, 

 XTnion was organized we received $2.00 per box for apples, 

 which the year before brought us $1.00 and $2.25 for appbs 

 for which we received $1.25 per box, so you can see what the 

 organizing of the growers did for us. The Apple Growers 

 X^nion has as its members at least 95 per cent, of the Growers 

 of Hood River Valley. The Association does the packing of 

 the apples for its members. No grower is allowed to pack 

 his own fruit for very few of them could see the flaws in his 

 own fruit that he could see in his neighbors. So in or- 

 der to keep the grade and pack the same, it hires its packers 

 and the work is charged to the growers. It is a very hard 

 thing for the good apples in the box or barrel to bring ud 

 the price of the poor fruit you put in, but no where near as 

 much as the poor will bring down the price of the good, so 

 ^we have to be on the alert all the time and keep our stand- 

 ard up. 



Another thing that helps us to get the fruit we do is th3 

 laws we have in regard to spraying our orchards and the 

 marketing wormy or diseased fruit. We can sell the wormy 

 or diseased apples to the vinegar factory, but if they are of- 

 fered for sale on the market, they become the property of 

 the Fruit Inspector, and he gives them a dose of Kerosene, 

 which makes them unfit for use. So with these conditions 

 and the high price of land it does not stand a grower in 

 hand, to raise much of the inferior grade of fruit. 



The question has been asked will it pay to renovate 

 some of our old trees. One of the finest examph^s I evr^r saAV 

 of this work was performed by Mr. George A. Drew at 

 Greenwich, Conn., who took an old orchard that was in very 

 bad condition and has brought it back in very fine shape. I 

 saw the trees last fall at picking time and they looked good 

 and had a fine crop of Baldwins and R. I. Greenings, but the 

 question arises, are not the majority of these old trees so in- 

 fected with different diseases that it would be doubtful 

 whether we would get a healthy wood growth and would 

 there not be danger of the new growth breaking from the old 

 part of the tree when it commenced to bear a heavy crop, I 

 think I saw several cases of this kizid last fall, and then agai.i 



