32 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



COLD STORAGE. 



One of the great needs of the fruit industry of our State, and 

 the first calling for attention at this stage of our progress, is cold 

 storage. There are millions of barrels of choice fruit seeking a 

 market and not a cold storage warehouse in the State, and 

 scarcely a suitable place for the temporary storage of a single 

 barrel ! This is the situation in Maine today. If we propose to 

 continue in the business of fruit growing, and especially if we 

 intend to increase it and make it a special feature of our efforts, 

 as this society has been and now is urging, there should be facili- 

 ties provided for suitable storage. 



Not only in the shipping trade abroad is this cold storage 

 necessary, but it is even more important in catering to the home 

 markets. Cold storage is now controlling in large measure the 

 markets for all perishable products, and none of them more than 

 fruit. Maine is a fruit growing State. Its fruit products are 

 now of sufficient value to be taken care of. This fruit produc- 

 tion, through the influence of this society and the general advance 

 of a knowledge of the profits of the business is sure to largely 

 increase in the future. The sooner provision is made to care for 

 it in a manner to insure largest returns to the grower the better. 

 If money is needed to provide such facilities as are needed we 

 have it in plenty seeking investment. Money from the farms 

 going into our savings banks, thence to distant states for invest- 

 ment would better far be used to extend, improve, perfect and 

 render still more profitable the business that made it. 



Just what facilities for storage may be needed under existing 

 conditions is a question that this society may well, for the benefit 

 of the industry, investigate. First of all, I do not hesitate to 

 suggest, better storage at the farm where the fruit is grown is 

 called for. Fruit as soon as taken from the trees should go 

 directly into cold storage, or if not into technically "cold storage," 

 then into a storage that though only moderately cold would store 

 from changes of atmosphere to which nearly all our home storage 

 is now subject. This provision alone w^ould be an important 

 step in advance. Fruit houses on the farm, or in the orchard, 

 constructed with absolutely air tight surroundings, would prove 

 of great value and are not costly. Several neighbors could unite 

 in their erection and each share in their advantages. In some 



