STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Il5 



My friends nearly all were doubtful of my success. But I went 

 to setting out trees, and when people would go along the road, 

 I would sometimes hear their remarks. They would say: "If 

 that fellow thinks he is going to get a living by growing fruit 

 on that place, he will just starve to death. That is what will 

 happen to him." And again, "Don't that man know better than 

 to set trees up on that side hill.'' They never will live." And 

 the best business man in the section said that the venture would 

 be a failure. He said : "I have owned a farm myself, and I 

 have capital enough to run it, and I have run it for eight years, 

 and that farm and stock are now for sale." 



But I was in a different business from that in which he was 

 engaged, and I knew several points about the business. I 

 didn't know as much about growing fruit then as I do now, but 

 from the dealer's standpoint I knew it, and the idea came to 

 me about the Ben Davis. When I was buying apples I drove 

 into \lr. True's door-yard one day, and he was packing a very 

 nice looking barrel of apples. I saw that they were Ben Davis 

 api i, and I asked him how they happened to grow so large 

 and une. "Well," he said, "that tree grew where I cultivated." 

 I mistook the apple at first for a King of Thompkins. It was 

 larger than any Ben Davis I had ever seen. And it struck me 

 that if one tree could be made to produce Ben Davis apples like 

 that, there was no reason why a thousand could not, and I 

 have followed, as best I could, that suggestion in regard to the 

 Ben Davis, and in regard to others. I do not confine myself 

 strictly to Ben Davis. In fact, today I haye a great many 

 more trees of other varieties than I have of Ben Davis. But 

 the idea of cultivation has proven very good. I have since 

 then added two more farms to the original purchase, and have 

 now about five hundred acres, and as many trees as I can take 

 care of, and perhaps more. 



But we come here and talk about these things, and then we 

 go home and do something else. We say : "It is a safe invest- 

 ment. It is all right." But we are not willing to invest our 

 money that way, or to loan it to others for a like investment. 

 A man with whom I am well acquainted has a farm with a 

 thousand young trees on it. It is a hundred acre farm, with a 

 good wood lot, close by a village. And among the other nice 

 things that he had on that piece of property was a mortgage of 



