86 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



of cities and towns there was a market for apples such as we 

 had, and they were marketed in old baskets, in secondhand 

 barrels, and very largely in bags or any way to get them there, 

 regardless of results upon the fruit itself; and consequently 

 we got very little reward for growing the apples and it was 

 easy enoug'h to say that apple-growing didn't pay. A little later 

 came the city merchant, the commission merchant we have 

 heard about, or the wholesale dealer, who found that he could 

 get the apples in sufficient quantity on the rnarket direct from 

 the farms and went out into the country and bought and packed 

 apples and taught us the trick of packing apples, of putting 

 the best there were in single facing on the head of the barrel, 

 and then a peck or half a bushel of a little inferior ones, but 

 the best there were out of the piles on the ground, and' filling 

 up the barrel with anything. And these went upon the market 

 and apples were sold and handled in that way. Just the way 

 to destroy a market. Your worthy president of the Pomologi- 

 cal Society, and toastmaster, said something about the inferior 

 packing of apples in Rhode Island, Connecticut and ^lassachu- 

 setts. We have a grange down in Connecticut — which I hope 

 you have up her in Maine — and it was my good fortune, and 

 bad fortune for the Pomona Grange of New London County, 

 to go down to one of their meetings a year or so ago. It was a 

 fruit meeting and they wanted me to talk. I never want to talk, 

 but they wanted me to talk on the fruit subject and it occurred to 

 me that we had better have a text. And to have a text for this 

 meeting I sent down to the wholesale fruit store and bought a 

 barrel of apples. It was marked XXX No. i Maine Baldwins. 

 We opened it up there before these Grangers of Connecticut 

 and we found nine fairly good No. i apples on the head — it 

 was faced up to look pretty well. The balance of the headings 

 were 2's and 3's. Down the next layer we had a moderate 

 numtyer of 3's and the balance was low grade cider apples both 

 in size and appearance — XXX No. i Maine Baldwins. You 

 are just waking up. Within the last twenty-five or thirty years, 

 or the last quarter of the last century, with the establishment 

 of the agricultural college and the experiment station, the spread 

 of the horticultural and pomological societies, the work of the 

 institutes in the various states, the grange and the farmers' 

 club anfl all these organizations working together, there has 



