STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 53 



T think we want to get rid of that thing, and that all the apples 

 packed in the state of Maine that are branded as No. I's 

 should be marked under the same brand, — for instance, "No. i 

 Maine Baldwins," and all the apples that are packed as fancies 

 should be marked simply "Fancy." 



I will say a word in regard to the new apple packing law. 

 This law, passed by the last legislature, has created much dis- 

 cussion among the people of the state, and when the depart- 

 ment, with whom it was left to enforce the law, commenced 

 operations and sent out inspectors, we found a condition of 

 affairs that in some respects had not been dreamed of. Our 

 work this year has been largely educational, teaching men 

 what the law is, what it means, and trying to induce them not 

 only to follow its precepts, but even to do better. We find a 

 large numlber of farmers who ship a few barrels of apples to 

 market. Many of them seem to have very little knowledge of 

 how to brand a barrel of apples. They do it with a pencil, 

 in the old way, writing in a way that is almost illegible. Now 

 of course it was one task of ours to try to counteract that, to 

 try to induce growers and those people who were not in the 

 habit of shipping many apples to use a printed form, a printed 

 blank, or something that would look neat and would cover 

 the law. We have succeeded in a measure, and it is our inten- 

 tion before another year to work this matter out and try to 

 teach those men who ship apples in small quantities to brand- 

 them better. Of course the shipper of apples, the buyer, 

 stencils his apples as a rule. But for these people who do 

 but little business we hope that we may work out something 

 that they may all use, and that when we come around to an- 

 other crop we may not find the difficulty which we have found 

 this year. 



As I said before, we find buyers, speculators in apples, with 

 all sorts of minds, and we found some buyers that didn't want 

 to grade their apples, but mark them "unclassified," which we 

 did not like. We found some who still wanted to continue 

 the old practice of putting in poor apples and marking them 

 No. I, but as a rule the shippers have been ready to conform 

 to the requests of the law. It seems to me, if they could get 

 together themselves and agree upon a standard pack, so that 

 a barrel of No. i apples might be pretty near like another 

 barrel of No. i apples, it would be very helpful. 



