190 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



because I consider they are growing the finest apple trees 

 that can be found. It ma}^ not surprise you to know 

 that they sometimes furnisli a great many apple trees that 

 go to dealers in New York and come l)ack again to New 

 England from Geneva and Syracuse. As I said, the trouble 

 is the way the business is done. A man takes an order. 

 His business is not like handling other merchandise ; it is 

 handling live stock. They are not suliject to the same abuse 

 in transmission, so that, to carry on the business of a large 

 line of canvassing jobbers, they employ canvassers, and the 

 canvassers take the orders and send them to the jobbers, 

 who pack them to different parts of the country, and these 

 persons who sell to you take your orders, and usually some- 

 body else delivers the goods. That seems to be one of the 

 peculiarities of the business. It is impossiljle to do the 

 business in the short time that they have at their command. 

 They have only five or six weeks in which to do the busi- 

 ness of the year, w hile every other kind of merchant has 

 twelve months to do his business. Thousands and hundreds 

 of thousands of trees, vines, shrubs and plants have been 

 packed, and are to-day in cold storage, in cellars all through 

 the fruit-growing region of New York State, and as early as 

 the middle of February the orders from the canvassers will 

 be sent to the general head, and wherever they may have 

 established their packing quarters the work of packing be- 

 gins all through the month of March. If you go into those 

 places 3'ou will find them filling orders from all over New 

 England. They are packed carefully and done up in straw, 

 and packed in cases and marked for the places that they are 

 to go. Then they are started along about the first of April, 

 or as soon as it is safe to ship on account of frost. You 

 will find these boxes at the railroad stations all over New 

 York, and a week or ten days sometimes will pass before a 

 person comes to deliver them, so that the trees are not dug 

 fresh from the soil. It is an utter impossibility for the men 

 to do it, so they are two months out of the ground ; they 

 are two months in the packing boxes many times before they 

 are distributed. And then the man that handles them goes 

 and un})acks the box, and sets them all up around the stable 

 or wherever the place may be, and many times puts them 



