No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 63 



handsome profits. A few peaches are grown as a specialty 

 by some farmers, and as this is done with more care and the 

 fruit marketed with more intelligence, there are better profits. 

 The only way, it seems to me, out of this difificulty is to go 

 into the production of fruit in New England as a matter of 

 business, — go into it from a business stand-point. I try to 

 urge upon people who are setting out trees for a little orchard 

 or a great orchard to study the business of growing fruit just 

 as successful cattle men study their business. Make a 

 business of it, study it and understand it, just as your 

 sharp, alert dairymen study the subject of cattle foods. 

 That is just what we have got to do, if the business is ever to 

 be what it ought to be. In the first place, study yourselves, 

 then study the plant, the soil and the market, and then there 

 will be your opportunity. There is a growing desire for 

 knowled2;e of these thino;s, but on the whole it is hard to 

 find any considerable number of farmers or fruit growers 

 who know very much about the business from a business 

 stand-point. 



Three years ago I was placed in charge of five special hor- 

 ticultural investigations of the Census Bureau at Washino'ton, 

 and one of the things I had to do was to learn all I could 

 about certain fruit interests of the country, — about the 

 soils, the varieties, the markets, the picking and handling, 

 and the work all the way through ; and I got up a schedule 

 of questions that I sent to the fruit growers all over the 

 country. I had the names of all the fruit growers in the 

 United States who produced anything for sale, and of all the 

 commercial men who handled these products, and I sent one 

 of these schedules to every man whose name I had, asking 

 for this information. I am ashamed to say, brother farmers, 

 that I often got more information in reo:ard to the growing 

 and management of fruit say in Worcester County, Mass., 

 from some men in the city of Boston who were dealers than 

 I could get from any farmer or fruit grower in Worcester 

 County, taking it as a whole. I wanted to learn something 

 about certain branches of fruit culture in the lower part of 

 the State of Alabama, and I thought if I could get hold of 

 some men there eno:a2:ed in fruit culture I could get the 

 desired information ; but I found I had to go to men in the 



