64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



city of Mobile, a commercial community, to get it. I 

 wanted to know something about the fruit productions of 

 the Mississippi valley, and although I found some gentlemen 

 there who were willing to help and who did furnish much 

 information, yet I obtained more, and information that was 

 of greater value, from certain commission men in St. Louis 

 than from any of the fruit growers in the Mississippi valley. 

 And yet we complain that the middlemen get all the profits ! 

 Why? They understand the business end of the matter, 

 while the fruit growers understand only the hard-muscle 

 drudgery of it. We have got to come down to that, and 

 understand fruit culture and fruit marketing from a business 

 stand-point, and then we shall place it where we want to 

 place it and where it ought to be. 



Now, I presume there are a number of farmers here pres- 

 ent who would love dearly to take their wives and daughters 

 and spend the winter in Florida, Ijut they think they cannot 

 aflbrd it. I know one bright, eneroetic farmer from a 

 neio:hborino; State who has £i:one to Florida with his wife 

 and two daughters to spend the winter on the pi'ofits made 

 from handling the apples raised, I will not say by Worces- 

 ter County farmers, but it comes pretty close to it. He 

 studied the fruit markets all this summer, and found out all 

 he could about the fruit supply. He found that up in this 

 part of the country there were more apples than in any 

 other section of the United States of the same size, and he 

 bought a large quantity at from $1.00 to $L25 per barrel ; 

 he has been selling them for from $2.00 to $2.50 a barrel, 

 has got a nice little bank account, and has gone to Florida 

 on the strength of it. And yet here in Massachusetts and 

 all over New England the farmers believe that the middle- 

 men absorb all the })roHts and they get only the hard work. 

 They are satisfied that apple growing does not })ay. This 

 jjentleman to whom I have referred is satisfied it does not 

 pay them, but it pays him. 



Then another point in the same line. Careless packing is 

 a constant source of tr()ul)le and loss. Not long ago two 

 pickers-up of apples from the Western States came to my 

 place and wanted a few carloads of apples. They ofl'ered 

 me from $2.25 to $2.50 a barrel on the track at Hartford for 



