No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 69 



more in the pockets of the farmers of Worcester County 

 than they have to-day. Quite a nice little protit lost on one 

 season's crop. That is a good deal of money, and they 

 could use it to good advantage, most of them. Some of 

 them would not want it, but they could get rid of it among 

 their neiohbors. But with the situation as it is, with the 

 tendency towards cheaper production and better handling, 

 it seems to me there is a wonderful opportunity for co-oper- 

 ative apple orchards. Large and small farmers adjoining 

 each other mioht take down their fences and walls and make 

 one great apple orchard of lifty or perhaps a hundred or two 

 hundred acres, and manage it with the same care and from 

 an emphatically business stand-point as the successful manu- 

 facturers of Massachusetts manage their business ; and the 

 apples could be sold at prices which would return a good 

 deal more than ten per cent on the capital, — probably 

 twenty, perhaps thirty per cent. That seems to me a 

 wonderful opportunity for farmers to co-0})erate in a way 

 that would bring tremendous results. That may not be 

 possible everywhere, for the farms may not be just suited to 

 it, or the men. The farms might be suited to it, and the 

 men not. Just as likely as not the men would not work 

 together. But where they would work together there is a 

 grand chance for a business venture that would be much 

 better than lending money on Western farm mortgages. It 

 would be a great deal safer, there would be lots more fun in 

 it, and it would be better for Massachusetts. Where the 

 fiirms were not properly situated for that work, there might 

 be opportunities for co-operation in another way. Some 

 men may have farms that are not adapted to the growing of 

 small fruits but just suited to orchards. These farmers 

 have the farms, the skill and the energy, but not the capital. 

 There is an opportunity for the men of capital to join hands 

 with the farmers, the men of means furnishing the capital, 

 the others the lands for orchard planting, and develop large 

 orchards in that way ; and not only large orchards but large 

 vineyards, and great fields of small fruits. Many of the 

 small fruit cultivators of to-day are unsuccessful financially, 

 and one of the reasons of their want of success is thought to 

 be the lack of a suflicient supply of moisture just at the 



