76 BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. [Pul). Doc. 



In order to manage the business part of fruit culture there 

 should be from the beginning an everlasting faith in your 

 business and in the markets that you supply. Your aim 

 should be to grow only the very best of fruits ; you will have 

 poor ones enough anyway ; and after growing them the very 

 best you can, pack them in the most business-like manner, 

 in the best style, in the most attractive-looking packages ; 

 pack them all the way honest from top to bottom, and yet 

 make the top just as pretty and attractive as possible. You 

 cannot put on too much style. People buy fruit to eat, and 

 yet the proper way to get them to buy it is to please their 

 taste, — not the taste of their mouths, l)ut the taste of their 

 eyes first. Give it an attractive, showy appearance, and 

 then you can get your money for it. I have a neighbor 

 who produces small fruit for the market. He is a most 

 thorough cultivator and a most careful and close inspector 

 of his packers. There is never anything of a poor quality, 

 never any unripeness or over-ripeness in his berries, they are 

 packed in the best and freshest-looking baskets, and then he 

 goes into the market and gets from forty to sixty per cent 

 increase per basket over the best. I never knew him to 

 overload the market. You have a cultivator here in ]Massa- 

 chusetts, A. G. Sharp of Richmond, who is growing fruit in 

 the same way, who grows the very finest berries I know 

 of in the State. He grows raspberries, blackberries and 

 currants, and has made more money the last two years on 

 two acres of currants than most of you have on any two acres 

 on your farm. He does it by thorough cultivation, by lib- 

 eral feeding, careful picking, and stylish but honest packing. 

 He goes so fiir in some markets as to put his card in his 

 packages, giving his name and address, and then saying on 

 the bottom, "Price always five cents above the market." 

 But his demand is always greater than his supi)ly. These 

 men do not begin to fill the markets, and they never will, 

 because Massachusetts is on the upward grade, and working 

 higher and higher in its taste and refinement and in its 

 demand for an abundance of these good things. 



Now, all this is from the commercial stand-]ioint, from the 

 business stand-point, from the stand-point of getting greater 

 cash returns to the farmer. But there is another side to fruit 



