No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 77 



culture, and that is for the home supply. That is the ])iggest 

 market of all, that is the l)est market of all. Hundreds of 

 farmers and hundreds of small home owners in Massachusetts 

 are working hard six days in the week to earn money from 

 some ftirm crop or some vocation in life to go into the 

 markets and buy home comforts, while at the same time 

 they are not having the home comforts of fruit that they 

 ouoht to have. There are hundreds and thousands of farmers 

 in the State of Massachusetts who do not have a full supply 

 of wholesome, healthy fruit. They ought to be ashamed of 

 it. There is a market that is not supplied. Their wives 

 and children are hungry, — yes, just hungry — for good, 

 wholesome fruits. They are feeding them on pork and 

 potatoes, or else going to market and spending their hard- 

 earned money to buy some other foods that are not as whole- 

 some, not as tasteful, not as refining, and also making a great 

 deal more work in the house to prepare that food for the 

 table, while they neglect the fruits that lie right out in their 

 own soil, if they would only develop them. The soil is just 

 full of delicious strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and 

 currants. Every acre of Massachusetts land is just chock 

 full of them ; all you have got to do is to work them out, 

 and it is not so very hard work, either. I have a friend in 

 Connecticut who is a manufacturer, but he keeps a little 

 half-acre of ground for a fruit garden, and charges up all 

 the fruit that goes into the house at the market prices, 

 and he calculates that he has got at the rate of about seven 

 hundred dollars an acre off that piece of land annually. It 

 pays him better than any of his manufacturing industries, 

 his family is a great deal better satisfied, and his neighbors 

 too. He has not only enough for his family, but enough to 

 give to his neighbors and make them happy. 



I think perhaps, Mr. Chairman, I have talked long enough 

 on this line, and it would be better for me to answer any 

 questions that the audience may desire to ask than to take 

 up any more time in talking upon matters which, however 

 interesting they may be to me, may not interest you so 

 much . 



The Chairmax. The speaker has said that the question is 

 so broad that he could not take it up in detail and discuss it 



