662 



^=MERICAJ^ BEE lOlJFNAL 



Oct. 16, 1902. 



years there has been a good deal done 

 in the way of legislation in a few of 

 the States — only a few of them — and 

 more ought to be done. Take the mat- 

 ter of foul brood alone : without legis- 

 lation foul brood is going to spread, 

 and spread, and spread, you may count 

 on that, because here is a man who has 

 foul brood in his apiary, and if he can 

 go on with it without let or hindrance 

 from any officer of the law, he may be 

 such a man as to do so, and the thing 

 will spread into the apiaries of his 

 neighbors. 



Now. I don't know just how, but I 

 think possibly the Association might 

 do something to help secure legisla- 

 tion in the different States ; for, re- 

 member this, friends, if jou have a 

 good foul-brood law in your State you 

 will be perhaps to a certain degree 

 safe from it, but you will be a great 

 deal safer from it if ever3' State touch- 

 ing your borders has just as good a 

 law: and the man who lives in Col- 

 orado ought to be anxious that there 

 should be a good foul brood law in 

 Florida. 



Another thing that I think might be 

 done bj- this Association is, as was 

 suggested to me bj- one of the mem- 

 bers, to originate a propaganda. I am 

 not sure whether I know exactly what 

 the word means, it is a big svord — a 

 propaganda to help make the public 

 understand, and feel, and know, that 

 honey is a good thing, and that the use 

 of honey as a sweet is a great deal bet- 

 ter for the public health than the use 

 of so much sugar. 



Now, I could make a whole, long 

 speech on that, but I have a little 

 human nature about me, and I wouldn't 

 be so hard on you as to give it to you 

 now. I do not believe, however, that 

 the public knows anything, compara- 

 tively, about that matter, and the Asso- 

 ciation could do something, perhaps, 

 towards getting into the public prints 

 information that would possibly be 

 accepted as reading matter by some of 

 the leading journals, and in that way 

 it would be spread abroad throughout 

 the whole land. You know very well 

 that the public press does influence. 

 You know there have been certain 

 statements made that have gone the 

 rounds of the press that have helped 

 to bring down the price of your honey. 

 You know it. don't you? And if a 

 simple statement that has gone the 

 rounds of the press, saying that in Chi- 

 cago you mix up a mess and get up 

 comb honey and sear it over with a hot 

 iron — if that statement can have an 

 effect to hurt the market a whole lot, 

 then counter statements telling about 

 the purity of honey and the wholesome- 

 ness of it might have a good deal of 

 effect in helping the market. The 

 Association may be able to do some- 

 thing in that direction. 



Just one more thing, and that is, I 

 believe, that there is not — and I am not 

 sure whether I am not getting over a 

 higher fence than I ought to just now 

 — but I will say that I believe there 

 ought to be a closer connection be- 

 tween this Association and the Gov- 

 ernment. I believe the Government, 

 through the apicultural investigator, 

 Prof. Frank Benton, is doing a good 

 work. I believe it might possibly do a 

 better work if it had the hearty co- 

 operation of this Association. On the 

 other hand, I believe that this Associa- 

 tion might do better work if it were 



more closely in touch with the work 

 going on in Washington. 



Now, there is not the close acquaint- 

 anceships that tliere ought to be. I 

 think, between those two parts. It 

 may be I am wrong ; it may be it is a 

 good thing to keep them apart. But 1 

 don't believe it. I believe they ought 

 to be close together. I believe I ought 

 to know what Prof. Benton is doing, 

 and I believe he ought to be willing to 

 tell me what is going on, what he 

 wants to do, what lie would like to do, 

 what he thinks can be done, and ought 

 to be done ; and I don't believe he is 

 averse to letting me know that. I don't 

 know that anybody has ever asked him. 

 (Turning to Prof. Benton.) Prof. Ben- 

 ton, I would like to have you tell me 

 all about what you are doing, and if, 

 at the same time, you would be willing 

 to tell the Association, we will go in 

 together, and it will cost us less to put 

 that information before the bee-keep- 

 ing public than to have you write a 

 whole lot of letters to each of us sep- 

 arately. I believe there ought to be a 

 whole lot of good work done in Wash- 

 ington, and we, as an Association, 

 ought to be in harmony, and we ought 

 to work together. 



Now, if out of all those fields you 

 know the answer to the question, 

 " Which is the most promising field ?" 

 3'ou know more than I do I don't 

 know. C. C. MuLER. 



Rev. E. T. Abbott then followed with 

 a response on the same subject : _ 



The Most Hopeful Field for the Na. 

 tional Association. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, and Members of 

 the Association: 



I do not know but that I owe the 

 chairman an apology. I do not know 

 that he waited for me, but I got here 

 late. It was a case of sickness. That 

 is the reason I was a little late. 



Now, about that lost paper : I will 

 say that I copied it immediately, or I 

 had uiy helper do it, and stowed it 

 away in a pigeon-hole very carefully to 

 bring to the convention. It is in the 

 pigeon-hole yet ; I haven't seen it 

 since I 



The question of the productiveness 

 of a field is purely a question of proper 

 cultivation. There are various fields 

 of work that might be productive, if 

 they were properly cultivated. It is 

 not a question of cultivation only, but 

 of proper cultivation. There may be 

 a number of reasons why a field will 

 not yield proper returns. Every farmer 

 who has studied modern farming care- 

 fully understands that there is fertility 

 enough in any soil that has ever been 

 cultivated in the United States to pro- 

 duce a crop ; and there is also fertility 

 enough in a great deal of soil that has 

 never been cultivated at all to produce 

 a crop where people suppose now that 

 nothing will grow. It is only a ques- 

 tion of knowing how to unlock the fer- 

 tility and bring it to the surface so 

 that it can be appropriated by the 

 plant that may grow in the soil. Now, 

 this is just as true in our work as it is 

 in real soil-work. Some farmers do 

 not succeed ; they do not live in Col- 

 orado. All in Colorado succeed : you 

 can tell that by the clothes they wear, 

 and the way the women are dressed. 

 They do not get that kind of clothes 

 out of nothing. 



A good friend of mine said, " I would 

 like to know where they got the mate- 

 rial to build this city. There is nothing 

 around it ; I came across a great 

 desert, or what looked as barren as 

 one ; I can not understand it." I said. 

 " If you go back into these hills and 

 unlock their treasures, and understand 

 the fertility which is in these valleys, 

 you would know something more about 

 it. You would know there was fer- 

 tility some place, that there were fields 

 properly cultivated somewhere, by 

 looking at this well-dressed crowd of 

 people, or those you meet on the streets 

 of Denver, or any place in Colorado." 



There are farmers who do not suc- 

 ceed, and there are reasons for that 

 lack of success, a few of which I want 

 to mention. 



One is ignorance. There are two 

 kinds of ignorance — one is culpable 



II EV. /■ 



AiiimrT. 



ignorance ; it is willful, persistent, 

 downright ignorance, of the kind I 

 have no sympathy with ; there is some 

 of that in the world. There is not as 

 much of it, however, as we are inclined 

 to think, sometimes. I think that 

 some of the ignorance comes from fol- 

 lowing only the special line in which 

 one is interested. The mind does not 

 act on a thing until it has something 

 to awaken it to activity in that special 

 channel, or along that special line, so 

 that it comes to pass that there are 

 many people in the country who have 

 no knowledge of a multitude of things 

 because the activities of their brains 

 have never been centered on that spe- 

 cial thing. That is true with regard 

 to the subject of honey. That is true 

 with regard to the popular ignorance 

 of the ordinary reporter ; I do not 

 blame the ordinary reporter for not 

 knowing anything about bees, an)- 

 more than I do the young man we 

 heard sung about last night, who sat 

 on the bee, and had trouble with his 

 girl because he did. They did not tell 

 us what the trouble was, but the prob- 

 abilities are there zras trouble. Now. 

 I do not blame that young man for not 

 knowing about that bee, because he 

 was more interested in the girl than he 

 was in the bee. 



