208 HOME FRUIT GROWER 



growing popular, not only in their day but for ours. They undertook 

 and with their own private capital completed monumental works. 

 Nowadays the Government and the individual States pay their suc- 

 cessors and supply the funds to solve modern fruit problems. There- 

 fore, it behooves these successors to make broad, instead of narrow, 

 specialists of themselves so they may sympathize with and encourage 

 amateur, as well as commercial, fruit growing in their respective regions; 

 for among the amateurs, probably far more than among the commercial 

 fruit growers, are our authorities of the rising and future generations 

 to be found. To determine the truth of this statement I suggest that 

 my auditors examine the list of present-day investigators, teachers and 

 writers on fruit growing to see how few are the sons of commercial, and 

 how many of Amateur fruit growers. The result I venture to say will 

 be surprising. 



Let me hasten to say my audience is mistaken if it has concluded 

 from these remarks that I advocate a return to the hit-or-miss methods 

 of former days. I most certainly do not. I am a firm advocate of 

 every method that makes for better fruit and more of it. What I have 

 striven to emphasize is the importance of replacing the now largely 

 decrepit fruit plantations with new ones of the choicest varieties to 

 be handled according to the best modern methods. Ry the establish- 

 ment of such plantations the standards of excellence will continue to 

 rise or at least be maintained. Fruit growing should, and thereby 

 can be made to minister perhaps as favorably as music, art and litera- 

 ture, to the sensibilities of the family, the community and the nation. 

 And finally, such environments as superior family fruit plantations 

 afford seem to be the most favorable for the training of future fruit 

 lovers and specialists among the rising generation. Thereby home 

 fruits will naturally continue as in the past to be educators of public 

 taste. 



As a postscript to the above address let me say a few words as to 

 Originating New Varieties. In these days of Government and State 

 departments of agriculture, of agricultural colleges and experiment 

 stations, and of huge commercial fruit-growing interests, amateur 

 fruit growers are too prone to consider themselves as merely amateurs 

 and therefore relegated to a less useful class than that of the scientists. 

 From the spectacular standpoint they are doubtless correct, because 

 they have neither institution nor title to push them, whether worthy or 

 not, into prominence. Nevertheless, without the least intention to belittle 

 the work of the scientists it must be said that the world owes an in- 

 calculable debt of gratitude, to say nothing of monetary considerations, 



