LOCATING THE ORCHARD 7 



tion which will assist in marketing the crop. 

 The western men have the edge on us there, and 

 as a result their business organizations are 

 each year putting their crop on the market to 

 far greater advantage than we have ever done 

 in the East. In 1920 the majority of the 

 New York growers had big crops and nearly 

 all of them lost money. Had there been some 

 sort of organization among them the crop 

 might have been marketed at a profit instead 

 of being dumped at a loss. Eventually the 

 Pacific markets will take larger amounts of the 

 western crop and at that time the two sections 

 may well be considered equal as to their re- 

 spective advantages. 



After deciding on the geographical location 

 of the orchard the prospective grower must 

 run the gauntlet of sundry and various real- 

 estate dealers who will assure him that they 

 know apple land when they see it. Selling ap- 

 ple land to suckers has been a pleasant and 

 profitable pastime for years past, in many sec- 

 tions. Several years ago we had an epidemic 

 of "orchard companies" that proposed to plant 

 orchards in blocks of a few acres and to care 

 for these blocks until the orchard came into 

 bearing. Many such orchards were sold and 

 many uninformed city people bought "individ- 

 ual tracts" as a sort of old-age insurance. 

 With the prospectus of the company before 



