32 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



crops of the farm. I heard a man say last week in Rochester 

 that the apple crop of western New York in '96 was as 

 great a disappointment to the growers as was the apple 

 crop in the garden of Eden. That was because railroads 

 and the transportation companies between the orchard and 

 New York took so much of the selling price of the apples 

 that there was practically nothing left. It seems to me that 

 you are wise in thinking and sa3ang that the apple crop, 

 wisely handled, is one of the best things left for the Con- 

 necticut farmer. You are close to your markets, and, 

 whether apples are high or low, you can cut off the cost 

 of getting apples to the consumer, which will always keep 

 the western man at a disadvantage. You will have to com- 

 pete with the western apple growers, and they have set 

 the pace in the New York market with the Ben Davis apple. 

 You New Englanders are partly responsible for that. You 

 have gone up and down this country and into printed pages 

 of newspapers and books, extolling the merits of the red 

 apple. You have educated the people of this country into 

 the apple-eating habit, and nothing can take it out. Having 

 done this, you have failed to fill the markets with the very 

 apples you talk about, and the result is that the western 

 grower is making use of the advertisement you have paid 

 for in selling Ben Davis. 



There would be no sense in raising Ben Davis apples 

 here in New England to compete with those grown at the 

 west. You have got to show that these Connecticut farms 

 are capable of producing something that is worth while, 

 something that will sell for good hard money. You can 

 do that with your red, crisp, juicy apples, far superior in 

 quality to those grown out west. Make a reputation for 

 high-grade stock, and you will sell all the apples you can 

 grow. 



In one of Whittier's poems occurs the line : " Save thou 

 a soul, if thou would'st save thine own." Changing this 

 a little, I would say to the New England farmer: "Save 

 thou 2l farm, if thou would'st save thine own." This may 

 seem like a radical statement, but I believe that the more 

 you help farms about you to produce good fruit, the more 

 you add to the value and reputation of your own farm. 



