82 STATE POMOLOGICAI. SOCIETY. 



sleigh perhaps, throw a canvas over your barrels so the wind 

 won't strike the barrels very hard, and take them down to the 

 car, load them into a refrigerator car, roll them right in, pack 

 them up in there the same as you do in the fall or summer and 

 tighten up your doors tight, and they won't freeze in going from 

 here to Boston — they won't freeze in going from here to the 

 Pacific coast, I don't believe. We never have had any trouble to 

 amount to anything from freezing in transportation. We warm 

 up the car with an oil stove before we put the fruit in most 

 always, so that the inside of the car is comfortably warm, and 

 we most always pack in with straw — and if you have the very 

 best refrigerator cars this is not necessary; and this way we 

 have with us, we have a c^r that goes to Boston and returns in 

 our own service, in our own name, and when we have a good 

 many apples as we have had this year to ship, we will have two 

 or three cars a week. That keeps us constantly busy through- 

 out the winter ; saves us from getting into trouble ; gives our 

 hired help who don't need money very much but still do like to- 

 have it, plenty of work to do through the winter ; and puts our 

 apples on to the market at a date when the market demands, 

 them, when they want them. 



I don't think that this is the most beneficial year for home 

 storage that we ever have had in the way of getting high prices. 

 It seems to me that the limit is pretty nearly reached in the 

 prices that they are paying for apples this year. Yet it may be 

 that we can double these prices this winter. Very often we 

 double the prices from fall to winter. 



Now I want to consider just a moment the commercial method 

 of buying apples and handling them and putting them onto the 

 market. A man from New York or Boston, or a firm — a mil- 

 lionaire firm generally, sends out agents all over the country, to 

 the west and to the south and in New England, and they send 

 even into Canada to look up apples and find where the locations 

 are. And those agents appoint other agents, and those other 

 agents hire men to pick their apples and pack them and grade 

 them and ship them. They hire the same cars that we are hiring 

 to ship them to some distant point to cold storage; they hold 

 them until they wish to sell them. Now can those men manipu- 

 late that amount of management cheaper than the farmers of 

 Maine? Can they pick those apples cheaper than you can? 



