96 STATE POMOEOGICAI, SOCIETY, 



Streets well kept as such a hilly town can keep its streets — so 

 much for your town. Now when I came back from there I felt 

 a little chilly and my wife and I walked across the river up and 

 down the streets, looking into your business places. A gentle- 

 man said to me last night, "Oh, ho, you think more of the busi- 

 ness of a town than you do of the horticulture, do you?" I says, 

 "No, sir, if you want to know the reason why I went out on the. 

 street, I will show you after sui^per." So I went to a store 

 above here and said to the man "Give me a couple of quarts of 

 those apples." He said "All right, sir." He sort of tried to 

 apologize for the looks of the apples that he had in his store. 

 The man was so ashamed that he said "As long as you are a 

 delegate to this convention I won't charge you anything," and I 

 says "I am going to give you ten cents." And I gave him ten 

 cents for them. Along the other side I saw some pears as bad 

 as those if not worse, and I had a good mind to buy some of 

 those and bring them here today. 



Now I am not saying these things to find fault or to be smart 

 or anything of the kind. I simply want to show you that there 

 is an everlasting lot of poor stuff that gets into the market, and 

 it is the poor stuff that drives your good stuff out of the market. 

 Now why do you suppose such apples as those Jonathan over 

 there sell in Worcester, Boston and New York and every other 

 large place ? Suppose any one of you was going to have a little 

 party, one of your children was going to have a party and you 

 wanted a dozen bananas, a dozen oranges and a dozen apples to 

 put on the table. You can get your bananas and your oranges 

 and you can trust to your marketman to bring them up, but what 

 will he bring you for apples? Now isn't that too bad to say, 

 when we are in the best apple section in the world, the New 

 England States ? I want you to understand that I am in favor 

 of fruit growing in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire 

 and Maine, and if I was a young man today I would put every 

 single cent of money I could into fruit growing. Last night I 

 lieard an old gentleman say here if he wasn't in the fruit busi- 

 ness he wouldn't go into it, because it was the poorest part of 

 agriculture. The old gentleman didn't know what he was talk- 

 ing about. Now if a man goes into the boot and shoe business 

 or into the lumber business he puts some thought into the mat- 

 ter ; he puts capital into it. He isn't a bit disconcerted if some- 



