FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 59 



W'c have to fight for all we g^ct. Back in the days when our 

 fathers and grandfathers set out some of the orchards, in 

 those days the soil had not been impoverished, it was full of 

 humus, and was more nearly in its virgin fertility than at 

 present. The San Jose scale was unknown. The codling 

 moth, canker womi and other pests, now so troublesome and 

 costly to contend with, were but little known, and it was no 

 trouble whatever to produce good apples at little expense, 

 compared to the present costly warfare we are com- 

 jjclled to wage for out: orchards and their fruits. Again, the 

 marketing conditions were entirely dififerent. There were 

 few peaches grown, and, therefore, an orchard that produced 

 early summer apples, and a succession from that time through 

 the winter months, was profitable in the extreme, while at the 

 present time there is but little profit in the summer varieties, 

 except in such localities where the other fruits are high in 

 price. In those days the orange and banana were rare and 

 costly fruits, and came in competition with the apple to a 

 very small degree, while now millions of boxes of oranges 

 and ship-loads of bananas are each week dumped on or^r 

 docks, all of which divert the xA.merican people from the apple- 

 eating habit. With the great annual increase in the produc- 

 tion of these tropical fruits, the competition with the apple is 

 growing fiercer all the time, and the apple growers must 

 combine and stand together, for all that vrill be to their mutual 

 benefit, or they will lose their markets to a greater extent than 

 ever. 



There are many agricultural writers at present who indis- 

 criminately advise their readers to plant apple orchards, with- 

 out regard to the man, the location, or other conditions. Only 

 last week I saw in one of our most representative papers such 

 advice given, and, if every one were to take that advice, in a 

 few years to come there would be thousands of disappointed 

 city men who have bought farms, planted apple trees, and who 

 are now waiting for them to grow to maturity, knowing that 

 when that time comes they W'ill be able to retire from their 

 strenuous city business and live like princes from the product 

 of their apple trees. Now this, I think, is all wrong. The 



