6o THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



apple business is already overdone, and if one-half of the 

 trees now in bearing were to produce half a crop each year 

 there would be such a deluge of apples that they would not 

 pay for the picking, packing and selling, and there would be 

 nothing left for the producer. This applies to the man who 

 produces the common quality of fruit, for there will always 

 be a market for the best. We have had a very strong illustra- 

 tion of this point in the past season. While the wind in 

 September blew off thousands and, perhaps, millions of bar- 

 rels throughout the apple growing sections, yet in the face 

 of those facts people that had apples allowed millions of 

 bushels to lay on the ground and rot. because there were no 

 buyers around to take them. The buyers had been losing 

 money for the last two years, and they were afraid of a repe- 

 tition of the exnerience, and therefore they held back. There 

 was a time when in the hotels of Rochester and Syracuse the 

 apple men monopolized the hotels. The hotels were filled 

 with apple buyers. They all combined to a certain extent 

 and agreed not to buy unless they could buy at a certain 

 price, and that price was lower than the apple producers had 

 expected to get. For that reason the picking and marketing 

 of the crop was delayed for several weeks, or until almost 

 into earlv winter, when the cold weather came on and caught 

 some of them, and then they had to sell their apples at the 

 buyers' prices, and there were not many of them. I am afraid, 

 that got what they ought to have had. The result was that 

 there were thousands and thousands of barrels that rotted on 

 the ground. If that was the condition last year, what will be 

 the condition when these hundreds and thousands of trees 

 that are being planted all over the country, come into bearing? 

 There are millions of apple trees that have never paid for 

 themselves, and that never will, and there are more millions 

 that will bear for the first time in the next ten years that will 

 never pay for themselves, and yet people, who can grow good 

 crops of hay, corn and wheat, and produce dairv products at 

 a profit, will continue to plant apple orchards at a loss. With 

 the great increase in the price and demand for cereal products, 

 hay and dairy products, one may well consider very carefully 



