APPLE GROWING IX XEW ENGLAND. 33 



Thirdly, I believe that the labor question is less acute here in 

 Massachusetts than in many parts of the country. We are reason- 

 ably near to the tide of immigration so that as a rule we can get the 

 help which we need in the orchard. 



And I feel like adding a fourthly, in the San Jose scale, which, 

 however disastrous it may be to the country generally, is certainly 

 weeding out the scattered apple trees and the small, poorly-cared- 

 for orchards, and is leaving the markets for the man who is really 

 making a business of apple growing. 



Some other elements of the situation might well be discussed if 

 time would admit but I think we have already arrayed a sufficient 

 number to warrant us in concluding that the outlook is flattering. 

 With a climate and soil which will grow the best of fruit, with a 

 market that will buy it at remunerative or even gilt-edged figures, 

 if it is of the right kind, and with labor to grow the fruit, what more 

 could we ask ? 



If now, in order to strengthen our position still more, we wish to 

 see what has already been accomplished in profitable orcharding, 

 while, of course, I do not speak as one who has all the facts by any 

 means, yet it seems to me that I have already known of enough 

 cases to fully justify my opinion that orcharding when properly 

 carried on in the past has proved to be very remunerative. May 

 I cite a few instances ? On the Agricultural College grounds is an 

 orchard of mixed apples and peaches, the apples forty feet apart 

 each way and interplanted both ways with peach trees. These 

 trees are now ten years set and the Wealthy and Mcintosh apples 

 (of each of which there is a row through the orchard) have averaged 

 two bushels per tree per year since they were five years old; and 

 this fruit has sold without the slightest difficulty at $2.00 per bushel 

 box. At forty feet apart this does not give a large return per acre, 

 but at twenty feet each way, which is a perfectly feasible distance 

 for these varieties for the first twenty-five years, we have 108 trees 

 or $432.00 per acre, for the years from the fifth to the tenth. This 

 ought at least to be doubled during the next five years. 



If we take the peaches growing in this same orchard there have 

 been three full crops in the past five years and each crop has more 

 than paid for the land. 



There is a large Baldwin orchard in the neighborhood of Amherst 



