G6 MASSACHUSETTS HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A'iously bad contented themselves with growing wheat, oats, corn, 

 potatoes, and stock, finding loss rather than profit in their accus- 

 tomed crops, and being tempted by the often extravagant prom- 

 ises held out to them of better returns in garden and fruit crops, 

 forsook their legitimate products, and began to grow berries, 

 onions, and a general line of garden vegetables. As a result, the 

 markets became flooded with these products, and prices in many 

 instances were forced down below the cost of production. So we 

 older gardeners met loss instead of profit, and the new-comers in 

 this field have found nothing but sore disappointment. 



Possibly you, near the seashore, and Avith the wealth of the 

 country concentrated around you, have been less affected b}' 

 these changes than we were here But I find from the market 

 reports that the big eastern cities also were glutted with garden 

 products, and prices have ruled lower than ever. Growers of 

 forced vegetables of all kinds, too, have suffered from ruinous 

 competition. Of mushrooms — once a great source of profit — 

 there were at times more than could be sold. Hothouse tomatoes 

 and lettuce were plenty and cheap, and there seemed to be in the 

 markets a plethora of all vegetables and at all times. 



Too much Instruction. — I believe that we have instructed too 

 much. What used to be trade secrets are now the common prop- 

 erty of the masses. Tuition has been practically free, and the 

 masses have learned to grow articles the production of which 

 used to be the business and privilege of the few. We have writ- 

 ten too many articles, books, and pamphlets. Stations have aided 

 with their bulletins, and societies with their free lectures and dis- 

 cussions. The urgent appeals for the production of garden and 

 fruit crops have been too persistent and over-emphatic. 



Xo Welcome for New-comers. — While the general effect in 

 bringing the blessings of a fruit and vegetable diet within the 

 reach of everybody who in any respect deserves to be called a 

 consumer may be wholesome, thus justifying somewhat the 

 course of those who have helped towards this result, we shall 

 have to modify, if not reverse, our teaching of a quarter of a 

 century or more, and now try to discourage the tendency of the 

 many unskilled outsiders to rush into market gardening as a 

 supposedly profitable business. There are too many producers of 

 trash in it already. Market gardening lias now entered a stage 

 of development in which a thorough weeding-out seems imper- 



