STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 67 



and grade as you pick, iuto two sizes. Pack the fruit nicely from top to 

 bottom, with no topping up to make it api^ear better than it really is. 

 Do good, honest packing. Have your baskets well rounded, and make them 

 just as showy as you can. Select the whitest baskets you can find, pack 

 the fruit nicely in these and put them in white clean crates. Of course 

 make it just as cheap as you can, but have a handsome package. Then 

 select some retail dealer or commission man who has a name and a good 

 reputation in the market, and impress on his mind that you are trying 

 to produce fine fruit. Toot your horn all j-ou want to after you have 

 produced fine fruit, and then make the public paj- for it, and they will do 

 it. The men who are making money in small fruits, just as in any other 

 business, are the men who are doing business in the best way. There is 

 no thinking that 3'ou can fool the public. If you put inferior grades of 

 small fruit or apples into the baskets or barrels, and a finer quality on 

 top, you will get for the whole the price of the lowest grade. But if j-ou 

 pack the fruit nicely you will soon get a big price for it, and after a time 

 you will have a name; and a good name is not only better than great 

 riches, but it is great riches. 



1 think there are opportunities in this line that have been neglected, 

 and 1 think the possibilities for strawberrj^ growing in this section of 

 Maine are verj- great indeed. There are certain kinds of fruit that people 

 will eat for a time and then drop. But there are two things that they 

 will never drop as long as they can get them in good condition, — straw- 

 berries and peaches. Thej- will eat these as long as thej- can get them. 

 They are beginning now to eat strawberries from California and they 

 would eat them in August if they could get them, long after the 3Iassa- 

 chusetts and New Hampshire crops are out of the market. 



We are too apt to imitate one another in all our work. In one section 

 of the country a few men are successful in producing a certain crop, 

 others follow them and that neighborhood gets into that one rut, and 

 you all produce one crop. The men who are succeeding in agriculture 

 and in fruit growing are the men who strike out in new lines for them- 

 selves. The men who succeed in manufacturing lines are those who have 

 individualized their own work, made themselves known by making a 

 special product. And so it is with us farmers. We follow along the 

 same lines that our grandfathers and fathers did, or even that we our- 

 selves started in; but we must adapt ourselves to the times, and there is 

 a wonderful growing demand for these fruits and some one has to supply 

 it. Why should it not be you people here as well as some one else'? To 

 give you some idea of the wonderful increase in the small fruit business, 

 I will give you a little instance. I have been a lover of fruits from a boy. 

 I was born on a farm, reared there and had to staj' there; but my taste 

 was in fruit-growing lines and so I drifted entirely into that, and I thank 

 the Lord that he headed me that way. In ray boyhood days the city of 

 Hartford, to which I lived adjoining, had a population of more than 

 40,000, and at that time there was but one commercial establishment in 

 that city that sold fruit. Standing in front of that store one daA*. look- 

 ing at the pineapples and other fruits that were there, the proprietor, 



