Bureau of Ageicultube. 217 



in existence for the handling of the surplus stock to ship 

 to the city markets. In order to meet the situation, and 

 to help our friends in the country, some of the members 

 of the board of trade invited a dozen or more representa- 

 tive gardeners and farmers to a meeting in the board 

 of trade rooms for the purpose of discussing an or- 

 ganization for the handling of garden products for the 

 joint account of the growers and shipping them to the 

 city markets. Three or four of the persons invited re- 

 sponded, and the unanimous opinion among them was 

 that such an organization was impracticable, that the 

 growers could not be interested, and that it was not 

 worth while trying. While the matter was still fresh 

 in the minds of the Paducah citizens, it was learned 

 that the Southern Illinois Growers' Association was to 

 have a meeting at Anna, Illinois. This association is 

 about forty years old, and is one of the most successful 

 of all such associations in the country. The board of 

 trade then invited about a half dozen growers from the 

 country as the guests of the board of trade to go to 

 Anna, together with some of the Paducah business men 

 and bankers, for the purpose of seeing the actual work 

 of such an organization. Of course, this invitation was 

 unanimously responded to. When the Board of Trade 

 had something to give away without obligation on the 

 part of its guests, eittier to spend any money or to do 

 anything except travel and enjoy themselves, it was not 

 difficult to get a meeting. The party went to Anna and 

 there found assembled representatives from all through 

 middle and southern Illinois. They heard addresses 

 from some of the most distinguished agricultural ex- 

 perts in the United States. They saw the farmers who 

 had in cultivation two hundred acres of rhubarb, over 

 one hundred acres of asparagus in single tracts, farmers 

 whose annual income in garden products and berries 

 ran from $10,000.00 per year upward ; they saw owners 

 of orchards whose annual income from their apples 

 amounted to $50,000.00 per year. They heard farm- 

 ers in the convention discussing scientific and efficient 

 means of preparation of the soil, of planting, of culti- 

 vating, of combating various plant diseases, and using 

 the technical and scientific language of their business 



