106 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
Mr. Woops. That has been figured out by the National Apple Ship- 
pers’ Association; they get the returns by the apples that go into cold 
storage. This disease continues to do its work, after the apples are 
picked and put into the barrel, and I think $10,000,000 is an extremely 
conservative estimate. Do you not think it is, Mr. Taylor? ' 
Mr. Taytor. Yes. 
Mr. Bowre. Who loses that, the farmer or the middleman who 
handles it? 
Mr. Woops. It is about equally divided. If the merchant goes into 
the field and buys the apples on the tree before they are ripe, he stands 
the loss; but the buyers are usually sharp enough now to wait until 
the apples are shipped, and then it is the farmer who loses. 
Mr. Taytor. Two years ago—it was in 1900, in fact—in southern 
Missouri a large buyer invested heavily in orchards; so much for 
orchards, so much for working, shipping, and storing, on his own risk; 
and that season he lost something like $30,000, between what his fruit 
cost him and what he got out of it. Other buyers operating in that 
same territory, one operating particularly at Leavenworth, Kans. 
saw the trouble coming, and pulled his buyers out of Missouri, and 
put them into New Hampshire and Vermont, and supplied his trade 
in Texas from New Hampshire and Vermont, and that meant fewer 
buyers in Missouri and that country. , 
Mr. Bowrs. I understand our duty is just the same towards the 
merchant as to the farmer. One is as much a citizen as the other. 
Mr. Woops. The next group of problems come under the plant- 
breeding laboratory, one of the great problems in the plant-breeding 
work, is the securing of a long staple upland cotton with smooth seed. 
We have now produced about 40,000 hybrids, and some selections from 
them are higher in production than ordinary upland cotton, have 
smooth seed and staple, of very fine quality. I have not asked for an 
increase in that work, much of it is carried on in North and South 
Carolina and the present allotment is sufficient. 
Mr. Scorr. Do you need anything in that work? 
Mr. Woops. No; what we now have will be sufficient. It is suffi- 
ciently covered by the regular allotment. 
Mr. Scorr. What I want to ask is this: If you have developed this 
fully already, what do you want with the money that you have had for 
that heretofore? 
Mr. Woops. We must “‘fix” the hybrids we have secured, propagate 
them, and put them into the hands of the farmers. 
Mr. Bowiz. It will take another year to do that? 
Mr. Woops. Yes; we may have to carry it along several years in 
order to be absolutely sure we have got our strain fixed, so that it will 
not go back to original types. We do not want to turn the seed into 
the hands of the farmers until we have proved fully that this is accom- 
plished If a variety should fail to come true to seed it would cause 
great loss to the grower. 
; a Cuairman. That is the period when you think it would be suff- 
cient. 
Mr. Woops. Yes, sir; we will distribute some for testing experi- 
mentally this year. 
Mr. Lever. How long have you been experimenting on that? 
_ Mr. Woops. About four or five years; and we will not need aby 
increase, and it will not be necessary to use what we are now spending 
if we could transfer the work to special cotton investigation. 
