PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS 3 CONVENTION. 17 



♦Cooper," and then a line indicating the years of his services to the 

 fruit-growers of the Golden State. 



If the optimism of the present time is to be permanent and become 

 brighter in the future, the fruit-growers of the State must take advan- 

 tage of their opportunities to the fullest extent. Of what avail is the 

 work of the United States Government, of the University and of the 

 State Commission if the growers do not respond? What is to be 

 gained by investigation and demonstration if the growers continue to 

 plant unsuitable kinds and varieties, or do not match their crops to 

 their soils, or buy cheap and impotent stock for their orchards? "What 

 advantage to know all about soil chemistry and forget selection and 

 pedigree at planting time ? Can your Horticultural Commission assist in 

 lessening the troubles that beset the business of fruit-growing? In 

 sod ) degree, yes. It can be made the means of your broader and more 

 forcible expression. You can enact laws that will tend to eliminate 

 or to make responsible unfit nurserymen, and see that your officers 

 enforce them. Require your Commissioner to take notice officially of 

 quacks, and frauds, and misrepresentations, and dishonest dealings in 

 all that may degrade your fruits and discourage superior productions. 

 You can see that his office be made the source of publicity for all the 

 good things and the bad that affect fruit-growing. The Commissioner's 

 office is the only rallying point where all horticultural interests can 

 unite for common good in the practical solution of their protective and 

 working policies. But this can only be made possible by widening the 

 fiel' 1 , and making room for their effective consideration in this office 

 which was created for the safeguarding and promotion of commercial 

 fruit-growing. 



It is a shame that this great office under whose auspices you are 

 assembled to-day has to plead for a bare existence when it should be 

 equipped to give back to the State ten thousand times its cost every 

 year. It would not drink from the finger bowl, nor swallow the knife, 

 ^ eat the bouquet, if given a seat with the more scientific institutions 

 txi are so richly sustained with means of doing the work they have 

 so well in hand. The scope of the office which I represent is broad 

 enough. It should have officers with executive ability and should be 

 backed with the funds to make its work felt throughout the length 

 and breadth of the State. To this end the laws concerning the appoint- 

 ment and support of our County Boards of Horticulture should be 

 wiped off the statute books and reenacted in a new and effective spirit ; 

 the bounty quarantine ordinances should be destroyed and a uniform 

 in adopted that would be more stringent and effective, without 

 ng our nurserymen to distraction, as they are driven under the 

 nt lack of system. I believe this feasible, if every fruit-growing 



2— FGC 



