42 PROCEEDINGS OP THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



MR. REED. My advice to a prospective pear-grower would be not 

 to plant out enough pear orchard so it would cripple him financially 

 in the event of failure. If he knows he can always get some one to 

 handle the orchard without outside help it is a good investment. I have 

 a thousand young trees myself, but I am not going to put out any more. 

 If a man wants to engage in the fruit business on a large scale he had 

 better take something else. 



THE CHAIRMAN. "We next have a paper from a gentleman who 

 needs no introduction, Mr. George C. Roeding of Fresno, entitled "The 

 Smyrna Fig for Profit in the Interior Valley." 



MR. ROEDING. It is with some hesitation that I appear before 

 you to-day. I have read and spoken so many times before on the 

 Smyrna fig that I hope you will be quiet during this essay, and if 

 you do so I will reward you by giving to each of you one carton of 

 figs. (Laughter.) 



THE SMYRNA FIG FOR PROFIT IN THE INTERIOR VALLEY. 



By GEORGE C. ROEDING, of Fresno. 



When Governor Gillett appointed J. W. Jeffrey to the position of 

 State Horticultural Commissioner, I said to myself, "Now the old 

 wheel horses will be turned out to pasture and given that rest and 

 quiet to which they are certainly entitled." Hardly had the thought 

 grown strong enough to become a conviction, when I received the usual 

 fiat from Secretary Isaac, of the State Commission, that Smyrna fig 

 culture was the subject on which I was to orate and grow eloquent at 

 this meeting. Needless to say, I good-naturedly protested and en- 

 deavored to convince Mr. Isaac that the Smyrna fig had been discussed 

 by me on so many previous occasions at annual meetings of fruit- 

 growers that I thought it was worn threadbare, hence those who are 

 compelled to endure me again will remark, "Well, it is the same old 

 story— Berwick on parcels post, Stephens on transportation, Roeding on 

 figs, etc. Why don't they kill off some of the old-timers and give us 

 something new?" True, I haven't given you anything on the fig for 

 several years, nevertheless those who have known me from the time I 

 was a woolly-headed boy appearing before you, and had it hammered 

 into them, time and again, that I am the fig man, to be inflicted 

 once more, when I am rapidly approaching the time when I might in 

 all seriousness be placed in the class of men who sit in the front row 

 of a theater drinking in the beauty and sinuous grace of a light opera 

 with its accompaniment of pretty girls and— well, it is certainly crowd- 

 ing the mourners: but to revert to my subject, from which we are sadly 

 digressing. 



