154 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



resentative furnish detailed information on these points to tL 

 comers coming in from the East. It might help ns in a great uii.n\ 

 cases, and it might have prevented ev^n the white fly's introdiietjon. 



MR. JA]\IES ]\1ILLS. Mr. Chairman : Just a word. I am very 

 greatly interested in this discussion and in the views that are bein? 

 expressed. Yesterday. I think it was, Mr. Roeding said he was sorry 

 to say he was a great sufferer from the laws as passed by some of our 

 counties. I thought when I looked at him. and when I heard and knew 

 his success, that he was a very healthy looking sufferer. -Now, it is 

 not a question of Roeding or Mills or Teague or any other nurseryman "s 

 welfare ; it is a question of the welfare of the growers at large. I am 

 one of those who have a nursery, who believe in drawing the line just 

 as close as it is possible to draw it. and to compel those who raise stock 

 to clean up and not allow them to ship goods into other sections not 

 affected with like diseases and like pests. 



I have in mind a party who wanted to ship into this count \ . 

 years ago 3,000 trees at ten cents a tree. The growers here wanted 

 them, and were put out at the commissioner because he said no. The 

 nurseryman said, ''I am willing to pay the damage. What is it?"' 

 He said, "It is $10,000. Do you want to pay it?" ^ And the result is 

 that Ave have not got purple scale. It was from a purple scale district. 



This year the growers in Riverside raised the question. We want this 

 embargo lifted; we can't get trees. And let me tell you that the 

 growers wanted to go into the purple scale districts, into the red spider 

 districts, to import trees into this county Avhere we don't have it, and 

 the men from those distant districts from which our growers wanted 

 to import came into this county and purchased trees to go down there. 

 I have sold myself thousands of trees this year that went outside the 

 borders of this county ; and our people want to go outside the Iwrders 

 of this county to bring trees in. 



I am one of those who, having large interests in my hands for othere. 

 am ready to put my hands in my pocket and form a company to grow 

 stock for the growers of this county at cost, rather than to bring trees 

 in from other districts where they have these diseases. God knows we 

 have enough. I myself am responsible in twenty months for an 

 expenditure of $57,000 in fighting the scale here in a small district in 

 this city. Shall we. the growers, earnestly seeking our welfare and 

 the welfare of our families, endanger for the welfare of one nursery- 

 man, or tvvo. or three, all of us? I say no. (Applause.) The indi- 

 vidual must give way to the masses. Let us get county ordinances : let 

 us get State laws : let us get national laws on these great fruit interests 

 involving such enormous capital and labor. (Applause.) 



MR. SHARP. I feel a little delicate always in talking about what 

 we have done in our county, or what I propose to do or what I don't 

 propose to do. or anything of that kind. I want to say this, that the 

 best thing we have found is to educate the people to believe that they 

 can't afford to go outside of the county to get a tree or xine. that they 

 can raise them at home, and they will grow there all right. 



