54 



COMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATION 



FRUIT GROWERS USE THE STATIONS 



On the other hand, we can not deny that the stations have done 

 even better by the fruit grower. Commercial fruit growing is of far 

 less economic importance, and probably affects deeply a far smaller 

 number of people than does commercial vegetable growing. As 

 already pointed out, the production of garden crops is also a far 

 more complicated matter, and involves many more problems as to 

 soil, fertilization, tillage, rotation, insects, diseases, etc., than the 

 production of tree fruits. (I count small fruits as belonging under 

 the head of garden crops). For these reasons, it would seem only 

 fair that the stations should do even more work for the grower of 

 vegetables than of tree fruits. 



ARE THE VEGETABLE GROWERS USING THE STATIONS? 



If they do not, however, it must surely be the fault of the vegetable 

 grower himself, your fault and mine. The stations, like shopkeepers, 

 are trying to meet the demand. When a dozen or a hundred tree- 

 fruit growers get together, and they find a weak spot somewhere in 

 their business, they at once begin to cry for station aid, and they do 

 cry loud. Vegetable growers either do not get together, or if they 

 do, act on the principle that "silence is golden." The body of the 

 vegetable grower is a slow-moving mass. We have been content to 

 let things drift, rather than cry out loud, or make some vigorous 

 efforts to find remedies for our ills. And we have not been in the 

 habit of going to the stations with our troubles as freely as we should. 

 Our stations are only too willing to help us if they can, and investi- 

 gate problems that we shove up to them as troubling us. As a proof 

 that the spirit of progress is not as strongly developed in the vegetable 

 grower as it is in the fruit growler, I would call attention to the fact 

 that a paper exclusively or even mainly devoted to vegetable growing 

 has not yet found the support necessar^^ to make it a glaring success 

 for the publisher. Most of our better agricultural papers print a 

 lot of matter on fruit growing, because this information meets the 

 demand, and they know^ that the fruit grower will respond with sub- 

 scriptions. But they are as a rule very weak in their matter relating 

 to vegetable growing. The publishers have felt the pulse of the 

 reading and subscribing and advertising public, and felt but a weak 

 response on the part of the gardening public. Fruit growers have 

 their trade papers, we have none: If we desire to make progress, we 

 must change our tactics. 



