22 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



scribe and pay for it, and if there is any value in that information they 

 are entitled to it, and not the public. So that, as you see, there is a 

 certain amount of friction, and always will be. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. The understanding, then, is that this 

 motion calls for independent news. 



Motion adopted. 



MR. BERWICK. Mr. President, is there anything to prevent the 

 California Washington Navels being grown in the West Indies? 



PRESIDENT COOPER. No, there is nothing to prevent it. The 

 Navel orange has been grown with very great success in Pernambuco,- 

 and Rio Janeiro, in Brazil. Probably the finest oranges ever grown 

 anywhere in the world are now growing in Pernambuco. They are 

 very thin skinned. And the Navel oranges, I suppose that is where 

 they came from originally to California. The climate of the West 

 Indies is very much like that of Pernambuco, and there is no reason why 

 the best oranges can not be grown on any of those islands. 



MR. KOETHEN. Then upon what do you base your judgment that 

 they can not plant orange groves in the West Indies and get them into 

 bearing in four or five years, as they do here? 



PRESIDENT COOPER. You understand that that country is not 

 prepared for growing oranges. It would take two or three years before 

 the land could be subdued and before the crops could be changed to 

 commence on these trees. And they can not be gotten in that country. 

 The stock would have to come from some other place, and it can not be 

 done under four years; nor I doubt in eight years. 



MR. STONE. Is it not the fact that the excessive moisture of some 

 of those islands, the West Indies Islands, militates against the Navel 

 orange, which requires, as I understand it, a dry atmosphere? 



PRESIDENT COOPER. As to that I could not answer. I don't 

 know. 



MR. ALLEN. Mr. President, this question of the Jamaica orange 

 I think has been gone through with experimentally. In the first place, 

 its status in this country is very well understood. It has been imported 

 here in large quantities for a great many years, and it has not competed 

 with the California Navel orange in the New York market, for instance, 

 or the other Eastern markets. I read recently an interesting article in 

 the "New York Fruitman's Guide," which stated that this would be the 

 last year of imports of Jamaica oranges on a commercial scale. It is 

 stated that since the time of the Florida frost large orchards were 

 planted on a commercial scale in Jamaica, and that those orchards have 

 been failures and they are being abandoned and the land which had been 

 put into orchards is now being put into other crops, such as sugar and 

 bananas. The experience of two gentlemen, brothers, of Riverside, is 

 an illustration of this fact. They thought Jamaica was going to be a 



