PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 135 



fields of human endeavor, relating to the stability of our crops and the 

 volume of their production. 



In your Agricultural Department in Washington some years ago. 

 when they began on vegetable pathology, they found one man in the 

 United States who was a vegetable pathologist, and at that time the 

 munificent salary attached to that position was $1,800 a year ; and that 

 man went into a pathological laboratory and patiently began his labors 

 for that small salary. Pretty soon the observant government of Japan 

 got its eye upon him, and there they must make every square inch of 

 soil produce all the food it will, and their rice and other food crops 

 were afflicted with diseases, and that government knew that it must find 

 a vegetable pathologist that knew what those diseases were and could 

 suggest their remedy, and so that government picked up this man from 

 the Agricultural Department getting the munificent salary of $1,800 

 a year and took him to Japan under a seven-year contract at $7,000 a 

 year. So, if we begin in our public schools teaching the rudiments of 

 agriculture and horticulture, teaching the labor that should be done 

 at seed time and at harvest, but teaching the necessity of studying 

 the enemies of that crop who reduce its yield, which reduce not only 

 the profit of the producer, but the quantity of food that will go to 

 the mouth of the consumer, pretty soon the country boy will look upon 

 his old father as something more and better than a hayseed and will listen, 

 not with disgust, when the old man does say "By Heck" and "Gosh- 

 all-hemlock. " In order to effect this the Agricultural Department has 

 begun a propaganda. It has issued a series of very interesting bul- 

 letins and pamphlets on the subject. It sent me the other day a few 

 of them and I will leave them here, and I want each one of you to 

 get a copy as far as they will go. There may be some men here who 

 are school directors in rural schools and city schools. And another 

 thing. These same things relating to agriculture and horticulture 

 should be introduced into the city schools to let the city boy know that 

 there is. beyond the limits of his town, pursued by faithful and toiling 

 men and women, that occupation, the tilling of the soil, which George 

 Washington said was the most noble, the most healthful and the most 

 useful occupation of man. And so instead of the lapse of the country 

 boy to the city we will have a hegira of the city boy into the country, 

 led there by having his imagination fired by the story of rural life. 

 Xow. that is what I wanted to say. Now I will go on and speak. 

 [Applause.] 



'•'After Fruit Production. What.'*' Gentlemen, the time when roast 

 pigs all stuffed and seasoned were running around the county roads in 

 California begging people to eat them has gone by. [Laughter.] The 

 representation to a coming stranger who desires to invest in land that 

 all he has to do is to buy a piece of California land and sit clown and 

 look at it and it will make him rich, should cease. The State Board 

 of Trade, of which I have been a director with Mr. Briggs and Mr. 

 Maslin and other gentlemen for the last twenty years, esteemed it its 

 function for some time to promote the fruit industry and fruit plant- 

 ing. Some time ago, however, we consulted upon that subject, and we 

 made up our minds that the time had come to cease promoting the 

 expansion of production in this industry, that the attention of the peo- 

 ple should be turned to something else ; that an industry which was shown 



