115 



After we started picking apples it occurred to me to try an 

 experiment. Our apple pickers, about fifty in number, were just 

 ordinary laboring men, some could not read or write. ]\Ien who 

 came down out of the mountains to help pick apples. I said to 

 Dr. AA'aite. I am going to get all my laborers over here and let 

 vou lecture to them just like you did to the fruit growers. Dr. AMiite 

 has a very peculiar facility for expressing himself, so that any sort 

 of intelligence can understand him. When the lecture began I saw 

 at once that the men were intensely interested and every one of 

 those men are better apple pickers to-day from that experience. 

 They a^ked intelligent cpestions and seemed to understand what 

 was going on. So much for expert information. 



The small fruit growers get anxious about selling, they do not 

 kr.ow what they will get for their fruit. They want to sell just as 

 soon as they can. One of my neighbors will sell his apples on the 

 20th of August no matter what the price. If three or four more 

 do that it breaks the market for the rest of us. It is customary 

 with us to sell the fruit on the trees before picking time, usually 

 contracting for the sale in August or September. 



One year when ten or twelve of us had about 25,000 barrels, 

 and we tried to organize, all we could get the growers to do was 

 to sign a paper agreeing not to sell their apples before the first of 

 September. After seven or eight or ten of us had signed up 

 controlling 20,000 or 25,000 barrels of apples, we carried that paper 

 around the neighborhood to get some others not to sell their apples. 

 The other growers said "Xo, we will not do that. We won't sign 

 up with you because we may not be ready to sell when you are 

 read}- and we do not know whether we want to take the price you 

 do or not." 



Then everyone of those small growers subsecjuently did in- 

 dividually, what they refused to do collectively, that is they said, 

 "Those fellows have a big lot of fruit tied up until September i, 

 and we will just wait until they sell and we will get just as much 

 as they will and not tie ourselves up either." Nobody did sell 

 until after the ist of September. There were 60,000 barrels of 

 apples sold on that one da}'. A\'hen the buyers had bought our 

 apples they claimed to have enough apples, did not want any more. 

 Then there was a stampede amongst the little fellows. They could 

 not sell their apples at our price and the majority had to sell for 

 considerably less than the apples we sold on the first of September. 

 We received S3. 50 to $3.65 in the orchard, and some as high as $4.00 

 to S4.25. AA'e got a good, round blessing on account of our com- 

 bine, and could not get a single man to sign up this year. 



Another thing happened that ought to be interesting. A gentle- 

 man came to see me at Washington, to organize an association of 

 fruit growers. The result of his visit to me was the organization 

 of what has since been known as the \'irginia Fruit Growers Ex- 

 change. About the same time there was organized, in the upper 

 end of Mrginia, the Shenandoah Fruit Growers' Association. Be- 

 tween those two associations, the one in the upper end of the valley, 

 and the one in the lower end, there was 100,000 to 120,000 barrels 



