100 



we ought to have ripe, well developed apples to put on the market in 

 the fall, whereas, at the present time, we are then putting on the 

 markets cull apples that are not fit to eat. When you or I pick up 

 a basket of grapes from a fruit stand and take them home they 

 look fairly good, but when we taste of them fmd them green, we do 

 not buy any more grapes for some time. Now, the man or woman 

 in New York, or vSavannah or New Orleans who attempts eating 

 York Imperial apples in the fall, does not buy any more apples until 

 he or she is forced to do it. Avant to have a ripe apple on the 



market in the fall season even if we sell that apple at cost. We 

 shall be educating the people to use our later apples when they do 

 become ripe. 



But this has nothing definite to do with the Eastern Fruit 

 Growers' Association. Two years ago a number of fruit growers 

 from our section went to Washington and appeared before the Com- 

 mittee of Agriculture to further the passage by Congress of a bill 

 giving the Secretary of Agriculture authority to quarantine against 

 infested nursery seedlings. There seemed to be inadequate methods 

 of detecting: the imported brown-tail moths. We felt, in our sec- 

 tion, that if a nest of brown-tail moth should get scattered we could 

 not afford to spray against it. 



W^hen, however, we reached A\^ashington, we found only a 

 handful of fruit growers from two or three sections. We put up 

 an argument before the Agricultural Committee which was admitted- 

 ly strong, but we could claim before that Committee to represent 

 only a handful from the fruit growing industry. We learned that 

 a number of your people. I think several of you gentlemen from 

 Adams county, had been down to A\'ashington furthering the pass- 

 age of the so-called LaFean Bill, standardizing packages. We were 

 in favor of the LaFean bill, ^^our people went down to push the 

 LaFean bill, we to Dush the Simmon 1:)ill. If we had all been 

 there backing both bills, we might have got favorable reports. It, 

 therefore, seemed advisable that some form of interstate organiza- 

 tion be eff'ected, and last year at the Hotel Raleigh, Washington, the 

 Eastern Fruit Growers' Association was organized. ^lany of vou 

 have copies of the constitution with the minutes of that meeting last 

 year. In concise terms, the idea of the Eastern Fruit Growers' As- 

 sociation is that the organization is a legitimate lobby in the interest 

 of fruit growing in A'irginia. West A'irginia. ^Maryland, Pennsvl- 

 vania, Delaware and District of Columbia, and to further legislation 

 which wnll help our fruit growers. 



If anv matters come up before the Agricultural Committee, the 

 officers of the Eastern Fruit Growers' Association are expected to 

 be advised of that fact and arrano-e for hearings at which all the 

 fruit growers can be represented. There are certain interstate 

 problems which aff'ect this whole territorv that neither your state 

 societv nor the Alarvland state society, nor the A'irginia state society, 

 can alone successfully solve. 



The second annual meeting has just been held this week in 

 AYashington, and in this connection I would like to beg the pardon 

 of the Adams county society. AYhen we arranged for the AYashing- 

 ton meeting I told Mr. Lupton I thought there would be no con- 



