44 



each member of that party must use lime-sulphur. Of course every 

 good party man will do it and pay the full price, but now comes 

 the other party. It also denounces plant diseases as a menace and 

 pledges its members to use Bordeaux mixture. Up steps a manu- 

 facturer of sulphate of copper with another $25,000, which carries 

 the same right to demand that all good party men use Bordeaux 

 and also pay full price. You may smile at this, but in a larger way 

 that is just about what we have been doing, and what we have 

 been teaching our boys as their political duty. We want and we 

 need a different plan. We want to all get together on the propo- 

 sition that plant or political disease is a menace, but that we do not 

 care what you use so long as you kill it. 



Granting this, again the question comes, hozv can we do our 

 duty? I mention three ways, — organization, courage, steadfastness. 

 You are doing the first right here. I see some of your fruit in New 

 York. People group around it and watch the apples and the labels. 

 You have grown slowly and well. Every man who packs an hon- 

 est box or barrel of apples gets into his heart a little of that pride 

 and joy in his business which means more than dollars in his 

 pocket. For I suppose you realize that through the years few 

 really enduring things are made with the hands. Progress is 

 through heart and character, for as the old hymn puts it, "Not the 

 labor of my hands shall obey my Lord's commands." In learning 

 how to combine over an apple you men are also learning uncon- 

 sciously how to get together for the larger and nobler things of 

 life. These may be packed in a box of apples as well as in a pic- 

 ture, a sermon or a poem. Do you recognize how the cohesive 

 strength of a great army depends upon that little joint in the human 

 arm which we call the elbow? Soldiers tell me that when they 

 march into battle ninety per cent, of the regiment feel that they 

 would gladly run if they could, and if they wxre alone. But on 

 either side they can touch another man's elbow. He is just as 

 frightened as they are, but all are depending on the light touch of 

 that elbow to hold them in line. 



You men in Adams County are showing us the way by build- 

 ing a home organization. That is the way it must come, dozens and 

 hundreds of smaller packing societies first of all, and then these 

 welded together into a federation. No one likes to be drilled, and 

 least of all a farmer, yet drill is all there is to it when the battle 

 comes. 



And the duties of citizenship also involve courage of a rare 

 and patient sort. It requires rare courage for a man of common 

 life to leave his party when he knows it is wrong and give a fair 

 reason for leaving it. No coward could possibly stand for an un- 

 popular cause which he knows is right. There are dozens of things 

 in business, we meet them day by day. They might be profitable 

 right now, yet to do them means taking an unfair advantage of a 

 neighbor or a customer. It requires rare courage to refuse to aid 

 them, or to point them out to others, yet only in this way can the 



