The Editor's Outlook 



THE APPLE is the most compan- 

 ionable of fruits. It is a part of 

 the old home. The trees leaned over 

 fences and grew on the hillsides when we first chased 

 over the fields in the red October days ; they shook 

 their petals of pink and white over the honeysuck- 

 les in the old garden like belated drifts of snow ; in 

 their gnarled branches the robin gave the first news 

 of spring, and from the crotches a young brood flew 

 in the early days of June. We cannot remember 

 the time that we first knew the apple tree. Every 

 returning year it has whitened the landscape with 

 its wealth of bloom, and every September the fruits 

 have reddened in the sun. And the memories of 

 the long winter evenings at home are fragrant with 

 the crisp and spicy fruits. So much a part of us 

 has the apple become, that we have ceased to think 

 of it. Like old friends and old places it is insepa- 

 rable from that compound of experiences which 

 we call ourself. 



And yet people are asking if apples pay ! Does 

 it pay to live, to eat, to think ? Does it ever fail to 

 pay to raise what everyone wants ? Yes, there are 

 some people which nothing pays. In these times it 

 never pays to raise common things in common 

 ways. It does not pay to raise apples if apples re- 

 ceive no part of the farmer's care or thought. 

 Where are the orchards that do not pay ? You 

 will find them everywhere. You will know them by 

 the thick-topped and yellow trees, the tall grass 

 and weeds, the broken fences. If they receive any 

 attention beyond the knocking off of the wormy 

 fruits in the fall, it is only such spasmodic effort as 

 the farmer now and then finds time to devote to 

 them, when all other work is done Neglected or- 

 chards, like neglected children, are rarely a pleas- 

 ant heritage ; and it is well that it is so. 



But even our best orchards fail now and then. 

 Yes ; so do wheat, and cotton, and stocks. It is 

 all a ([uestion of how often the failures occur and 

 how great the capital invested. Perhaps, on an 

 average, every alternate year brings no profit from 

 the orchard, but what is the outlay when the crop 

 fails ? — interest on an investment which is every- 

 where rated too low, a few odd days of cultivating 

 and pruning, and something for fertilizers. There 

 is no bustle or worry of sowing the crop in the 

 spring, no laborious harvest to find that you have 



reaped only chaff . The trees are there, and your 

 land is worth from five to twenty times more with 

 the trees on it than without them, even though there 

 is not an apple on them. How many young men 

 look upon an apple orchard as an investment ? Land 

 worth twenty dollars to-day will be worth one hun- 

 dred or two hundred dollars ten years from now, if 

 it has a good orchard. And the cost of the im- 

 provement is nothing, for the immediate use of the 

 land in the meantime should at least return all out- 

 lay. 



Every man who cares for his orchard as he would 

 care for other crops from which he expects to reap 

 a profit knows that apples pay. And they must al- 

 ways pay. Demand is keeping pace with supply; 

 perhaps outstripping it. Good fruit in the right 

 market pays ; poor fruit hustled off to the handiest 

 market does not pay, and we are glad that it does 

 not. Intelligent effort is needed for the develop- 

 ment of men as well as for the improvement of 

 apples. 



But dii¥iculties are increasing. Worms, apple 

 scab, glutted markets, all contribute to the risks of 

 the business ; but what then ? Shall one soldier put 

 us to flight ? The difficulties do not come every 

 year ; or if the worms come, rout them ! There is 

 no longer any excuse for ihe loss of a crop from in- 

 sects. And the scab is coming under our dominion 

 Yes, apples pay ; we must make them pay ! 

 * 



THE Experiment Stations of three 

 I states — Maryland, Tennessee, 



Georgia — have recently pub- 

 lished identical bulletins upon " Potash and Paying 

 Crops." From the introductory matter it appears 

 that the bulletin was prepared by the German KaU' 

 Works, of Washington, a firm which deals in potash 

 fertilizers. It was evident that the stations had 

 lent themselves — probably inadvertently — to an ad" 

 vertising scheme, but the exact nature of the trans- 

 action has lately been told with the utmost compla- 

 cency in the annual report of one of the stations 

 concerned. The director of the Tennessee station 

 simply says that " the edition of this was furnished 

 the station by the American agent of the German 

 Kali Works.'' But the director of the Georgia sta- 

 tion makes an extended statement, as follows :. 

 "Bulletin No. 9 (special), October, 1890. — An edi- 



