580 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



! 



only be effective when the individuals who compose the combined body 

 each and all fairly and squarely do their part. Collectivism founded 

 upon any other basis is futile. The day-dreams of the feckless and 

 the idle are of a " collectivism " which must be futile. All praise then 

 to the individual Colonial fruit-grower and to his coadjutors individually. 



I hope, then, the question, How is it done? is satisfactorily 

 answered. 



Is it not clear that natural advantages — such as soil and climate — 

 cannot be held responsible for the splendid object-lesson the Colonies 

 are affording us. The best compliment we can pay our Colonial kins- 

 men, and at the same time the sanest course we can adopt for the welfare 

 of our own fruit industry, is to accept the lesson and follow so fine an 

 example. There is no insurmountable obstacle to our doing so, but 

 there is one obstacle that must be surmounted before we are able to 

 achieve what our Colonies have achieved. 



No climate throughout the world is better abused than the British 

 climate, yet I am afraid I must abuse it once again, and ascribe to it 

 that one obstacle I refer to, because I do not know to what else it can 

 be ascribed. There is, there must be, some micro-organism infesting 

 the atmosphere of these islands which has a peculiar effect upon our 

 population. It has the strange property of making a man infected with 

 it quite incapable of believing that his business interests can be in any 

 way identical witli those of his neighbour, or that in combination with 

 his fellow-man he can attain greater material advantages than he can 

 achieve single-handed. This germ or microbe, or whatever it is, is 

 evidently more prevalent or more virulent in the rural atmosphere than 

 in the air of cities; for sure it is that the countryman suffers more 

 intensely from the mental derangement caused by it than the townsman. 

 Now that this germ is peculiar to our climate is obvious, since any 

 man badly under its influence here has only to transport himself to 

 other climes — say, to the Colonies — to be freed from its ill-effects. In 

 other words, an Englishman who will carry individualism to the extreme 

 point of his own undoing in his own land will go abroad and adopt in 

 theory and in practice the principles of " combination " to his own 

 vast benefit. 



V/e must inoculate ourselves against this microbe — say, with a 

 vaccine charged with the germs of common sense — and once freed from 

 its influence the road is open to us to build up a fruit industry in the 

 way and by the same methods that our Colonial kinsmen have built up 

 theirs. Efforts have been made — honest efforts enough in their way — 

 in this country to put the industry on a firm basis, but organization is 

 lacking and there is no cohesion; and the microbe always intervenes. 



The Colonies need never fear that after learning from them " How- 

 to do it " we shall enter into harmful competition with them. There 

 are unlimited markets open for really first-class fruit, the supply of 

 such fruit simply increases the demand for it, and the world's popula- 

 tion is not standing still. 



Hearty congratulations are due from us to the exhibitors in this 

 show, mingled with gratitude for the object-lesson it conveys. 



