THIRTY-THIRD BTENNIAD SESSION 
171 
of a few quarts of strawberries was enough; but by assigning to one man 
in a town a car load of strawberries, it has been rather easy to market car 
load lots in towns that have not one thousand inhabitants, and market them 
profitably. I believe that on account of such conditions in connection with 
the marketing of strawberries, the berry will likely become an important 
article of diet, and will steadily increase in use for breakfast, dinner and 
supper. 
Mr. Fadden: I wish to say a word in reference to the development of 
the strawberry. There have been men in the way of, rather than helping, 
the development ever since we discovered it. I want to say to Mr. Allen 
that my observation with reference to the growth of that industry in the 
last fev/ years, notwithstanding the eight or ten backsets, is, that it is really 
comparatively in its infancy and occupies a position in the fruit world very 
similar to that of the automobile in the transportation world. I have been 
very greatly surprised at the rapid development that is being made in the 
improvement of that type of ever-bearing strawberry. 
Mr. Macoun: There is no question that the strawberry has a strong 
and a very important place, one of the most important places, in the fruit 
industry of the United States and Canada. It is one of our great national 
assets, not because it adds $20,000,000 a year to the nation’s purse, but be- 
cause there is no other fruit produced in this whole North America that 
grows over such an area of the country, and there is no other fruit in this 
country that is as easily raised as the strawberry. S'o that I say to our 
people and to every one, at all times, that there is no fruit in the world to 
my mind more important to the people than the strawberry. It holds a 
higher rank right among the finest of all fruits of the world because every- 
body can raise it and everybody can have it. 
Mr. Lazenby: I speak for Ohio; and in that state the strawberry is not 
grown so much as formerly on account of the problem of marketing; the 
output has greatly decreased in the last fifteen or twenty years. We 
would rejoice to see more grown. About twenty or twenty-five years ago 
the farmers of Ohio, many of them in different sections of the state, some 
north, some south, raised strawberries on a very large scale; in our section 
often five to ten, fifteen and sometimes twenty cars, or more. But the 
grading and the system of marketing seems to have been very largely 
detrimental or discouraging; one source of trouble seems to have been the 
pests and certain diseases; again other growers had varietal and cultural 
troubles; another trouble was that in shipping any distance, and they did 
ship to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other points, the losses occa- 
sioned by very hot weather and rather imperfect and irregular transporta- 
tion were so great that the growers received little for their efforts, and finally, 
gave up altogether, because the risk in marketing was so great. 
Now we have many small growers, and there is no question but that 
we would be extensively raising strawberries in Ohio if the growers simply 
did depend more on local markets or did not have to depend at all on them. 
If there is any way to come back to former conditions and ship and market 
the fruit advantageously, I think it would place many of our Ohio men In 
better position and increase profits in their work. 
