THIRTY-THIRD BIENNIAL SESSION 
235 
and crop results. Here within a radius of three hundred miles or less we 
have more than 15,000,000 of the population of this country, and this great 
consuming population can be reached over many lines of railroad through- 
out a section where a distinctive tonnage takes relatively low rates. Then 
again, this section is within one hundred and fifty miles of the farthest 
ports to the seaboard, whence liners run across to the great marts of conti- 
nental Europe. So also the markets of the South, are around you, while 
other and competing fruit growing sections are principally far in the North 
and Northwest. In talking yesterday to the Maryland Horticultural Society 
I had occasion to refer to this same subject, and I spoke to them particularly 
about an enterprise which had been started in the western part of their own 
state, which appealed to me a few years ago from the very bigness and 
broadness and boldness of the conception as being of great promise to the 
state. Out in that section of territory they are establishing a great fruit 
community with what I may term, if you will allow me, real genuine western 
enterprise and push. I heard the president of the Maryland Horticultural 
Society say yesterday that the horticulturists of Maryland has been asleep 
at the switch. But this project is illustrative of what this great country 
will do; with other enterprises of similar character, it is the making of the 
state of Maryland and of this particular section of the state especially 
and probably this will be shortly one of the great apple-producing sections 
of the east. 
Now, in passing, it may be interesting to say — although not bearing 
directly upon the transportation question as you probably know — that dur- 
ing the past twenty or twenty-five years the population of this country has 
increased something like thirty-three and one-third per cent, and during 
that same period of time the actual production of the apple has increased 
over thirty per cent. This of course looks as if it were a fixture. From 
every standpoint the growing of apples in this and surrounding states ought 
to be carried on more successfully than in any other section of the country. 
We all know of the successes in commercial apple-growing in the Far West, 
but their market is comparatively small as compared with ours; but we in 
this section are feeling the new conditions which are arising. For, when the 
Panama Canal is in operation we will feel the force of competition, water 
competition, if properly equipped steamers can go from Seattle or Portland 
down the Pacific coast, through the canal, and reach the ports of New 
Orleans, Galveston, Jacksonville, Charleston or Savannah, or Norfolk or 
Baltimore, and through these ports the interior markets, and lay their fruit 
down there at very much less prices than are now prevailing through trans- 
continental transportation. I have seen very recently in the public press 
that the growers of the West are now preparing for this coming condition 
and are providing the means whereby they can take advantage of these 
markets. 
Now I will not detain you longer. I simply wanted to say to you that 
the farmer and the fruit grower, as has been indicated to you to-day, should 
adopt the same methods which have made other great business enterprises 
successful. It must not be forgotten that in this age of the world farming 
and horticulture are lines of business as much as selling drugs or manufac- 
turing stoves. It is the results in dollars and cents that you are after in 
