90 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
with us, Professor Agnes Harris from the 
Florida State College at Tallahassee, who 
is going to talk to us along these lines 
for home purposes, but which are capable 
of extension into our commercial life. 
Miss Harris: I feel cpiite like the ne¬ 
gro man, who preached a sermon. When 
he began, he held up two fingers, and 
when he had closed his remarks, he held 
up two fingers. Someone asked him why 
he did that. He said that he copied his ser¬ 
mon, and holding up two fingers were 
quotation marks. 
I have here nothing that I myself have 
found out, but I have had the pleasure of 
being in charge of the demonstration 
work that was started in the state several 
year ago, and our girls and women have 
been working on this work of saving the 
surplus fruits and vegetables for home 
use, and if we have done anything that 
can be of assistance to you, we shall cer¬ 
tainly be delighted. 
The betterment of present living con¬ 
ditions and the training of the girl for the 
home of tomorrow is the chief aim of 
Home Demonstration Work. We have 
not manufactured products from the 
grove on that large scale necessary to 
place them on a wholesale basis. We 
have, however, taught through our work, 
the preservation of the fruits from the 
grove for home use, and in a small way 
have developed this work to commercial 
proportions. 
Florida fruits have been shipped into 
other states, manufactured into marma¬ 
lades, preserves and jellies, and have been 
placed upon the market at a profit. A 
recognition of the fact that a large per¬ 
cent of our fruit crop now goes to waste 
as culls, strongly suggests the undevelop¬ 
ed possibilities in this field of work within 
our State. Scientific investigation should 
precede the development of such work on 
a large scale. We have not been unmind¬ 
ful of this fact, but we have had no funds 
with which to pursue such investigation. 
By frequent appeals to the Bureau of 
Chemistry, at Washington, we have had 
four brief visits from one of their ex¬ 
perts in this line of work. What he has 
done has been sufficient to indicate to us 
what should be done. 
As a result of our work, there are now 
hundreds of women in the State making 
products of excellent quality; but our 
work and the work of the manufacturers 
in the State, would be greatly helped if 
more scientists were at work upon our 
fruits, developing the best methods for 
handling them, and determining the need¬ 
ed equipment in kitchen and factory for 
the same. If there is money in marma¬ 
lades, jellies and preserves produced by 
factories located at a distance from the 
groves, then surely there is a profit to be 
realized on these products made in Flor¬ 
ida. 
On the shelves of Florida's retail stores, 
are California fruits of many kinds, 
Louisiana figs, jellies and jams from vari¬ 
ous other States and English marmalades 
far inferior to the products which could 
be made from our own fruits. We should 
not only be supplying our home market, 
but finding a place for our products in 
other fields. 
In this discussion of the utilization of 
products from the grove, it will be im- 
