96 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
It has been a number of years since a 
warning was first sounded to the Florida 
State Horticultural Society in regard to 
the menace which was hanging over us 
from the Mediterranean fruit fly and the 
Mexican orange maggot. A great many 
of us were worried about those things 
years ago, but our worry was not sufficient 
to goad us into seeing that we secured a 
proper law to keep them out. We have 
not those pests as yet, but while we were 
worrying over the Mediterranean fruit 
fly and the Mexican orange maggot we 
got citrus canker and it is yet too early to 
tell whether or not we have something 
worse than the things we were worrying 
about. 
However, unless we get rid of canker, 
the fruit fly and the maggot need worry 
us no more, as far as our citrus industry 
is concerned. Those of us who have lived 
with the canker for the past year have not 
the slightest doubt that until the last leaf 
of the last infected tree is destroyed—ab¬ 
solutely eradicated—the man who plants 
an orange tree or a grapefruit tree in Flor¬ 
ida is simply throwing money away. 
There is no doubt of it. And it is not 
what General Hancock called the tariff, 
“a local issue.” 
We have been unfortunate enough in 
Dade County to draw the big end of the 
fight, at least we hope no country will 
have anything to contend with such as we 
have had. But let me tell you, there is 
not one citrus producer in this State but 
should feel that this is an issue that affects 
him directly and personally. 
In presenting the case before the Sem¬ 
inar at Gainesville last September, I stated 
that Dade County was going to get rid of 
the disease, but what we most feared was 
that it would break out in some other part 
of the State and come back to us. I was 
young and inexperienced and had known 
citrus canker only three or four months. 
There has hardly been a week since that 
time but I have felt quite sure that I had 
made a mistake and that Dade County 
was not going to get rid of the disease. 
But as the case stands now, I believe, per¬ 
sonally, though I might have a hard time 
proving it, that Dade County is going to 
get rid of the disease, providing we get 
the law, providing we get the funds that 
must go with that law, providing*, further, 
that we get from one source or another 
the right man to go with the law and the 
funds, and providing, still further, that 
behind that law and those funds and the 
man who administers them, we have the 
united backing of the citrus industry over 
the State. Without all these provisions 
I would hate to venture a guess. It has 
been an uphill fight so far. 
When I reported to the Seminar I 
stated that we had something like seventy- 
five or eighty active infections. We 
worked steadily all fall and about the first 
of the year we took an inventory. We 
had spent something like $12,000 in South 
Dade County and we had started four or 
five months previously with seventy-five 
known infections. After working all 
those months and spending all that money, 
we had one hundred and twenty-five ac¬ 
tive infections! 
Our trouble was that we had not suffi¬ 
cient men in the fall to hunt for the new 
infections. Where we had known infec¬ 
tions and funds to properly handle them 
we had succeeded in eradicating the dis- 
