FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
23 
for fair rates and rapid transit, do not 
these demand our attention and challenge 
the best brains among us ? Of what avail 
is it that we devote our time and capital 
to the problems of production if the other 
and more complex problems of economy, 
distribution, transportation, receive not 
their proper attention? These things are 
as much a part of our legitimate business 
as the cultivation of the soil, the ferti¬ 
lizer we shall use or the various matters 
of every day occurrence. What man is 
there before me who has not felt like this ? 
The season has been a good one, I have 
fertilized judiciously and wisely, I have 
cultivated, I have sprayed, I have spared 
no pains to produce a fine crop. How 
shall I market it to the best advantage? 
Have you not realized that you were then 
confronted with harder conditions than 
those of production and ones less within 
your control or management? 
The original scope of our Society be¬ 
ing much narrower than its presc'nt one 
curtailed the range of topics considered 
at our meetings to a very narrow inargin. 
The original thought of the founders of 
this Society was to make it apply almost 
exclusively to orange growing, to citrus 
fruits and their allied subjects. As the 
years have come and gone its scope has 
been widened so that it now covers, not 
only semi-tropical, but also tropical fruits, 
vegetables and many of the fruits of the 
temperate zone. This enlargement of its 
sphere has injected into it new relations 
and new problems for annual considera¬ 
tion. Let us briefly discuss a few of the 
important items worthy of thought. This 
is an age of organization, co-operation 
and consolidation. It is not sufficient that 
the horticulturist of today knows how to 
produce the fruits and the products of 
the soil but that he knows as well how to 
successfully transport, distribute and mar¬ 
ket them. Perhaps the largest field for 
present and future investigation is the one 
covering the problem of marketing. This 
problem involves the element of business 
experience and study of the relations of 
the cost of production and transportation 
to the market value of our products; the 
study of the laws of supply and demand 
as applied to each particular product; a 
study of the value of organization in the 
securing of reasonable and satisfactory 
rates of transportation; of the proper 
commissions to be paid our selling agents; 
and the proper distribution of the crop 
so as to prevent surplus in one portion of 
the country and deficiency in another. 
Were there no such thing as organized ef¬ 
fort among those whose financial interests 
are opposed to ours there should be no 
necessity for organization on our part. 
The value of farmers and fruit growers’ 
organizations is in direct proportion to the 
tenacity with which they adhere to them 
and the vigor with wLich they enforce 
the principles involved. I do not deem 
it necessary to go into arguments sup¬ 
porting the needs for compactly united 
organizations in each of our principal in¬ 
dustries. The need for organization must 
be apparent to all. For greatest efficiency 
consolidation of all for the handling of 
problems common to all is only common 
sense. Questions like transportation, tar¬ 
iffs for protection, rates of commission 
and kindred broad matters can only be 
handled powerfully and conclusively in 
the hands of one central organization. The 
methods and direction taken by each in¬ 
terest must be dictated by themselves. 
It can do no harm to crystallize among 
them, into some definite form the l^est, 
ideas of the most intelligent and ener¬ 
getic of the growers, nor need it be be- 
