88 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
organization for the opportunity granted 
by its officials. 
It would be absolutely impossible for 
me to give you the physical conditions of 
the Panama-Pacific Exposition in the time 
allotted to me, and therefore, before read¬ 
ing a telegram which I asked your presi¬ 
dent the privilege of having read, I will 
take a few moments of your time in tell¬ 
ing you of my efforts since I arrived in 
Florida a few weeks ago. 
All of those present know what this 
Exposition is to celebrate; the opening 
of the Panama Canal, and if you think 
back you will remember that it is an in¬ 
ternational affair and not a local or state 
fair; therefore your state, my state, has 
just as much interest in the Panama-Pa¬ 
cific Exposition as California, and it be¬ 
longs as much to you and to me as rep¬ 
resentatives of our States as it does to 
California. 
The President of the United States has 
issued a proclamation inviting all the peo¬ 
ple in the world to attend this Exposition 
which opens February 20th and closes De¬ 
cember 4, 1915. After doing that he ap¬ 
pointed San Francisco as the place for 
the meeting and when San Francisco, or 
the State of California was made the trus¬ 
tee, she raised the sum of $17,500,000.00 
with which to conduct this Exposition. 
When I arrived in Florida a few weeks 
ago I went to the east coast and after 
explaining to them the physical condi¬ 
tions of the Fair I was encouraged and 
told I could have their co-operation and 
this State would be properly represented 
in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific Exposi¬ 
tion. Encouraged at the way they re¬ 
ceived me, I then went to Tampa. (I came 
pretty near saying Tammany Hall). 
There I discovered a condition that had 
not entered into the matter before. The 
President of the Board of Trade told me, 
after extending the privilege of a talk 
there that evening, that unless I could 
secure the endorsement of the Florida 
Citrus Fruit Exchange they would not 
join with the Board of Trade of Jack¬ 
sonville or in St. Augustine, and he then 
asked me to interview the General Man¬ 
age of the Citrus Exchange before we 
went any further with the matter. 
In my interview with Mr. Jones I dis¬ 
covered that California had some years 
ago passed a quarantine law which pro¬ 
hibited the importation of Florida fruit 
into that State, and having learned the 
conditions named in that law, I began 
telegraphing out to San Francisco to 
know what could be done about it. 
This telegram I am about to read would 
not be worth a cent as information if you 
do not follow me right straight through. 
After telegraphing them, I received a 
telegram saying that special provision had 
been made by which Florida could ex¬ 
hibit fruit at the Exposition in 1915, but 
we did not know on the strength of that 
telegram what those special provisions 
were. They stated in that telegram that 
a copy of the law prohibiting the fruit, 
and the information as to provisions had 
been mailed. 1 
In discussing it with Mr. Jones and 
the President of the Board of Trade at 
Tampa, we did not want to wait seven 
or eight days, so I wired again asking 
them to embody in a night letter these new 
provisions which would admit Florida as 
an exhibitor of her fruit. The answer 
