140 
SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
tiave indeed only transferred and adapted to Florida a very 
common sight in California and the far west. Irrigated colo¬ 
nies are there numerous and rapidly increasing. We need 
them here. They will make our state prosperous. They will 
fill up the waste places. They will give opportunities for 
thousands of people to make beautiful homes for themselves 
and their families. They will lead to other industries beyond 
what I have so briefly sketched, and help on the prosperity, 
education and happiness of our whole people. Such is my 
faith in irrigation. I believe that faith to be founded on facts, 
sustained by cool reasoning and confirmed by years of careful 
observation among the conditions here existing. 
Marketing Oranges, 
Yerbal report by T. Hind, of Georgetown, chairman of Standing 
Committee on Marketing. 
I have not had the pleasure of meeting either of the other 
two members of this committee to consult with them. I have 
written to each gentleman, however, and have received from 
one of them his views. The season that we have passed through 
has been the most disastrous one in the history of orange 
growing. The amount realized from our crop this season (the 
largest we have ever had) has been the smallest any of us ever 
dreamed ol getting, and I believe there is not one of us here 
to-night who, had he known that after these years of toil he 
would receive no more for the product of his labors than he 
has this year, would have embarked in the business. The 
year 1893 will be remembered by all engaged in the culture 
of oranges as a year for phenomenally low prices. The chair¬ 
man of your Marketing Committee last year, Mr. Bean, stated 
that over 50 per cent, of the crop of 1892 has been sold in 
the state and he predicted the experience of last year would 
bring buyers into the state for the whole crop this year. This 
prediction was not fulfilled in my section. Buyers have never 
been so scarce. Admitting that the best plan would be to 
sell on the tree, experiences this year have demonstrated that 
