FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
79 
him and told him that his brother had 
already gone into partnership with 
him, evidently fearing that Mr. Berger 
wanted to join forces with him. As a 
matter of fact, a large percentage of 
growers in Florida, and a great many 
who are in the Exchange, have not yet 
freed themselves from the idea that the 
Florida Citrus Exchange is an institu¬ 
tion entirely foreign to them. They 
have an idea that the Florida Citrus 
Exchange was organized by a few phi¬ 
lanthropists or capitalists who are seek¬ 
ing their own interests, but whether 
philanthropists or capitalists, they are 
a good thing to shy off from. It is 
astonishing how many really intelli¬ 
gent people entertain that view. It is 
not uncommon to receive requests from 
people asking us to come and look over 
their groves and put a price on their 
crops. We also get letters from people 
asking us to come over and look at 
their fruit, and if they cannot sell their 
crop to someone else, maybe they will 
come into the Exchange. They can’t 
seem to comprehend that the Ex¬ 
change is founded to serve the interests 
of the grower. 
The growers in Florida, a great, great 
majority of them, haven’t the slightest 
conception of the proposition confront¬ 
ing them today. How many growers 
in Florida know that Louisiana next 
season will ship a half-million boxes of 
oranges? They don’t know that Louis¬ 
iana froze when we did, and that she 
has grown just as fast as we have. 
They don’t know that Porto Rico is 
producing large quantities of oranges 
and grapefruit and putting them all 
through New York. They don’t know 
that some of our friends who are inter¬ 
ested in the nursery business in Flor¬ 
ida have been encouraging Texans to 
plant their prairies in oranges, but they 
have. I read an amusing paragraph 
last season, after one of the cold snaps 
out there. One man was writing about 
his experiences with firepots, and said 
he had raised the temperature in one of 
his orchards up to twenty-one degrees. 
Now, if we had anything like that, we 
would think we were entirely done for. 
Out there, they are growing Satsumas 
that never freeze (?). That is the 
only place in this country where we 
can’t sell oranges unless we sell them 
Satsumas, and let me say, that is all 
due to enterprising nurserymen. They 
have advertised that the Satsumas are 
the finest oranges grown on earth. 
From what those people out there be¬ 
lieve, they are not sure whether Peary 
took any of them up to the North Pole 
or not, but if he did take any Satsumas- 
up there to set out, they are willing to 
wager those trees are living yet. They 
say, “We want nothing in this country 
but Satsumas.” Just see the trees they 
have put out! In Louisiana and all 
through that section of the country into 
Texas points, you cannot get in there 
unless you go at a sacrifice price. You 
are shut out of that territory. You are 
practically shut out of New York ex¬ 
cept with the best stock you can grow. 
If you haven’t the finest kind of stock 
you want to stay out of New York be- 
