28 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
through this hotel. Rockledge was only 
shipping 100,000 boxes of oranges and 
Florida was shipping over a million of 
boxes. They got the price and they got 
that extra 50 cents which Mr. Skinner 
spoke about. I have a man in mind at 
Leesburg who I don’t believe has ever 
been out of the county and was never on 
a railroad train until some friends put him 
on, and he produced the finest fruit in that 
section. When anyone else would pro¬ 
duce 5,000 he got 1,200 and 1,500 boxes. 
Now is the question whether we want that 
i r 500 boxes at $1.50 per box or 5,000 
boxes at 90 cents and sometimes 50 cents. 
We used to have a tremendous number of 
varieties in this State. I got the Cunning¬ 
ham orange from a budding at Orange 
Bend, and New York used to pay more 
for this orange than any, because it had 
the quality. Today you cannot find a 
Cunningham orange. It was the soil it 
was grown on. You cannot take a piece 
of pine land and produce on it the pineap¬ 
ple orange that they can produce at Citra, 
and you cannot produce an orange with 
the quality; you can probably produce a 
commercial orange, but not the quality. 
They do produce some quite fine Valen¬ 
cias in Polk county. 
I ship from 2,000 to 5,000 boxes of 
Parson Brown oranges and I ship the 
most of them from the 15th of December 
to the 15th of March. I originally got the 
Parson Brown oranges in Webster coun¬ 
ty. I planted the seeds. There is suffi¬ 
cient acid in it that you can eat it in No¬ 
vember and December and you can eat it 
the last of October if you want to ship a 
green orange. I would rather ship a car¬ 
load of pineapple oranges in January and 
take 40% less money for them than to ship 
that same car in September when every 
car would give the market a black eye. 
Now the question of quality is what in¬ 
terests the man on the other end of the 
line, the man who buys this fruit. 
You will pardon me for referring to 
California, but they have taught us a great 
many things. They used to ship into Bos¬ 
ton their first, second and third grades in 
the same car and they could not under¬ 
stand why Boston would not pay the same 
for the second grade as for the first. It 
would give 50 cents more for the first 
than for the second grade. Boston would 
not pay for pale fruit, but New York 
would take pale fruit, but would not take 
granulated fruit. When you get west of 
the Mississippi river you never see a rus¬ 
set orange. They do put some out from 
the San Diego section. There is not any¬ 
thing that pleases so well as a good rich¬ 
looking orange. 
About twelve years ago there was hard¬ 
ly a decent packing house in the State. 
Those people recognize the fact that they 
must not only have the quality of fruit, 
but they must have the quality of pack, 
and it must be placed on the other end of 
the line in the most satisfactory manner 
possible. I don’t know of anything else 
to be said on this subject. 
Coming back to the Indian river propo¬ 
sition. The production of oranges and 
placing them on the market to sell are dif¬ 
ferent things. I have hammock soil and 
I have the sour stock, and I can produce 
good fruit if I will do it. We cannot all 
produce the best, but we can if the oppor- 
