FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
59 
can do as individuals, does not benefit 
the average grower. These gentle¬ 
men have found out how to raise or¬ 
anges and how to contend with the 
natural and unnatural enemies of the 
industry and meet them successfully. 
They represent themselves and per¬ 
haps five per cent, of the orange grow¬ 
ers outside of themselves in the state 
of Florida. Let me tell you how the 
situation is in my own neighborhood, 
and I think it is a typical neighbor¬ 
hood. Seventy-five per cent, of the 
fruit grown in that neighborhood is 
neither picked nor packed nor mar¬ 
keted by the grower. The buyer 
comes in and he hires men to pick it 
and pack it and ship it. The men that 
we have to hire to do this work for 
us are a set of irresponsible men, and 
if they got their just deserts they would 
all be hung. I can’t stay to see my 
oranges packed. I have got reasona¬ 
bly fair prices for my oranges and the 
men who have bought them have suf¬ 
fered perhaps more than I have. Why 
do we sell our fruit this way, though? 
Why are we compelled to sell it to 
people who have no interest in his 
reputation as an honest grower, whose 
only idea is to sell the fruit at the best 
possible price? It is simply because 
of the lack of co-operation; simply 
from lack of willingness to exercise 
confidence in our neighbor and fellow 
man. When I talk to my neighbor 
about co-operation for our mutual 
good, he simply draws into his shell 
and says, “My business is my own, and 
your business is your own, and if you 
will leave mine alone, I won’t bother 
yours.” Now, we know what is 
the proper thing to do, but how are 
we going to get seventy-five per cent. 
of the growers to know what we know 
and what should be done for their 
own good ? It is bound to come after 
a while, as Dr. Inman says. It may 
not come in his time or in my time, 
as he has so unkindly intimated that 
he and his contemporaries are past the 
first flush of youth; but it is to the 
gentlemen who are on the platform— 
Prof. Rolfs, Dr. Sledd, and the others' 
—to whom we must look. It has to 
be done through education. It must 
be taught to the coming generation; 
not only horticultural and agricultural 
methods that will be successful, but 
they must be taught that intelligent 
co-operation is the only way to make 
a success of the orange or any other 
business. We expect you to teach the 
coming generation how to do this, but 
we know you can’t do it alone. We 
cannot get all the orange growers to 
come into this association, and how 
can we teach them to pack and ship 
oranges to get the best results ? 
Through education. That is the key¬ 
note, and until we educate them up to 
seeing their own interest and realizing 
the fact that “united we stand, and 
divided we fall,” we never can expect 
anything in the way of results. What 
does the man coming here from 
Cleveland or Baltimore or New York 
care about our success or our reputa¬ 
tion? He wants to get the most he 
can out of the crop. We have to pay 
his expenses and, in fact, everything 
comes back on the grower. The only 
way to restore Florida’s reputation as 
the best orange-growing country in 
the world, is to co-operate with that 
end in view. Send out men to organ¬ 
ize local organizations, and let the 
members of these local organizations 
