The Green Forest tribune., 1903-01-17
THERE CAN BE NO LIMIT.
Over Production of Apples and
 Poultry an Impossibility.


 be possible for me to attend the meeting in your city on Feb. 10th next, I have taken the liberty to write you giving my views on the question of lover production, which question is being raised in some of the horticultural and agricultural papers.
 I know of no better guide for the future than the experiences of the past, and my observations cover a space of more than fifty years and extend from Maine, almost to the Rocky Mountains and from the Canadas to this and adjacent states. When Charles Sumner was U. $. Sen- ator, he was asked if he thought a match factory would pay. He replied, ''That same question was asked me recently in regard to pin factory. Now, a pin can be used indefinitely, but a match can be used but once. Now, if a pin is used on an av- craze ten times and a match can be used but once, then the match factory should pay ten times as we'll as the pin factory" :"
 Now, the same analysis is ap- plicable in regard to poultry and fruit. A little over fifty years ago man from Massachusetts bought a large farm in the southern part of Connecticut and he astonished the natives by building a hen house and stocking it with hun- dred hens. This venture created as much talk and speculation among his neighbor farmers as a presidential election. But what is hundred hens for an av- craze farmer now? And yet eggs are scarcer and higher now than they were then, for more eggs are used in the city of New York now than was produced in the whole United States then, and from 3,O0O,OOO to 5,000,O00 dozen eggs are now imported from other countries annually. l can re- member when poultry shippers made rush to get the first car load of poultry into Boston for the Thanksgiving trade, fearing lest the markets would be glutted. But now it requires more than ten car loads to supply the rallies and the large houses and plants which give their several en- ployees a thanksgiving turkey. The entire shipment of that time would look lonesome in any one of the cold storage houses of that city today.
 It is less than fifty years since the first "Poultry Show" was held in Boston and the Boston Cultivator was much ridiculed for advocating it. Then there was no such thing in existence as a poultry paper. But now there is from one to a dozen in every state and there is few counties in the union but has it's poultry show and no state or county fair is complete without this most i'm portant annex; and what has proven true in poultry will also prove true in fruit and more so, for the immense population of the grain growing states, where the major part of the poultry is grown, is being forced out of fruit culture by the high price of lands and the short, uncertain bearing age of the trees, together with the ravages of fruit pests. And all this vast territory with it's teaming millions of fruit lovers and fruit consumers will have to be supplied from the fruit grow ing states.
 The growing offruit in the New England and Middle states of first class quality is regular warfare. It is fight from start to finish and if it were not for the longey- ity of the trees and their massive proportions and bearing qualities it would not pay.
 No, if the fruit acreage in all the fruit growing states is doubled every year for the next fifty