The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-05
ABOUT THE APPLE KING OF FRUIT American Product is Height of
 Perfection INDUSTRY STILL GROWING Missouri Now Has 3o,ooo,ooo Trees, While New York, Illinois and
 Ohio Are Also Great
 Apple Producers.
INDUSTRY STILL GROWING
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKIN.

BY FREDERIC J. HAskIN.
 Among all the peoples of the tempor- ate zones. in whatever nation. the ap- pie is undisputed king of fruits. In the United States there are three apple trees for every man, woman and child, and the annual crop will average nearly two bushels for each American citizen. 1 The apple Is the only fruit that forms staple article of food, fresh cooked or dried, for the American table every day in the year. All other fruits, except in the tropics, are luxuries. Some millions of bushels are sent to foreign lands each year, but New York city recently well comed an importation of 1,o00 boxes from Australia Hundreds of thousands of bushels of apples were wasted in the orchards of the middle western states last fall because of the car shortage and lack of fertilizers for taking care of the crop.
 When good American wishes to de- scribe the perfection of neatness he says It is in apple-pie order" When an American boy grows enthusiastic over his sweetheart, his baseball bat or his dog, he declares the object of his de- votion to be a 'pippin.' The standard type of the great American dessert, whether eaten in those places where it is used three times day or only once is apple pie. In it's varieties of 'kivered unkivered, or cross-kivered' it is always welcome, and the apple part of it, at least, is wholesome.
 ho Wag ipO OtO SnOn0ent London Times is a man whom no one would expect to grow enthusiastic over anything distinctly American but it is a fact that when a bubbling young girl asked him the question Dickens so hated, "how do you like America?" he replied: T like American apple pie so much that I want to stay here" This con servaton is proof of the patriotism of the elder statesmen of the United States Senate in providing for the senate restau- rant d cook who brings apple pie and apple dumplngs and baked apples to the very pinnacle of culinary perfection dishes that the gods envy.
 Delightful as the Apple is when convert ed into pie, or glorified into apple sass, or expressed into cider it is bset as it comes from the tree-juicy and good from it's tough, thin peel into it's brown, ripe seeds. The seeds, too-if it were not for them how would a maiden tell her fortune on All Hallowe en? One 1 love, two l love, three l love l say, and the American girl we. knows how much better are apple seeds than daisy petals, for are there not more often eight seeds, or tweve?-"eight we both love, nine he comes, ten he tarres, eleven he courts, and twelve he marries!'
 Withir the memory of most of the peo- pie who read this the orchard was sim ply d small lot of apple trees, fifty or a hundred, planted somewhere near the farm house, on which apples were grown for use by the family, and maybe a few bushels were sold each years to the neighboring towns and cities Often the pruning knife was not used and the orchard was made up of unsghtly, msshappen trees that would disgrace a modern fruit grower. Under the trees was a thick mat of grass and the ground was innocent of cultivation. If insects attacked the trees. or disease ruined the fruit, 1t was accounted a mis- fortune. Steps for prevention and cure were rarely taken.
 Now it has all changed. and the com mercial orchard. so rare forty years ago, Is common sight in many of the states "a large tract of well groomed trees of uniform size cultivated as carefully as corn or potatoes. and protected from in- sects and disease religiousy the children of a good mother.
 Transportation widened the market and when the market demanded them, the ap- pies were raised. With experience came knowledge, and the knowledge gained by one fruit grower became the property of another. Many state universities now maintain schools of fruit-growing, where the sons of the orchard owners spend the winter learning how to grow and protect, gather, pack and ship the apples from the paternal acres. The federal department of agriculture and the agriculture bureaus of the several states assist the thousands of horticultural societies in gathering and disseminating knowledge, and experts Are at the beck and call of every man who desires to plant an apple tree.
 The apple is the descendant of the wild crabs of Europe and was brought to America with the Caucasian race of man and. like that race, has found a congenial home in most of the United States and in large acres of adjacent British America There are hundreds of varieties, some of them ripening almost as soon as others finish blooming, and we have June apples summer apples early fall apples, late fall apples and winter apples. In the last named classs the apples do not complete the ripening process until months after they have been taken from the tree, and by placing them in cold storage this pro- cess may be delayed so that the finest ap- ples are just ripe late the next spring
 The popularity of varieties varies with taste and with the section of the country There are Virginians who will fight for the fame of the Albermarle Pippin. New Workers who will stand to the death for the Northern Spy and Aregonians and Washingtonans who will maintain IL