STATUS AND POSSIBILITIES OF NUT CULTURE IN THE NORTH (continued 2)

Mr. C. A. Reed: You are right about that. But I would like to go on record in opposition to this movement. When pecans are recorded in the standard works the names stay. The rule is generally accepted that where the names have once been recorded no other name can be permitted. It is easy enough for us to vote to change a name but not so easy to change it in actual practice. How many of us will know these pecans that Prof. Smith has mentioned by any other names than those that have already been accepted. Suppose we do rename them, we shall have to explain that they are the old pecans under the new names.

Mr. McCOY: We remember well when we changed the name of the Green River. We decided that among ourselves here. The Posey pecan used to be the Grayville and you know when we changed it. I call it the Grayville yet because I got used to that. You changed it to Posey thinking it was from Posey County but it really is from Gibson County. I have no doubt many of these men here call it the Grayville, and then lots of men that hear me call it the Grayville ask me what I mean as they don't recognize it under the old name. I am in favor of changing these names. I named some of them and you know it, but I didn't always name them right and you have changed them here. Can't we do it again if it will sell them?

The Secretary: What is the motion exactly?

The President: As I understood it was to appoint a special committee to take up the matter, and consider changing these names.

The Secretary: Why should we do that when we have already a committee on nomenclature? What is the use of a special committee?

Mr. Potter: The special committee will report quicker.

The President: If it belongs to the committee on nomenclature to consider the matter it will be best to do it now, immediately. If the names are to be changed they ought not go another year, and if not to be changed it ought to be known. The chair will be glad to entertain a motion that the committee report tomorrow on it.

Mr. Potter: I make a motion that the matter be referred to the committee on nomenclature and that they be ordered to report tomorrow.

The President: Do I hear a second?

A Member: I second the motion.

C. A. Reed: I am the chairman of that committee and I could not report tomorrow so I will ask that if it is to be taken up by committee that a special committee be appointed.

The President: It is Mr. W. C. Reed who is the chairman of that committee, to which committee was added C. A. Reed and R. L. McCoy.

Professor Close: I would like to ask Mr. Reed if he is absolutely sure about the rule he has just quoted of the American Pomological Society, that a name cannot be changed. I don't remember that rule.

Mr. Reed: Mr. Taylor was the framer of that rule and in actual practice he has adhered to the first name used, and did at the time he was secretary of that society.

Professor Close: Have you not in mind the rule that a name like Posey being given this variety no other variety can be given that same name. I think that is the rule you are thinking of.

Mr. Reed: No, but that is true too. You know we had the Sovereign pecan, and after that name had been established Mr. Taylor wrote up that variety for the yearbook, and the name had been changed then to the Texas Prolific, but he still retained the name of Sovereign for the reason that it had been called that before.

Professor Close: It seems to me that an organization could change a name. I think the idea is a good one. Take the name Indiana. I think that name ought to be given to the very best seedling variety that is a native of that state. I don't know whether the Indiana is the best one or not, but it is now too late to change that. If it is not the best the name will have to stick to the variety to which it has been given, even if later on better varieties are found.

Mr. McCoy: I know there are some extremely fine pecans on the Illinois River because I have some samples of them, a good bit better than the ones we have, and I suggest that we reserve the name Illinois, which would be suggestive of both the river and the state, for one of them. I know the nuts are there and I think they are very fine. The Illinois River has more pecans on it than the Wabash.

Dr. Deming: I second the motion.

The President: It has been moved and seconded that the matter of changing the names of these nuts as suggested by Dr. Smith, be referred to the committee on nomenclature, and that they be instructed to report tomorrow.

(Motion carried.)

The President: We have with us this afternoon, the state entomologist, Mr. Baldwin, who knows many things of interest to nut growers, and we shall be glad to hear from him.

Mr. Baldwin: Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Nut Growers Association: I am wholly unprepared to make a talk before this association and must say I am not sufficiently familiar with nut culture to be able to tell you anything of interest along that line of work. Your discussion relative to the pollenization of plants was intensely interesting and clear. There is no use in trying to dodge the fact that every plant has a father and mother, and that father and mother also have fathers and mothers, the same as we have. The reason I am not just the same as you is because I have a different father and mother, and the reason I am not just the same as my brother is because the characteristics of the parent may show in one individual and not another. If your pecan trees should stand out in an isolated situation and pollenate themselves the individual nuts would not all be the same. We have peaches that come nearly true to name, and the same is true of the Snow apple that has been grown in the St. Lawrence valley for generations. The pollenization of budded and grafted fruit trees or nut trees is brought about, in my opinion, wholly by the surroundings or environment of that tree. The well known experiments of the Geneva Experiment Station have very satisfactorily proved that the variety does not change except in so far as the environment changes it. Of course there are some things in nature we do not understand as where very decided deviations, or wholly distinct varieties arise; but the general rule holds, that whenever you propagate trees, and get your buds from some variety having merits, those merits will be transferred to the trees that are budded or grafted, and will remain in them while the surrounding conditions remain the same, and changes in the fruit will be effected only by changes in the locations in which the trees grow.

I suppose that as I am the entomologist of this state you expected to hear some discussion of things of interest to you in this particular field, but I came wholly unprepared for that. In this state so far as the nut growers industry is concerned we have not done anything at all. There is a large field for work but I must confess I am wholly unprepared to give you a talk on this subject. Where I was raised, back in Pennsylvania, we have several well known bugs that the nut growers have to contend with, and they are especially abundant with the chestnut. That of course would not be of so much interest to the people of this state until the chestnut growing industry has developed more than at present. I am very glad to be with you and the discussions I have heard have been very interesting.

The President: We are very glad to have heard from the state entomologist and we want his assistance. We are trying to steer away from bugs and we want his suggestions and help at any time.

We have a number of interesting people on the program yet this afternoon, but the chair is going to take the liberty of asking the president of the National Nut Growers Association, Dr. C. A. Van Duzee to talk to us on any subject that he cares to discuss. I know him well enough to know that anything he says will be good enough to hear: I know him personally, the most of you know him by reputation. He has some pictures here, and I shall take the liberty of passing them around for you to look at, and I am going to say that these are pictures it certainly does my heart good to see. They are pictures of his orchard down South. Just pass them around please.

Col. Van Duzee: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I told your President the first thing when I got in this morning that I didn't care to have any place on the program; that I would be glad to talk at any time on any subject he wished me to, and do anything I could to help along. That puts me in bad to start with. As I have listened to the discussions of your meeting the thought has come to me that you are following along very much the same pathway that the southern nut growers traversed five or six or seven years ago. We are a little further along in the growing of nut orchards in the South, but you are certainly going to get along and be abreast of us in time. Perhaps I may be able to do more good if I confine myself to a few practical suggestions as to how I think nut orchards can best be produced. Those pictures represent an orchard which I have in southwestern Georgia and have grown under adverse conditions. The pictures show the culmination of years of earnest effort. They represent what I consider to be a very reasonable success from a practical standpoint. I am a farmer and the first thing I require of my farm is that it shall pay. I have no theories; I have no ideals but those which must stand that test. I am in farming to make it a success; it is my business and everything I do must stand that test. If it doesn't pay it is not successful. That orchard represents the culmination of years of study of the problem of how to grow a pecan orchard on my ranch. That bunch of hogs represents about one hundred and fifty we selected about three weeks ago to put in our early peanut patch down there to finish them up as pork, but it does not show my breeders or young stock. I could talk hogs to you until the cows come home. I set my mark a year ago last spring, after being twice wiped out by the cholera, I set my mark at fifty thousand pounds of meat from my orchard, and I want to say I have animals now in the orchard and in the peanut field together to make that and a little margin to the good. I expect our orchard will produce this year more than fifty thousand pounds of hams, bacon and lard. The reason I am talking about this is that I want to emphasize the fact that the growing of nut trees is a business proposition. I want to say, in passing, that I believe no better thing could happen to the people who live in America than that every man who owns land might plant a few nut trees. It is a notorious fact that the nut trees which do the best, and which make the most money for the man who plants them, are the ones planted in the garden and immediately about the home where the conditions are favorable for the best development. It is also true that all the successful pecan promotions that have been put over on the American people have been built upon the records of those individual trees, which were grown under the most favorable conditions. That is the source of all that magnificent literature, and all these people that have been inveigled into these promotions in the South are going to be disappointed. That orchard in the photographs is eight years of age, or will be this year, as it was planted seven years ago last February. It has never paid a dollar of profit. You won't find any literature on nut orcharding in the South that will convey any such impression as that. I do expect it to pay this fall a small margin of profit. I won't attempt to explain all that but will say that an orchard must be eight or ten years of age before you may expect or hope for a reasonable profit. After that it ought to pay well. It is well worth going after because it is one of the most legitimate, safe, satisfactory business opportunities we have ever found. I don't know anything that pleases me more as a business man than the growing of a large orchard of nut trees, and I assure you, gentlemen, you must bring to that orchard the same degree of skill, energy and patience that must be brought into any large business proposition to make it a success. My own idea is that the nut orchard is a legitimate part of the general farming operation. If you travel from one end to the other of this country you will see that it is covered with apple orchards. Small apple orchards were a part of the original farming operations. The fact that they have been neglected does not alter the situation at all. If the owners of those orchards had given them proper growing conditions, they would have been successful. In the same way I say the successful nut orchard is going to be a legitimate part of the general farming operation.

I want to talk to you a few minutes from a business standpoint. Suppose you want to plant an acre of nut trees, and you buy an acre of land, and you buy your trees and have them planted. Who is going to take care of them? You hire a man who knows about the care of trees. You couldn't afford to hire one who didn't, and you would expect him to put in part of his time some other way. If he didn't your investment would amount up to so much you couldn't make anything on the deal. I emphasize this fact because I believe you should make your nut orchard propositions large enough so that you could afford to hire the best men to handle them for you. If you can't do this there is another way which has been practiced a great deal in the South and which I hope to see practiced in this section. I have worked out a solution of the problem, which I believe is very promising, and it is this: Get enough men, for instance in the city of Evansville, who want nut orchards, to go out a few miles and buy a bunch of farms, and put those farms under the management of a man big enough to make them a success, then plant your orchard, and use the land for general farming operations as well. I could go on indefinitely along this line because it is inexhaustible. I think it is the keynote to success in growing nuts. You can't be successful without giving attention also to the things I talked about this morning. You have to analyze the root pasture and the soil. You have to observe from the time the trees are bought and delivered, and it requires the most careful attention. You can't hope to accomplish a thing like that until you do give it your most careful attention. If you have money of your own, or make your living in some other way while the trees are growing, and feel that you must delegate it to somebody else, associate with yourself other men and make the undertaking big enough so you can hire the very best talent the country affords. In this section of the country land I presume is worth a hundred to two hundred dollars an acre, and you have got to make it pay interest. I want to talk about the figures. The farmer or nut grower, who does not keep a set of books and can't tell you at the end of the year whether he has made enough money to pay off his bills and legitimate expenses, and allowing himself a compensation for the time energy and experience put in the business, is not successful, and I don't care to consider him, because he is not a farmer as I see him. You must keep your figures and know how you stand. Before I get to the photographs I want to go back to our convention at Chattanooga. I don't know whether there is anybody here that was at that meeting or not. I was third man on the program to respond to the address of welcome by the mayor of the city, and I was new in the nut game and new in the South. I went up there with this thought, "I will listen to the other fellows, and take my cue from them, and make a little bluff at doing the best I can under the circumstances." To make a long story short, when the president called on the other two men to respond they were not there and that left me with an audience of four or five hundred people to talk to and nothing much to say. I apologized to them for being unable to talk in a light way. I said, "I can't say anything unless it is in earnest; I have got to talk about something I am interested in." I went on to advocate this principle, and it is a principle I wish every man or woman in America would grasp and retain and put in execution today; that is that the calling of agriculture is the most honorable calling a man can follow, and it is up to us to inspire in the children of America the thought that such is the case, and help them in every way to go out into the field of agriculture and be successful farmers. That is what I want to say. I have no patience with the men who farm and are not successful business men, because they are the people that make life in the rural districts objectionable to the children, and are responsible for the children of the best blood in the country going into the turmoil of the city where it is largely lost. You have to pay interest on the land you use, and you have got to pay yourself a fair compensation for the brains and energy you use on it. I want to call your attention to one other thing. This farm I bought nine years ago from a man who had farmed it until it wasn't capable of producing enough income to enable him to keep it, and I undertook to build an orchard on that farm, and I have done it. Last October, where these hogs are grazing in the picture, I planted a crop of oats and I got forty bushels of oats to the acre the latter part of April. I then turned around and broke the land up and planted it in sweet potatoes, which are just maturing and the crop will run one hundred and fifty bushels to the acre. Don't forget that that is two crops grown and harvested in one year on the same land. I consider it the best treatment for the land. I pastured the oats last winter with the hogs, so I got a very material gain from the oats in that way, and as soon as my sweet potatoes are harvested I will turn the hogs back in and let them glean the field. It is a fact that we can make lots of pork on the gleanings of a sweet potato field. And besides that these trees, each one of them, will bring me four, to five, or six dollars' worth of nuts. That land cost me sixteen dollars an acre, and there is a net income of several dollars above the price of the land, and I presume there is an individual growth on each tree that increases its value at least four or five dollars worth of nuts. There you see I have several dollars' worth of nuts, the sweet potatoes and the oats all grown on the same land, besides the pasture for the hogs. Those things are possible to the man who will go into the growing of a nut orchard in a business way. I have other land adjoining this and I will also utilize it for these purposes and grow such crops as I can grow in the orchard, because when the nut crop is ready to gather, I must get the stock out. I keep my organization employed the whole year. I have the best superintendent I know of and I have to make his salary out of my business. I get the best tree man I know of and he also receives his compensation from the money I make in farming. Last year I extended my farming operations in order to make it possible for me to keep my organization running full speed three hundred days in the year. I am dwelling upon this line for this purpose. Don't let any promoters ever get his hooks into you or tell you things as we have had them told to us down there. Thousands and thousands of acres of pecan orchards have been planted without a thought of the things I am talking about. They have planted thousands of acres in Georgia; they have not any organization and the man in charge is inexperienced and they don't pay. Each year from the time I planted my orchard, and got it to the point where I could count on an orchard crop, it has increased in value, and today it is worth four or five dollars a tree above what it cost me. It is a magnificent business proposition. I am so in love with my work I could talk to you until the cows come home. I want to impress on the people of the Northern Nut Growers Association and their friends the one fact that in order to be successful in a commercial way you must go into it right. There is no short cut.

The President: The next on the program will be an article by Mr. Olcott.