“ I have always felt that the success of this organization—the success of the nut industry as a whole—depended upon its being upon an entirely truthful, fair and honest basis. I would rather see a crooked cashier in a bank than a crooked nurseryman or tree man. The cashier you can check up at 4:30 every afternoon; you can't check up the crooked tree man for about ten years. I think the worst of all discouraging things to people who want to go to the country to build up farms and homes is to run into alluring, but misleading, advertisements. ”

“ Attention has already been called to the superior nutritive value of the nut. It has other excellencies well worthy of consideration; for example, the protein of nuts is of the very choicest character. Recent investigations by Rubner, Osborne, Mendel, and others have shown that every plant produces its own special varieties of proteins. There is indeed a wide difference even between the proteins of various cereals and the proteins of many vegetables differ so widely in character from those of the human body that it is doubtful whether to any extent they can be utilized for human nutrition. ”

“ When the Nut Growers' Association celebrates its one hundredth anniversary, it is safe to predict that the descendants of the present generation of nut growers who have followed the example of their forebears, will be living in opulence and will be regarded as the saviors of their country, while the great abattoirs and meat packing establishments will have ceased to exist, and the merry click of the nut cracker will be heard throughout the land. ”

“ Notwithstanding the emphasis that has been put on all these things, notwithstanding the difficulties and disappointments that we are all laboring under at the present time, I feel that we have a wonderful industry ahead of us. I can't see any reason in the world why we should not go on within our means, wisely planting nut trees. It doesn't make any difference if you are seventy-five or eighty years old, plant nut trees, because they will be a constant pleasure to you, and, ultimately, a benefit to some one else. ”

“ The American chinquapin is one of the many beautiful and valuable plants which have not as yet been taken up by horticulturists for extensive development. It promises to become one of our important sources of food supply for tomorrow. If we were to develop all of our plant resources at once it would be an unkindness to the horticulturists of two thousand years from now, who would be left moping around with nothing to do. ”

“ Lastly, I wish to emphasize one more possible crop insurance tree for the man who is planting nuts on land difficult of cultivation, or entirely untillable, and that is the persimmon. I have paid my respects above to the tilled crops and the pastured pig for the arable land, and for the unarable land I would still emphasize the pig and give him other sources of food to supplement pasture. ”

“ I think that the pecan tree, the black walnut, varieties of the English walnut and of a number of other nut trees, are going to make it most possible and more desirable for men to go to the country, but I think the success of those things depends upon giving those people, as far as possible, facts, and not misleading them. Wherever a man sets a tree that is a failure you have a man as a failure generally as a tree man, and wherever you get a man to set a tree that succeeds, you have a living, walking advocate of the tree business. ”

“ When the body makes its own fat from starch and sugar, the natural source of this tissue element, the product formed is sui generis and must be better adapted to the body uses than the animal fat which was sui generis to a pig, a sheep, or a goat. It is certainly a pleasant thought that one who rounds out his figure with the luscious fatness of nuts may felicitate himself upon the fact that his tissues are participating in the sweetness of the nut rather than the relics of the sty and the shambles. It is true that nuts are poor in carbohydrates ”

“ They are indeed a by-product of the splendid work now being done in bringing to us the crop plants of all parts of the world. Along with the Chinese and Japanese products which have already been so valuable and promise us so much more for American horticulture, we have received the San Jose scale, the chestnut blight, and probably others will follow. For the next twenty-five or fifty years while the nut industries are in what may be properly considered the experimental stage, I wish to urge the great necessity of some kind of crop insurance for the man who plants out any kind of nut tree. ”

“ But in the infant trees it is almost impossible to detect the blight, so that the tree goes out looking like a perfectly good one. It may be two or three seasons before it dies.
Now, the economic aspects are these: Who should stand the loss, the man in the nursery or the man in the orchard? It is a toss-up, it seems to me at present, with the results apparently in favor of the nurseryman rather than in favor of the citizen. The people who have an interest in nut growing are going to have that interest lessened or destroyed by beginning with a bad kind of tree. ”

“ MR. LITTLEPAGE: Oh, yes.
MR. MCMURRAN: Well, that was the point I had in mind. Of the two trees one bears every other year, and the other bears heavy crops every year.
DR. MORRIS: You see the same thing at the Experiment Station in southern California. One tree will be absolutely resistant to blight; the other will be all killed. And down at Whittier, perhaps, seven-tenths of all the trees will be badly affected with the bacteriosis, and the others not very much affected, so that, apparently, it is largely a matter of this cynips, which introduces the bacteria, selecting certain trees. ”

“ Most native trees are immune to fungous and bacterial diseases that destroy so many trees. The black walnut is a hardy tree, and a fine timber proposition. In the second place, it is a fast growing tree. I don't knew just how quickly one could actually produce a black walnut orchard, but, outside of a few trees, such as the black locust and a number of others that do not produce nuts, the black walnut is one of the fastest growers. If you will feed a young walnut tree a small application of wood ashes and some stable manure it will commonly make a growth of six or seven feet a year. ”

“ Our nut trees are not as yet domesticated. They haven't learned bad habits, and they depend upon peculiarly favorable conditions of moisture, warmth and light. You plant a nut two inches below the surface, but nature doesn't do anything like that. Consequently, that nut is surprised, doesn't know what to do, and stays down there looking for something to happen. But if you put that nut so it is about half buried in the sand, so that it is damp on one side and the sun strikes it on the other side, and the frost and snow affect it naturally, the nut does just what you want it to do. ”

“ There is a glamour about planting, and it is a sort of a disease with some people, year after year, to seek for novelties. These nut tree advertisements that read so well attract many purchasers. Right here in this section people are buying nut trees that they are going to plant in a blighted district, and these people, when they see what utter failures they have, will be so disgusted with nut growing that when you approach them you cannot talk nuts to them, and you will never have them join the Association. ”

“ Nine men are leaving the farm today for every one going there. If you don't believe it, read the census statistics. The reason is labor and because you can't afford to pay it. I don't think there is any profit in selling the black walnut as a nut, but there will be profit in gathering that nut, storing it, and, when your farm crops are all in and you are ready to discharge the labor, put up an ordinary cheap cracking shed and let them crack the nuts for you, and sell the meats. ”

“ So far as my personal experience goes, if I were to choose the one method of being most thoroughly disliked, it would be to ask my neighbors, particularly those who do not know me, to become members of any kind of a nut association. ”

“ With very few exceptions their trees are isolated, a man having two or twenty, or thirty, scattered about his farm, usually in the midst of his fields where they can develop to perfection, take the tillage of the crops, and bring in some extra money, which one of the owners very significantly told me is "income without effort." This income without effort aspect of the matter takes the form of a man having to pay as much rent for a good walnut tree in the department of Dordogne, as he does for an acre of good wheat land alongside. ”

“ Now it is only occasionally that you will find one that will keep as long as that, but with the trees bearing every two years, it is quite possible that the fruit would be marketable for two or three, or even four years afterwards, if kept properly.
There is no reason to think that the Stabler is the best nut growing in the United States. It merely grew within reach of the eyes of observing men. ”

“ A pound of almonds can be bought at wholesale for forty cents, and has food value equal to that of meat which would cost a dollar or more. A pound of peanuts can be bought at wholesale for seven or eight cents, and furnishes nutritive value equivalent to more than a pound of beefsteak and a half a pound of butter, which would cost forty-five to fifty cents, or seven times as much. No objection can be offered to the fact that we are comparing wholesale with retail prices, for the reason that nuts do not readily spoil as do meat and butter, but will keep in perfect condition for months. ”

“ We have, of course, from the beginning, hunted, and hunted hard, to find individual chestnut trees that might be immune to the disease—native American chestnuts. We expected to find such trees, but up to date we have not found them. It is a very extraordinary fact and an almost unparalleled fact, because with the majority of plants affected, by any given disease, we can find some individuals that are not only resistant, but immune. ”