“ It is a question how far we, as an Association, are responsible for the care of our fellowmen, but at this period when the industry is new, I feel that it is a very legitimate thing for us to do a little work to try and prevent these people from preying upon our fellowmen. The president remarked this morning that something was an evidence of the tremendous waste in Nature. It is true, Nature, in building a forest, wastes a vast amount of time and energy. These people who are preying upon the nut industry today find as their victims the weaklings which Nature buries in the forest. ”

“ As a nursery man who has sold a great many trees to promoting companies, I want to say that I have never, with one exception, seen an orchard that has been a success, but I have seen hundreds of failures, some of them where they have set out orchards of 150,000 trees and sold them off in one and ten acre tracts, and in only one case have I seen a success. I think these promotions should be avoided by the nut growers of the North. ”

“ But the greatest enemy of conservation is erosion, the best checks for erosion are roots.
Thus far, the only man who has been telling us anything about planting roots upon the hillsides is the forester. But he usually sets nothing but wood trees, which at the end of fifty or a hundred or a hundred and fifty years, we can cut down, and which, during the intervening time, have done nothing but cast shade, drop leaves and retain the soil. My doctrine is that the potentially greatest crop-producing plants are not those on which we now depend for our food, but are the trees ”

“ They had followed their natural instinct of climbing when they got into the steel traps, and climbing wildly had broken off every single branch from those hazels which carried hybridized nuts. There wasn't one left, because the squirrels when caught had climbed into the trees and had so violently torn about with trap and chain that they had broken off every single branch with a nut on it. So many things happen in our experiments that appeal to one's sense of the ludicrous, if he has a sense of humor, that I assure you nut raising is a source of great delight to those who are fond of the drama. ”

“ The future of the chestnut depends so largely on the conquering of this disease that no other horticultural problem of this nut is, just at present, imperative. So far as we know, all of the European and American varieties are highly subject to this disease, so much so that there is no inducement to plant them, and we are waiting for Dr. Morris and a few other hybridizers to find some hybrids, or straight Japanese varieties, that are of sufficient merit, and of sufficient degree of resistance to this disease, for us to have a basis for building up the future industry. ”

“ I believe that it is capable of proof that we can get just as much yield from a hillside in untilled fruit and nut-yielding trees, as we can from putting that same hillside under the plough and getting wheat, corn, barley, rye and oats and a little grass once in a while. It will make just as much pig or just as many calories of man food from the tree crops as it will make under the plough. And under the plough that hillside is going down the stream to choke it and reduce the hillside to nothing. ”

“ So it does, and the master is he whose vigilance is continual, who watches each tree as if it were a growing child—as indeed it is, a child of the forests—who has the care and the patience, and who is not dazzled by the glitter of the dollar, but who loves trees because they are trees. ”

“ It might just as well be planted with a host of crop-yielding trees, the walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, persimmons, mulberries—and the list is very long. There are at the present time in use in Mediterranean countries twenty-five crop-yielding trees other than the ordinary orchard fruits. I am told that they have oak trees there which yield an acorn that is better than the chestnut. A pig will fill himself with acorns on the one hillside and with figs on the next hillside and then lie down and get fat. We are too industrious, we wait on the pig; I want the pig to wait on himself. ”

“ The life of an apple tree is from fifty to sixty years whereas a walnut tree is just in its prime at that age and destined to live for hundreds of years afterwards. Then again the ravages of the chestnut tree blight are destroying the cultivated paragons just as freely as the chestnuts in the forests, which in a few years will be things of the past, thus giving still more room for walnut and other nut trees. ”

“ I am addressing you as secretary of the Northern Nut Growers' Association in hopes that you can refer me to some one, perhaps a member of your society, in this part of the country to whom we can appeal to take part at the coming annual meeting of this society as champion of nut growing. While in our state we cannot successfully grow pecans, nor perhaps the sweet chestnut and some other nuts, yet some varieties do well with us and a larger interest in their growing should be stimulated. ”

“ I don't think the question is so much one of planting in fence corners as that we have a great deal of waste land on which the soil is very well adapted to growing nut trees. I know that sometimes in growing peach trees it is almost impossible to cultivate them. I know places in western Maryland where the rocks are lying so that you can hardly plough, and yet the soil is fertile and particularly adapted in some places for peach trees, and would be for chestnut trees. They have there a system of cultivation much as if you used the plough, and yet they are on steep hillsides. ”

“ I know of numbers of teachers, doctors and other poor people who have put money into nut promotion schemes without knowing anything about the ultimate prospect of profit.
Mr. Hutt: One noticeable thing about the promoter's literature is that he never knows anything about crop failure, and in the agricultural and horticultural world that is a thing that is painfully evident to a man who has been in business a great length of time. In the promoter's literature it is just a matter of multiplication; if one tree will produce so much in a year, a hundred trees will produce a hundred times as much. ”

“ We are a great people over this way. Perhaps you are not aware of that, but we bear prosperity with meekness and adversity with patience. We feel that we can say to you, without boasting, if you seek a pleasant country, look about you. You may not know it, but it is a fact and the United States census reports ever since census reports have been made will prove it, that the annual valuation of the agricultural products of the county in which you now sit exceeds that of any other county in all this great nation. ”

“ We look at a great industrial enterprise, such as the steel trust, and marvel at its success. But it must be remembered that this industry started many years ago, and step by step built furnace after furnace and mill after mill, after the owners had tried out and become familiar with all the factors of that industry, and after great corps of trained experts had been developed, and after science had given to this industry many of the most marvelous mechanical inventions of the age. ”

“ It is very gratifying indeed to be in the midst of a great county [Pg 12] of this kind that has made one of the great basic industries so successful. It takes three things to make a really great nation; it takes great natural resources, it takes great policies and it takes great people. We have nations in this world where the resources, the possibilities of agriculture and all lines of human endeavor are as unlimited, almost, as ours, but they haven't the people and in the cases where they have people of the right kind, they haven't adopted the policies. ”

“ We may look forward to extending the range now of pollinization from knowledge based upon the experiments of Loeb and his followers in biology. They have succeeded in developing embryos from the eggs of the sea urchin, of the nereis, and of mollusks, without spermatozoa. Their work has shown that each egg is a single cell with a cell membrane and it is only necessary to destroy this cell membrane according to a definite plan to start that egg to growing. Life may be started from the egg in certain species without the presence of the other sex. ”

“ Almost any land that can produce a forest, and much that has been considered too dry for forest, can produce an annual harvest of value to man or his animals when we have devoted sufficient attention to the breeding of walnuts, chestnuts, pecans, shellbarks, acorn yielding oaks, beech nuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts, almonds, honey locust, mesquite, screw bean, carob, mulberry, persimmon, pawpaw, and many other fruit and nut trees of this and other lands. ”

“ The Japanese nut is not ordinarily of a quality equal to that of the American. It is thought, too, that with the Japanese chestnut the chestnut blight has been introduced, which has been so serious to our native species. The walnut has not become well established in the eastern states. So far, most of the European nuts that have been imported have been too tender to adapt themselves to our climatic conditions, and the filbert, when brought from Europe, proves quite subject to a blight that prevails everywhere with our native species, but with them is not so serious. ”

“ But once the gully removes this soil, it is the end so far as our civilization is concerned—forest, field and food are impossible and even water power is greatly impaired. Our present system of agriculture, depending upon the grains, demands the plowing of hillsides and the hillsides wash away. This present dependence upon the plow means that one-third of our soil resources is used only for forest, one-third is being injured by hillside erosion, and only one-third, the levelest, is being properly used for plow crops. ”

“ The possibilities of plant breeding as applied to crop yielding trees seem to be enormous. They certainly warrant immediate and widespread effort toward the creation of useful strains which may become the basis of a new agriculture yielding food for both man and the domestic animals.
(B) The time for constructive conservation has come. Our most vital resource is the soil. It is possibly the only resource for which there is no substitute. Its destruction is the most irreparable waste. ”

“ It is not proper here to take time to discuss the reasons why the man in the "steenth" story of some magnificent office building, with telephones, electric lights, elevators, and all modern conveniences, longs for the time when he can roam again amidst the green fields in the sunshine and fresh air, but suffice it to say that in my judgment a majority of the professional men, and men in other walks of life, would, if they could, abandon their various employments and turn again to the soil. ”

“ For the most part the various species and varieties of hickories retain their identity because their own pollen is handiest, and different species do not all flower at the same time. Their own pollen from the male flowers is apt to fall at the time when their own female flowers are ripe and under these circumstances the chances are very much in favor of the tree pollinizing its female flowers with its own pollen. On the other hand, there is hardly one chance in many hundred thousand for any crossed nut to grow, for the reason that most nuts are destroyed by mice, squirrels, rats and boys. ”

“ In taking up the question of the present status of the nut industry of the Northern States, we have to do more with what has not been accomplished than with what has been. Very little has been done toward developing the northern chestnut. What has been done has been mostly with the European species and so far that has not been very satisfactory. The European species is quite subject to the blight. ”

“ We do not know the amount of nuts gathered from the Indiana and the Busseron trees. The Buttrick tree had some three or four bushels of nuts this year but as a dredge ditch was recently constructed by it, destroying half of its root system, it did not mature its crop. This tree has been in bearing since 1817 and it has not been known to miss a crop previous to this year.
In our search for nuts worthy of being propagated we have found several nuts as yet un-named that are in our opinion much superior to any northern nut that has been brought to public notice. ”

“ Conservation, whose object is the preservation of our resources for future generations, as well as for ourselves, finds its greatest problem in the preservation of the soil. The forests can come again if the soil be left. It is probable that we can find substitutes for coal, and for nearly everything else, but once the [Pg 60] soil is gone, all is gone; and the greatest danger to the soil is not robbery by ill cropping, because no matter how man may abuse the soil, scientific agriculture can bring it back with astonishing speed. ”

“ The original idea of roadside trees was constructive in its nature but failed to include the idea that, with the increase of orchard trees, or trees of any one species, we increase the insect pests because we disturb the balance of nature; and by disturbing the balance of nature we give advantage to insects which then remain on neglected trees to prove a menace to our own orchards. ”

“ Littlepage is one of very great importance, because the number of frauds associated with an enterprise is an indication of the fundamental value of the cause. These fraudulent nut promoters capitalize the enthusiasm of people who want to get back to the land, just as porters at the hotels capitalize the joy of a newly married couple. (Laughter.) We have in this "back-to-the-land" movement, a bit of philosophy of fundamental character which includes the idea of preservation of the race. ”

“ It is probable that most nuts will grow wherever the peach will. Outside the peach area there is probably not much use in trying to grow the pecan or Persian walnut. Yet it must always be remembered that nut growing in the North is, at present, almost entirely experimental and that anybody may be able to disprove the authorities. We are all experimenting now. By and by it will be different.
In severer climates the chestnut, shagbark, black walnut, butternut, hazel, beech, pine, Japanese cordiformis and hardy Chinese walnuts can be grown or, at least, offer possibilities. ”

“ This tree, considering its surroundings and location, had a good crop this year. Standing on the lawn uncultivated and unfertilized, hemmed in on three sides by other trees, it gave us at least three bushels of fine nuts.
The wood showed no injury after last winter's intense cold. Growth started in the spring just as the apple blossoms came out. The catkins are very large, at least much larger than those on the other trees we have, and hang on longer. One of our trees loses its male blossoms before the female bloom appears, but the "Holden" is the last to lose them. ”

“ Red squirrels and white footed mice must be looked after with great care in our hybridized trees. If the squirrels cannot get at a nut that is surrounded by wire cloth, they will cut off the branch and allow it to fall to the ground and then manage to get it out. White footed mice will make their way through wire, and mice and squirrels will both manage to bite through wire cloth unless it is very strong in order to get at the nut. The mere fact of nuts being protected by wire cloth or in other ways seems to attract the attention of squirrels. ”

“ The chestnut is one of the most beautiful of our native nut trees. This tree has the blight in one of the earlier stages and it is shown here merely to call attention to the disease, because no discussion of the chestnut industry at the present time can be complete without at least calling attention to the seriousness of that blight. ”