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SPEAKING OF NEBRASKA APPLES.
Lincoln, Nebraska, August 12. To the Editor of the World
Herald : The controversy between Professor Howard of the Uni
versity of Nebraska and Frank Odell of the Rural Life Commission.
relative to Nebraska's status as an apple producer, is mighty in
teresting. I trust no one will accuse me of egotism when I claim
to have some little knowledge of Nebraska's productivity, and so
claiming I beg leave to intervene in the Howard-Odell discussion
with some views of my own.
There are those who look upon the statistics of the Nebraska
Bureau of Labor as mere "guess work," but I am here to claim
and can prove that the statistics gathered by the Nebraska bu
reau are more reliable than those gathered by the national govern
ment. In the first place, the Nebraska bureau's statistics are the
averages of the crop estimates made up from ten to twenty con
servative men in each county; the government's statistics are merely
the estimates of one or two men in a county. Usually these govern
ment estimators are bankers, or the postmaster, or some elevator
man. The state's estimators are all farmers, and because the av
erage farmer is a crop pessimist the Nebraska bureau's statistics
always err on the side of conservatism.
I insist that Nebraska is the equal of any other state as an ap
ple-growing country, and far superior to most of them. Already
she is raising more apples than Washington, Oregon and Idaho com
bined, but she is raising better apples. And it costs 50 per cent
less to put an orchard into bearing in Nebraska than in either of
the states named. Now for some apple figures :
In 1909 there was shipped from railroad stations in Nebraska
606,000 bushels of apples. That was not a good apple year, either.
And 606,000 bushels shipped by rail was really only about one-third
of the actual crop. It does not include the local sales, the apples
fed to the hogs nor the apples manufactured into cider or vinegar.
or the apples canned locally. In 1910 these surplus shipments in
creased to' 1,616,000 bushels. This is not guess work ; they are the
figures submitted by the railroad agents and taken" from freight
records. In sbort, Nebraska shipped 30 per cent more apples by
rail than the government statisticians credit to Nebraska as her
total apple crop. What might have been shipped had Nebraska
been given a square deal in freight rates on apples is problematical.
But we don't get that square deal. For instance, I can ship a car
load of apples from a western New York point to Chadron, Nebr.
as cheaply as I can ship a carload of apples from Falls City, Rich
ardson county, Nebr., to Chadron, Dawes county, Nebr. Person
ally I saw thousands and thousands of bushels of apples rotting on
the ground in southeastern Nebraska during each of the last four
or five years. Why? Thousands of people wanted apples they
could not get. Surely there was not a surplus of apples. The rea
son was that these people could not pay the price that had to be
demanded in order to pay for the picking and handling and freight
and the freight and express rates were prohibitive. Given a fair
and equitable apple rate and I venture to say that inside of five
years Nebraska will be shipping millions of bushels to all parts of
the United States.
It is only within the last six or seven years that intelligent
orcharding has been the rule. Prior to that tune it was deemed only
necessary to dig the hole, plant the tree and wait for the fruit. And
because these neglected trees resented the neglect ; because the scale
and the bug and the blight got in their work, people said: "O, Ne
braska ain't in it with the northwest as an apple country." And
of course the gentlemen with orchard schemes in the northwest
country took advantage of the situation. But along come a lot of
keen young fellows who had learned a lot about pomology in the
University School of Agriculture, and they took hold of these or
chards. They knew that an apple tree would respond to intelligent
and kindly treatment as readily as a horse or cow. They cultivated
and pruned and sprayed and then Nebraska began demanding rec
ognition as an apple producing state. Then years from now to think
of apples will be to think of Nebraska, for inside of that time Ne
braska apples will be the world's standard and her total production
a marvel in size. The result of this intelligent effort is visible on
every hand. Old orchards, practically abandoned, are now yielding
splendid results. The Smith orchard in Richardson county, and the
Hartley orchard near Lincoln, for example.
A few years ago the Northwestern Apple Growers' Association
held an exposition at Detroit, the idea being to advertise the north
west as an apple country, and to enlarge the market for the northwestern-grown
apples. As a matter of courtesy Michigan was
asked to occupy space and make a showing of Michigan-grown ap
ples. . A few Michigan apple raisers got an exhibit together and
entered it. -The result was that Michigan walked off with the first
prize for a collective exhibit, and in every class that Michigan en
tered the northwestern exhibitors were forced to be content with
second and third prizes. You'll not catch these northwestern boom
ers making another such an offer. If the Apple Growers' Association
of the Northwest, or any orchard-booming concern in the same ter
ritory, will make an . exhibit of apples from Oregon, Washington
and Idaho anywhere in Nebraska preferably Omaha or Lincoln
and consent to having a Nebraska exhibit alongside, agreeing to
pay half the expense of publishing the final results, I'll undertake
to raise enough money to defray the rent of the building and the
local advertising. Nebraska would "skin 'em to death in sucn a
competition. Yet I know Nebraskans who have sold their Nebraska
farms for $125 an acre and gone to Idaho and Oregon and paid
from $250 to $400 an acre for apple lands that are not fit to be
mentioned in the same day as apple lands by the side of the Ne
braska farms that were sold for less than half the money. All along
the Missouri river there is ideal orchard land that may be had for
from $50 to $100 an acre, and every acre of it will raise more and
better apples than Idaho or Oregon can raise on their $250 and $400
land. The trouble is that Oregon and Idaho are advertising their
fruit lands and attracting people thereto, while Nebraska is doing
absolutely nothing in this direction. As a result the northwest is
not only building up wonderfully, but that section is depriving Ne
braska of some of her very best men and women.
With all due respect to Prof. Howard, who certainly knows
a lot about how to transplant and graft and spray, I don't think
he knows a blooming thing about real results in the apple industry
in Nebraska. It is one thing to know how to teach and quite an
other to go out and learn by actual observation. You cannot get
an idea of what Nebraska is doing in the apple growing line by
correcting students' papers in a university office. Mr. Odell is get
ting at the facts by traveling around, interviewing apple raisers
and studying the statistics. He may not have secured either a
doctor's or a master's degree at any university, and he may not be
able to give us the Latin names of trees and bugs and pests; but
I venture to say that Odell knows, more about what Nebraska is
doing in apple raising and other products than 90 per cent of the
university professors. And if Odell does not. I'll lav claim to
knowing it.
The thing for Nebraska to do is to call attention to her avail
ability as an apple producing , section, to attract people here who
will develop the orchard industry, to educate her own people con
cerning her resources and productivity, and encourage her young
men and women to stay right here instead of gallavanting off to
some far-away section, following the lure of some exploiter. And,
too, she ought to insist that her univeristv professors stick to their
lasts. WTTiTi M MATTPTN
AND SPEAKING OF NEBRASKA BUTTER.
You are familiar with the pound carton of butter the kind
you buy at the grocery store. Well, before finishing this paragraph
just guess how high the column would be if all the butter manu
factured in Nebraska in one year were packed in pound cartons
and those cartons stacked up end on end. You wouldn't guess
within hundreds of miles of the real answer. In 1911 Nebraska
manufactured approximately 35,000,000 pounds of butter. A pound
carton of butter is approximately 8 inches long. That column of
butter would be more than 4,500 miles high. With them it would
be possible to build a sidewalk of butter 18 inches wide more than
500 miles long. .. i- ' , ,
BELL 3401
AUTO B 1745
John Westover
Incorporated '
Manufacturer of Bridge
and Building Iron
1900 W St.
LINCOLN, NEB.
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FOR MEN WHO SMOKE'
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In The Merchant's Hall
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THE LINCOLN TANNERY
Manufacturers of fur Robes & Coats. Custom Work a specialty
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