Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting: Lancaster, Pennsylvania, December 18 and 19, 1912
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting: Lancaster, Pennsylvania, December 18 and 19, 1912
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
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. These facts
are overlooked, however, when some fellow steps up and proposes to put a
steel-trust-orchard on the market in twelve months. In most industrial
enterprises there are well-known and established factors to be
considered. In horticultural enterprises, however, no man knows what
twelve months hence will bring. I read the other day with great
interest the prospectus of a great pecan orchard started several years
ago by a very honorable and high-minded man, and the promises of success
were most alluring. What are the facts? The boll weevil came along and
wiped out his intermediate cotton crops. The floods came later and
destroyed acres of his orchards, and, if he were to write a prospectus
today, it would no doubt be a statement of hope rather than a statement
of facts. He would no doubt turn from the Book of Revelations, where at
that time he saw "a new heaven and a new earth," and write from the Book
of Genesis, where "the earth was without form and void."
How many people have been defrauded by these various schemes, no one
knows. How many clerks, barbers, bookkeepers, stenographers, students,
preachers, doctors, lawyers, have contributed funds for farms and future
homes in sections where they would not live if they owned half of the
county. How many people have been separated from their cash by
literature advertising rich, fertile lands in sections where the
alligator will bask unmolested in miasma for the next fifty years, and
where projects should be sold by the gallon instead of by the acre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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