Read Ebook: Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting Lancaster Pennsylvania December 18 and 19 1912 by Northern Nut Growers Association Editor

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Mr. Hutt: I would like to ask how widely you have been able to cross species?

The Chairman: It has been possible to cross species of hazels freely with the four species that I have used, the American hazel, Corylus Americana; the beak hazel, Corylus rostrata; the Asiatic, Corylus colurna, and Corylus pontica. These apparently cross readily back and forth. With the hickories I think rather free hybridization occurs back and forth among all, but particularly in relation to groups. The open-bud hickories, comprising the pecan, the bitternut, the water hickory, and the nutmeg hickory, apparently, from my experiments, cross much more readily among each other than they cross with the scale-bud hickories. The scale-bud hickories appear to cross much more freely among each other than they cross with the open-bud hickories; not only species but genera may be crossed, and I find that the walnuts apparently cross freely with the open-bud hickories and the open-bud hickories cross with the walnuts. I have thirty-two crosses between the bitternut hickory and our common butternut, growing. All of the walnuts apparently cross rather freely back and forth with each other. I have not secured fertile nuts between the oaks and chestnuts, but I believe that we may get fertile nuts eventually. The nuts fill well upon these two trees fertilized with each others' pollen respectively, but I have not as yet secured fertile ones. We shall find some fertile crosses I think between oaks and chestnuts, when enough species have been tried.

Mr. Hutt: Do you notice any difference in the shapes of any of those hybrids, the nuts, when you get them matured and harvested? Do they look any different from the other nuts on the tree?

The Chairman: There isn't very much difference, but I seem to think that sometimes the pollen has exercised an influence upon the nuts of the year. Theoretically it should not do so, but I noticed one case apparently in which I crossed a chinkapin with a Chinese chestnut, and the nuts of that year seemed to me to present some of the Chinese chestnuts' characteristics.

Mr. Hutt: This year I crossed a number of varieties of pecans and in nearly all those crosses there was to me quite an evident difference in the nuts. For instance those gathered off certain parts of a pecan tree of certain varieties, Schley or Curtis or Frotscher, would be typical nuts, but those hybrids or crosses that I produced were distorted, more or less misshapen and seemed to have peculiarities; so that when we came to look over the colony we were in doubt whether they were hand pollinated hybrids or had been pollinated before we got the blossoms covered. Many of them evidenced a great number of distortions, and one of them I remember particularly whose shell was so thin it was just like a piece of brown paper; and there were several peculiarities that were quite noticeable in those hand pollinated nuts.

The Chairman: That is a very interesting point. When we come to consider deformities of nuts we shall find very many cases due to the character of the pollinization. I crossed the Persian walnut with the shagbark hickory and had nuts that year of just the sort of which Mr. Hunt speaks, with shells as thin as paper. One could crush them with the very slightest pressure of the finger. The shells were not well developed. Unfortunately the mice happened to get at all of those nuts. I don't know if they were fertile or not. The kernels were only about half developed. I should look for deformity in these nuts rather than a taking on of the type of one parent over the other, the idea being based on theoretical biological considerations. We had last year a photograph of a tree in California which apparently was a cross, a very odd cross--does any one remember about that California tree?

Mr. Wilcox: It was a cross between Juglans Californica and the live oak.

The Chairman: Both the foliage and the nuts were very remarkable and pertained to characters of these two trees. Such a cross to my mind would be wholly unexplainable excepting on the ground recently brought out by Loeb and his followers in crossing the lower forms of animal life and finding that the cell membrane of the egg, if destroyed, will allow of very wide fertilization subsequently with other species. It occurs to me now--I had no explanation last year, but it occurs to me now, knowing of Loeb's experiments--that it is possible that one of the parents, the parent California oak tree carrying the female flowers, might have had its sex cells subjected to some peculiar influence like acid, sulphurous acid, for instance, from some nearby chimney. Sulphurous acid perhaps from someone merely lighting a match to light a cigar under the tree; he might have so sensitized a few female flowers, may have so injured the cell membrane of a few female germ cells that cross pollinization then took place from a walnut tree. It is only on some such ground as the findings of Loeb that we can explain such a very unusual hybridization as that, which appeared to me a valid one, of a cross between an oak and a walnut.

Professor Smith: I should like to ask why, if this free hybridization takes place in nature among the hickories, you do not have a perfect complex of trees showing all possible variations in the forest.

The Chairman: In answer to Professor Smith's question I will start from his premises and remark that we do have such complexities. The hickories are so crossed at the present time, like our apples, that even crossing the pollen of various hickory trees of any one species does not promise interesting results unless we cross an enormous number. They are already so widely crossed that it is very difficult sometimes to determine if a certain tree is shagbark or pignut or shellbark or mockernut. 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. If you have a hickory nut tree growing in a lot, and which has produced a bushel of hickory nuts year after year, do you know of one single nut from that tree which has grown? In this plan of Nature, this plan of enormous waste of Nature in order to get one seed to grow, the chance for a hybridized hickory nut to grow under normal conditions, is so small that we should have relatively few crossed trees growing wild in Nature, though we do find quite a good many of them.

Professor Smith: If I am not taking up too much time, I would like to put some more questions to you.

The Chairman: That's what we are here for.

Professor Smith: Have you ever tried the plan of serving collations to squirrels? Why wouldn't it pay to give them portions of wheat and corn? Second, what percentage of the oak pollen kept in cold storage a month was alive? Third, what is the range of time that the hybridizer has to make the pollinization? Must we go on the dot or have we two days or four days or a week, in the case of hickories and walnuts?

The Chairman: I think possibly as these are three direct questions, I might answer them now. No, I think it would be better to have all questions bearing on this subject brought out and then I will answer all together. So if you will kindly ask all the questions, I will then endeavor to answer them.

Mr. Corsan: The squirrels bothered me last year. I've got forty acres of land for experimental purposes only and I started planting and the little beggars would dig down exactly where I planted the nuts, so I went into town and got a rat trap with a double section so I could catch them alive; and I caught so many by feeding them cheap pignuts, the sweet pignuts from Michigan, that I brought them in and my boys sold them for twenty-five cents apiece. Since then we have never been bothered with red squirrels. For the white footed mice I laid down large doors over some hay or long grass and they gathered underneath and then I lifted the doors up every day and with a stick I smashed hundreds of them. I have posted a notice to leave the skunk and mink alone; I don't want anybody on the place shooting them.

The Chairman: I will first answer Professor Smith's questions. This matter of serving collations for squirrels had best be done as collations are served at political meetings--with a trap attached. You don't know how many squirrels there are in the vicinity or how many white footed mice. You will be surprised at the numbers of the little rascals, and not only that, but the field mice, the common field mouse and pine mouse run in mole holes under the ground and can smell a nut a long way off. They are extremely destructive. What percentage of pollen grains of the white oak were alive? I do not know. Enough to fertilize a number of flowers. The sooner pollen is used the better. I cannot answer the question exactly because I did not make an experiment in the laboratory to know what part of the pollen was viable. I put on a good deal of it and there were at least some viable grains in the lot. That, however, is a matter which can be subjected to exact laboratory tests without any difficulty. I am so busy with so many things that I can only follow the plan of the guinea hen that lays forty eggs and sits in the middle of the nest and hatches out all she can. Now the range of time for pollinizing is a thing of very great importance and we have to learn about it. We must all furnish notes on this question. With some species I presume the duration of life of pollen, even under the best conditions, might be only a few days. Under other conditions it may be several weeks; but we have to remember that, in dealing with pollen, we are dealing with a living, breathing organism.

The Secretary: I believe the experiment has been carried to completion of fruiting a thousand trees from nuts grown on one pecan tree without two of the resulting nuts being like one another or like the parent nut. Is that true, Mr. Reed.

Mr. Reed: Yes, you might say ten thousand.

The Secretary: We have an illustration of the variability of the progeny of a nut in this collection of chestnuts by Mr. Riehl out in Illinois. This is a parent nut, the Rochester, and these others are seedlings from the Rochester, except where marked otherwise, some showing a tendency to revert to the parent, and some promising to be improvements on the parents.

The Chairman: Mr. Secretary, I think we'd better confine ourselves to the hybrid question at the present time.

The Secretary: Are not those all hybrids?

The Chairman: I don't believe any man can tell, unless you get the flowers, because you have the American and European types merging together so perfectly. Some of them show distinctly the European type; others show distinctly the American type. That is what I would expect, however. The practical point is the question of quality. Which one keeps the American quality and which one retains the coarseness of the European type?

Mr. Harris: Speaking of variations of nuts I think it is well known that there is quite a variation in the nuts of the oak. I noticed in one species, michauxii, which is an oak in the South, that its nuts varied a great deal. It is something of the type of the chestnut, the white oak or the rock oaks and it varies a great deal.

I found one on my father's range in New Jersey and also one on the Potomac. The variations extend to the trees as well as the nuts.

The Chairman: The oak tree properly belongs in another tree group and some of the acorns are not only edible, but first-rate. In China there are at least three species found in the markets to be eaten out of hand or roasted. Our white oaks here, some of them, bear very good fruit, from the standpoint of the boy and the pig, anyway, and it seems to me that we may properly include the oaks in our discussion. There would be great range in variation of type from hybridization between oak trees and I have seen a number of oak trees that were evidently hybrids, where the parentage could be traced on both sides, that were held at very high prices by the nurserymen. I asked one nurseryman, who wanted an enormous price for one hybrid oak, why he didn't make ten thousand of those for himself next year? It hadn't occurred to him.

If there is no further discussion in connection with my paper we will have Mr. Littlepage's paper on Nut Promotions.

FRAUDULENT AND UNINFORMED PROMOTERS

T. P. LITTLEPAGE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

In the beginning, let me assert my confidence and interest in agriculture in general. This is one of the basic industries, upon the proper understanding and growth of which depends the food supply of the nation. It is admitted by scientists that, other conditions being equal, an adequacy or inadequacy in the supply of proper food makes the difference between great people and undesirable people. This being true, the various operations of agriculture must always be of the greatest concern to those who are interested in the nation's welfare.

The "back-to-the-farm" movement is being discussed today in various periodicals, but back of the "back-to-the-farm" movement is a philosophy that has not been generally understood. 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. The boy on the farm dreams of the days when he can be the president of a bank, have a home in the city, own an automobile, smoke good cigars and go to the show every night. The bank president dreams of the day when he can turn again to the farm and walk in the green fields, where he can shun the various artificial activities of life, drink buttermilk and retire with the chickens.

It may be asked what connection these statements have with the subject, and the answer is this--that in the minds of many thousands of people there is this supreme desire to some day own a portion of God's footstool to which they can retire from artificial and vainglorious environments to those under which they can be their real selves and follow pursuits to their liking. It is this that makes it possible for the promoter of various horticultural enterprises to succeed in interesting in his schemes the clerk, the merchant, the doctor, the lawyer, the school teacher, the preacher, and all others whose occupations confine them within the limits of the great cities.

In the beginning, let us distinguish between the fraudulent promoter and the uninformed promoter. The fraudulent promoter is he who recognizes this great and worthy ambition of many people to buy a spot to which they can some day retire and work and rest and dream and enjoy the coming and going of the seasons, and the sunshine and the shadows, and who capitalizes this ambition, with that industry as his stock in trade which, at the particular moment, happens to offer the most attractive inducements. Those familiar with the industry he is exploiting, can tell him by his actions, by his words, by his nods and winks. It is hard for the crook to disguise himself to the informed.

Distinguished from the fraudulent promoter is the uninformed promoter, but, so far as results are concerned, there is not much difference between them for the innocent investor. They both lead him to failure. They are unlike only in this, that the pathway of the one is lined with deception, crookedness and chicanery; of the other, with blasted hopes based upon good intentions but bad information. Both lead to the self-same sepulcher which in the distance looks white and beautiful but when reached is filled with the bones of dead men.

There is not much difference after all, when one comes right down to the facts, between the crook who starts out deliberately to get one's money and the fellow who starts out in ignorance and makes great promises of returns that he knows nothing about. Both succeed in getting one's money and both succeed in misleading those who have a desire to lay aside something for their old days. We naturally feel more charity for him who has good intentions, but who fails, than for him who starts out with bad intentions. But, after all, only results count.

Did you ever receive the literature of one of these various concerns that has pecan or apple orchards to sell? How beautiful their schemes look on paper! With what exquisite care they have worked out the pictures and the language and the columns of figures showing the profits! While writing this article I have before me a prospectus of a certain pecan company that prints columns of attractive figures. Fearful, however, that the figures would not convince, it has resorted to all the various schemes of the printers' art in its portrayal of the prospective profits from a grove set to pecans and Satsuma oranges, and it tells you in conclusion that it guarantees by a bond, underwritten by a responsible trust company, the fulfillment of all its representations. Yet what are the facts? Their lands are located in a section where the thermometer falls to a point that makes highly improbable the profitable growing of Satsuma oranges. And all their figures are merely estimates of the wildest character, printed in attractive columns, based upon nothing.

As a member of the National Nut Growers Association I was this year chairman of the committee on orchard records. I sent out blanks, with lists of questions, to many prominent nut growers to see if I could secure data upon which to base a report to the association. The replies I received showed the existence of some very promising young orchards of small size, well cared for, but they also showed that there was no such thing as an intelligent report upon which reliable data as to the bearing records of orchards could be based for any future calculations. There are two reasons for this. First, most of the figures we have are based upon the records of a few pet trees around the dooryard or garden, grown under favorable conditions. Second, the young groves are not yet old enough for anyone to say, with any degree of accuracy, what the results will be. Therefore, the alluring figures printed in these pamphlets are only guesses.

Furthermore, what of the contract of these concerns? What does it specify? You would be surprised to know the legal construction of one of these contracts, together with their guaranty bond. In most cases they advertise to plant, and properly cultivate for a period of five to seven years, orchards of the finest varieties of budded or grafted pecan trees, with Satsuma oranges or figs set between. But the guaranty company is usually wise enough to have lawyers who are able to advise them of their liabilities, and about all they actually guarantee is that, after a period of five years, provided all payments have been promptly met, there will be turned over to the purchaser five acres of ground with trees upon it. Five years old? No, they may not be one year old. Budded or grafted? No, they may be mere seedlings. Oranges set between them? No, the orange has passed out of the proposition before the bond stage. The companies generally print a copy of the bond, but usually in such small type that the victim does not read it, though the heading is always prominent. It thunders in the index and fizzles in the context.

Moreover, suppose suit is brought on one of these contracts and bonds? What is the measure of damages? What basis has any court or jury for fixing damages? And be it remembered that courts do not exist for the protection of fools against their folly. The principle "caveat emptor" is as old as the common law itself, and it means that the buyer must beware, or in other words, that he should inform himself, and that he cannot expect the courts to protect him where he has failed to exercise due caution and diligence. Therefore, as a lawyer, I should very much hesitate to take on a contingent fee the suit of one of these various victims against a promoting orchard corporation.

However, in any jurisdiction where there is a criminal statute against fraudulent representation and obtaining money under false pretenses, I should not hesitate, if I were the prosecuting attorney, to indict every member of such a corporation, and, to sustain the case, I would simply present to a jury of honest men the representations in their advertising literature, and then have the court instruct the same jury as to the validity and limitations of their contract. Their advertising is brilliant enough to dazzle the sun. Their contract is as dull as a mud pie.

In addition to all of this comes the question of orcharding by proxy, and the success of the unit or acreage system, and many other similar questions; and let me say that I doubt if there is today in the United States one large development scheme, either in pecan or apple orchards, that will prove of ultimate financial profit and success to the purchaser. The promoter may get rich--he has nothing at stake. In most instances he has the price of the land in his pocket before there is a lick of work done on it, and the payments come in regularly and promptly to take care of his salary and the meager and unscientific development.

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.

Some time ago it was reported that inquiries in reference to the feasibility and profits of various orchard schemes had come in to the Bureau of Plant Industry of the Agricultural Department, at Washington, in such numbers that the officials of that Bureau had considered the advisability of printing a general circular, which they could send to the inquirers, advising them to make due investigation, and giving a few general suggestions about proxy farming and orchard schemes. I was advised by a friend in the middle west that the contemplated issuance of this circular by the Bureau of Plant Industry had aroused a number of protests throughout the country, and that various Senators and Members of the House of Representatives had entered strong protests with the Secretary of Agriculture against it. A number of these protests have come to my notice, and they take various forms of opposition, but are all unanimous against the Department of Agriculture offering to the prospective purchaser any information. Various reasons for their stand were given by the protestants, but how flimsy and ridiculous they are when analyzed. Congress for a number of years has been appropriating money and authorizing certain work by the Department of Agriculture. It is the people's money, and the people's Department, and the information gathered by the experts in this Department ought to be the people's information, and it ought to be possible for any citizen to write the Department a letter about any proposition that he has received from any of these various promoters, and have the advice of those who know most about it.

I suppose the Department of Agriculture has entirely too many duties to perform to undertake a work of this kind, but what an inconsistent position it is for a Member of Congress, who has been voting for appropriations to carry on this work, to appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture to suppress such information in order that some exploiter may get somebody's money under false representations. I think if it were possible today to know the list of concerns and companies who registered, directly or through agents, their opposition to this proposed warning circular, you would have a correct index of the concerns good to let alone. For no honest, reputable individual or company need be afraid of the work or suggestions of that great Department. I have the pleasure of knowing many of the officials in the Bureau of Plant Industry, and never anywhere have I seen a body of men so conscientiously engaged in the work of promoting legitimate horticultural and agricultural knowledge. It is the very life of that great Department, and its officers and employees above everyone else are most interested in seeing the land produce the most and best that it can be made to produce, and they are best qualified to pass upon these matters.

Most of the questions in these various schemes are questions of soil and horticulture. One letter in opposition to the Agricultural Department's attitude, that was brought to my attention, stated that crops varied under different conditions, and that no one was able to tell what a certain soil would or would not produce throughout a period of years, and intimated that the Department of Agriculture might mislead the public; and yet the concern that sent it printed columns of figures guaranteeing returns from pecans and Satsuma oranges in a section where orange growing is of very doubtful possibility. Boiling down these objections by the promoters, they come to simply this: That the Agricultural Department, with no motive but to tell the truth, and with its corps of trained experts, might mislead the public, but they could not possibly be mistaken in their fabulous figures compiled for the purpose of getting money from some misinformed victim.

Proxy farming never was a success and I do not think it ever will be. One of my friends told me a short time ago of a very successful young pecan orchard on the gulf coast. Upon inquiry I found that it was of reasonable size, nine years old, and that the owner had lived in it nine years. It was not 500 acres in extent, or 1,000 acres, or 2,000 acres, but about 20 acres. Last summer I went into a beautiful apple orchard in Southern Indiana and saw about forty acres of trees bending to the ground with delicious Grimes Golden apples. On that particular day there were great crowds of people walking among the trees and admiring the fruit. I too walked among the trees a short time, but of greater interest to me than the trees was the old, gray-haired man who had made the orchard. The trees could not talk, but he could, and he told the story of the years of care, and diligence, and work, and thought, and patience, that showed why it is not possible to cover the mountains of a state with orchards bringing almost immediate and fabulous incomes.

Some time ago I stood talking to the old superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Washington--William R. Smith, now deceased--and while discussing with him the requisites for tree culture, he said "Young man, you have left out the most important one of them all," When I asked him what I had left out, he said "above all things it takes the eye of the master." 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.

Theoretically, one can figure great successes in big horticultural development propositions, but these figures rest upon theory and not fact. It would be difficult to state all the reasons why I have a firm conviction that such big schemes of every kind will fall, but I believe this conviction is shared by the foremost thinkers in the horticultural world. A four-year-old boy was once taken to see the animals in a circus. He was very much interested, but, when shown the tremendous elephant, shook his head and said "he is too big."

A small grove properly handled ought to be an excellent investment. The various uncertainties and vicissitudes involved can, in a degree, be compensated for by great care; and I suppose it would be possible even with some of these big schemes--by placing enough money behind them--to insure a fair degree of success. It must be borne in mind, however, that these promoters, of whom we have been speaking, are not so much concerned in the successful orchard as they are in big salaries and profits, and, if one has money enough to pay big salaries and profits, and still pay for the proper care of the orchard, then he does not need an orchard. Most of these promoters charge too much for a proper and honest development alone, and too little for the proper development plus the profits and salaries of the promoters. I wish it were not so. I wish the old earth could be made to smile bountiful crops without such expensive tickling, but this is one of the checks and balances that nature places upon her great storehouse of wealth.

The Chairman: This is a matter of very great importance and I hope we shall have a good discussion, from a practical point of view, by men who know about fraudulent promotions and their effect. We ought to go on record in this matter right now. 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. I got a letter the other day from Mr. S. H. James, of Beaumont, Louisiana, and he said, "I have been very fortunate, I have actually had two good crops in succession," and when you come to compare that with the promoter's literature--why he knows no such thing as crop failure. Anybody who knows anything about agricultural or horticultural work knows that we have winter and floods and everything else to contend with.

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