Keep at it and take advantage of this offer of Mr. Jones. I believe by
following those lines you can very easily go out and get five or ten
members apiece.

MR. BIXBY: I don't want to throw cold water on any idea that is going to
increase the membership but it seems to me that there are some
objections to the proposed plan. In the first place the association has
gone on record as favoring largely the planting of grafted trees. Now on
the proposed plan the minute we get a new member in we have to send him
a seedling tree. That does not seem to me the best thing to do. In the
second place, I have had a good many years' experience in merchandising
and it has always worked out with me that people do not much appreciate
what they get for nothing. You can do this if a man is going to buy a
certain kind of goods, by offering him an inducement, giving him
something for nothing you can make him buy more than he would otherwise;
but if a man who has never had a certain kind of goods, generally
speaking you can't sell them to him by offering him a prize with them.

In the case suggested by Mr. Spencer, where a member working in a
certain location could club with others and get several new members, why
that hasn't the same objection. I do think that it would be a fine thing
if the members in the different sections each agreed to get five or ten
members, go after them and get them. I think that would be fine. And if
they are willing to be responsible at the end of the year if they don't
get them, and pay two dollars apiece for the ones they don't get, why
that would help out the treasury.

MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I am rather in favor of the premium plan. In
this great state of New York there exists an organization at Geneva
known as the New York State Fruit Testing Co-operative Association. In
order to get members they offer premiums, a yearly premium. The year
that I joined the association they sent me a new apple which had been
tried out and found to be a very desirable fruit. They named it the
"Tioga" variety. The next year they sent me as a premium twelve new
raspberries that had been tested first by the Geneva Experiment Station,
a branch of the agricultural college, and then by this association of
fruit growers.

Now I don't know how it would operate with others but it was an
inducement to me in the first place to get that new apple to experiment
with, and the next year it was an inducement to get the twelve new
raspber