damn. I wish I
were a moron. My God! perhaps I am."

David Fairchild says that it takes the energies, the fortunes and the
lives of pioneers, the best people of our country, to build up a new
plant industry. I congratulate you all in being included in that class
of pioneers, the best people of this country. But we haven't yet built
up the great nut industry that we would like to build.

I might tell you how the idea of the nut growers association arose. In
1907 I got a little farm of forty acres in Connecticut. In 1908 I read
an article by Dr. Morris, "Nut Culture as a Side Line for Physicians." I
immediately wrote the doctor and he said in fifteen years I could have
an income of $100.00 an acre from nuts alone. That seemed to me exactly
what I wanted, $4,000 a year and live very comfortably. So I bought all
the nut trees I could find. I bought nut trees from every nursery in
this country that offered them in the North. I got pecans from the
South. I sent to California and got filberts and English walnuts. I sent
to Europe for English walnut seeds. I bought twenty acres of chestnut
sprout land and grafted the sprouts. Just as the chestnuts were
beginning to bear the blight came along. That ended them. The English
walnuts I set around in fence corners and they grew a little smaller
every year and, finally disappeared. That was the end of the English
walnuts. At that time I couldn't graft hickories. With great labor I
collected hickory scions and sent them to nurseries in the South and had
them grafted. They arrived in the North after the ground had frozen. I
told the hired man to heel them in. He heeled them in but left the top
of the roots out. In the spring they were all dead. By that time my
dander was up a little. I thought there must be other men who were
having the same trouble. If we could have a little organization we could
tell each other our troubles and perhaps work them out together. I wrote
Dr. Morris, John Craig, Professor Close, Mr. Hales, and one or two
others, and we met together in the Botanical Museum in Bronx Park and
organized the Northern Nut Growers Association. That is all I had to do
with it. Whether we will ever come to the place where they will have
bands out and ticker tape flying, when we come to town--that is the
thing I used to dream about a little when we first started. But I don't
think we are destined to burst wide the gates of fame yet. We may after
we have achieved our objects. As Dr