s meeting some way looking towards the
Association's giving consideration to methods and means whereby we can
properly evaluate varieties that we have that are growing so that we can
recommend and tell others the varieties that they should grow.

You know, here is the situation exactly. In the territory of the
Northern Nut Growers we don't have a commercial industry at the present
time. I doubt if there is a single family of the Northern Nut Growers
who are here that depend on the sale of nuts for their living. Well,
when your living depends on something, you take an awful lot of interest
in it. And that has been true in the case of apples, for example. I
don't know how many there are, but twenty years ago or more there have
been fifteen or sixteen thousand apple varieties that have been
described and have been planted and propagated, and you can name all of
the commercial apple varieties grown in the United States almost on the
fingers of your hands. That is, the important ones. Oh, the list has
grown, would probably take in 200, but that 190 hardly make a drop in
the bucket as compared to the ten big ones.

Well, the same thing is true with peaches. The Elberta peach just is
completely outstanding. It's a big commercial peach. Now, in all of the
Association here, almost every paper that is presented always has some
commercial aspect mentioned in the paper, but we could never have any
commercial industry as long as we are fooling with a lot of these
varieties with nobody giving them the serious consideration that they
deserve, in an effort to properly evaluate them.

This evaluation of a variety is our problem. I have given an awful lot
of thought to it over the years and how to get around it, how to come up
with the proper answers within the near future so that we can be of help
to others and stop a lot of our amateurs, those who are attracted to the
industry, from making mistakes and getting discouraged. That is the
problem. And that is the thing that I want all of you to be thinking
about tonight and help us with the suggestions.

Now, we could just start almost, I expect, in dogfights, if we were to
conduct this round table to get to discussing the different qualities or
desirability or other aspects among varieties, and each fellow would be
right, because I know there wouldn't be agreement. It would make an
interesting round table, but I don't know how constructive it would be.
So I have tried in these prelimin