and more tasty and
more alluring than the pecan, we shall be mighty glad to have you
discover it, and we hope it will be adaptable to the South. You know the
Buick automobile says, "When better cars are made, Buick will make
them." "When better nuts are made, we will make them." We know that all
people can't have the best. We know that some people have to eat cheaper
steaks. The trouble with this country today is that everybody wishes the
very best. The packers tell us they have great trouble in disposing of
the cheaper cuts of the meat. I do not imagine that the nut growers are
going to have much trouble in disposing of the round steaks, but we are
going to furnish the best nuts. The market for cultivated pecans has
developed in a most marvelous way. There has never been any advertising,
except in a very small way, and yet the demand has always exceeded the
supply. It has grown just naturally. People learn of a good nut and they
spread the good news to their friends so that the demand increases.
Customers in New York but four or five years ago would order eight or
ten barrels of nuts; they are ordering 150 barrels now.

I want to say to you, find a nut like that that you can grow in New York
State or that you can grow down in Connecticut, or in any of this part
of the world, and we will be mightily glad to see what you can do, and
we will try to steal it and grow it in the South. It has been said that
every great institution is only the shade of some great man. If you can
build up a great institution of a great commercial nut here in the North
let it be the shade of the Northern Nut Growers' Association.

I am not going to keep you longer because this rambling talk is not
prepared. I have been interested as I drove through New England in
seeing great groves along the public highways of maples and elms, and I
have thought how wonderful it would be if those were all pecans or
walnuts or almonds or some tree that would bear nuts instead of
furnishing shade. There is a world of opportunity in this country for a
commercial nut. They are used as delicacies now, most of these nuts, but
they are food, and they are food of the very highest type. I expect to
see the day when all our best hotels and restaurants will have on their
menus nut steaks, almond and pecan steaks, and when a great many of
their guests will order these steaks in place of the beef steaks that
they are ordering now.

I want to say that we are glad to have