ions 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 un