d to is selling trees that are diseased in
places where they are sure to die quickly. Other men are similarly
selling trees, with less skillful advertising, perhaps, but probably no
less diseased. Most of these nurserymen may be honest in their belief
that they are putting out stock that is not diseased. But in the infant
trees it is almost impossible to detect the blight, so that the tree
goes out looking like a perfectly good one. It may be two or three
seasons before it dies.

Now, the economic aspects are these: Who should stand the loss, the man
in the nursery or the man in the orchard? It is a toss-up, it seems to
me at present, with the results apparently in favor of the nurseryman
rather than in favor of the citizen. The people who have an interest in
nut growing are going to have that interest lessened or destroyed by
beginning with a bad kind of tree. There are possibilities of a great
national injury, as I see it, if we let this thing go on.

DR. KELLERMAN: Well, as a constructive policy for aiding in the
establishment of nut culture, I think your policy is sound, but as a
question of economics of operation, I doubt whether any plan of that
sort can be established, beyond the plan of merely giving the general
advice that such planting is attended with very grave risks.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you not authority, or does not authority exist, to
prohibit shipment?

DR. KELLERMAN: The plant quarantine act gives the Department authority
to quarantine infected areas and to place certain restrictions on
shipments. To place any such restriction, however, it must be plainly
established that beneficial results are going to result, not to a
particular industry necessarily, but to the general public. The
difficulty in establishing a quarantine on the shipment of nursery stock
is the apparent impossibility of saying that that is going to stop the
spread of the disease. That is one question. The other problem is the
difficulty of determining what is infected territory and what is not.
We have very serious difficulty in making regulations, excepting as
between definitely infected territory and definitely clean territory.

THE PRESIDENT: And you don't have the authority to make a sweeping,
blanket prohibition of the shipment of a certain thing?

DR. KELLERMAN: No, we haven't that authority.

MR. M. P. REED: We put a clause in the printed matter that goes out with
all of our shipments saying that chestnuts are subject to