ng to do with the rest of us?

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Reed, I didn't say what you said I did. I said:
"There are so many things you already know that are not true."
(Laughter.)

MR. C. A. REED: Well, now, I will quote another man, Dr. Curtis, one of
the best known pecan men in the South. It was Dr. Curtis that I went to
for my initial experience in pecans. The first I ever saw were in his
orchard in Florida, and I asked him quite a good many questions, and he
would tell me a story and go away. And I called him up one day, went
into his orchard in harvest time when he was gathering the nuts in the
hulls and taking them to the packing house. And I said "What is that
for?" And he said "Don't you see those shuck worms all through the hulls
here? I am throwing them out there to let the chickens get them."
"Well," said I, "can you say you are getting rid of the shuck worms by
doing that?" And he replied, "I can see, one year with another, that
they are gradually getting less." A year later I went down there before
he did. He was in Maine at the time, but his orchard trees were just
alive with shuck worms, every variety almost eaten up with them. I said
to him, when he came back, "I thought you were going to get rid of those
shuck worms by feeding them to the chickens?" "Well, there it goes," he
said, "you get a nice theory all worked out and some one comes along and
asks you a simple little question that knocks it all in the head." And
that is almost the unanimous experience. What you know you have got to
qualify if you talk at all. I am getting to be such a pessimist I am not
much good in the government any more. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: The one hope a college professor of my acquaintance has
is when a student comes around and says he believes he doesn't know
much. He regards that as the beginning of knowledge, and I think that
Mr. Reed's confessions, and incriminations of the rest of us, show one
thing, perhaps, better than anything else, and that is the great
necessity of organizations of this sort in which many men who are trying
many things in many ways come together and give the results of their
observations. No doubt, this whole question of agriculture in general,
and nuts in particular, is so complex, it is so run through and through
with so many different controlling factors, and, with them, so many new
things are constantly coming along, that we are all going to be handing
down to our children and grandchildren a