The motion was carried.

THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen. When I started for Washington it
was with the determination that another should succeed me as president
of the association the one reason being that my time had been so
occupied during the past year that it seemed impossible for me to go
ahead with the work as it should be done as president of this
organization. Now I am going to accept the election which you have so
kindly conferred and I am doing it for two reasons. I like the
association and the membership of this organization. I feel for the
other reason that my work has not been completed and I desire to finish
it. Now then you should have your membership doubled. Every last member
of the organization should put forth efforts this year towards that end.
Here is one plan that I have under way. I asked the faculty of our
agricultural college at Lansing if they would undertake to supply me
with the names of those who have nut trees in Michigan not the ordinary
kind but those producing good nuts and in plenty. I have the names of
from fifty to one hundred of those men owning perhaps a thousand good
nut trees. I do not believe that there is one of those men but would
become a member of this association if the matter were properly
presented to him. We have in Michigan 1,500 townships or more. Now we
have a way of reaching the supervisors of those townships through some
of our departments and we can practically take a census of the nut
bearing trees in Michigan so that instead of having from fifty to one
hundred names here we should have several hundred. Really 75 per cent
of those men should be members of this association. Now what we hope to
do this year in Michigan I feel can be done in every other state that is
interested in our particular work. I want to ask your co-operation you
who live in other states to assist in doing it. Then when we meet a year
hence I hope it may be somewhere in the central West. You honored our
state last year with the annual meeting. Of course we would like to have
you there again. You are welcome. We would be glad to receive you but
Michigan has been thus honored and I imagine that it would add to our
force in other sections to hold the meeting elsewhere, in Illinois or
Iowa or perhaps even a little further west. Some associations are now
meeting in Yellowstone Park and if we should go there we would have the
states of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. We should get membership