required a balanced ration fed to an unbalanced brain to settle that
problem.

Now I think the importance of the nut industry must come to the general
public in that way, through the stomach rather than through the mind.
The human mind is a marvelous piece of mental machinery, so is the
machine which sets type or weaves fine cloth, yet both are powerless
unless the fire pot under the engine, or the stomach of the man, are
kept filled with fuel or food. I have heard very old men tell of the
prejudice which existed against coal, years ago, in New England, when
attempts were made to introduce the new fuel. Cord wood was the local
fuel, people knew what it was, and its preparation provided a local
industry. The introduction of coal meant destruction for this local
business of wood cutting, and wiped out the value of many a farm. Coal
had to win its way against prejudice and local interest, and it only won
out by showing power. I am sure that 75 years ago, if some visionary
Yankee had said that coal would be so freely used in New England that
cord wood would be almost unsaleable, the public would surely have given
him that honorary title which goes with prospective and persistent
knowledge, "nut."

In like manner the importance of nut growing will not be truly
recognized until we can show a man in the most practical way that nuts
provide the energy to be found in beef steak. It is said that knowledge
creates an atmosphere in which prejudice cannot live. I know an old man
who is absolutely settled in his conviction that New England has
degenerated because her people have given up eating baked beans and cod
fish balls, and introduced the sale of these delicacies in the West.
That man says, with convincing logic, that in the old days when New
England lived on brown bread and baked beans, we produced statesmen on
every rocky hillside, and we dominated the thought of the nation. Now,
he says, we have not developed one single statesman since the canned
baked bean industry took our specialty away from us. The only way to
convince him is to produce a dozen statesmen out of men who are willing
to subscribe to a diet of nuts. I have a friend who says he feels like
throwing a brick every time he passes a modern laundry. He says the
invention of the linen collar kept him a poor man. His grandfather
invested the family fortune in the stock of a paper collar factory. Many
of our older men remember the time when we all wore paper collar