Northern Nut Growers Association, Report Of The Proceedings At The Tenth Annual Meeting. / Battle Creek, Michigan, December 9 and 10, 1919

by Unknown

Report of the Nominating Committee

Your committee on Nominations, having in mind the rapidly expanding interest in Nut Culture and the need of the Northern Nut Growers Association for a board of officers especially equipped for extending development on broad lines, respectfully submit the following nominations:

For President—William S. Linton, Saginaw, Michigan.
For Vice-President—James S. McGlennon, Rochester, New York.
For Secretary-Treasurer—Willard G. Bixby, Baldwin, New York.
For Acting Secretary—Dr. W. C. Deming, Wilton, Connecticut.
For Executive Committee—Messrs. Linton, McGlennon, Bixby, W. C. Reed, and J. Russell Smith.

(Signed)	Ralph T Olcott
	James S. McGlennon
	Robert T Morris
	William S. Linton
	J. F. Jones

Mr. Olcott: Secretary-Treasurer Bixby has suggested that the work of his office be divided, he to look after the financial affairs and the nut contests, Dr. Deming to assume the work of the Secretary proper. The constitution provides that the three principal officers and the last two retiring presidents be the executive committee. As the constitution specifically provides regarding this matter, the committee suggests the position of acting secretary for Dr. Deming until such action may be taken as will conform to the constitution.

President Reed: You have heard the report of the committee. What is your pleasure?

Mr. C. A. Reed: I move that this report of the committee be unanimously adopted and the officers be elected, and the secretary so cast the ballot.

Mr. Smedley: I second the motion.

President Reed: All in favor of that vote say Aye. Opposed, No. Carried. I hereby instruct the secretary to cast the unanimous ballot of the Association for the list of officers as read.

The Secretary then cast a ballot for the persons on the report of the Nominating Committee, and declared the following elected:

President—William S. Linton, Saginaw, Mich.
Vice-President—James S. McGlennon, Rochester, N. Y.
Secretary-Treasurer—Willard G. Bixby, Baldwin, New York.
Executive Committee—The above three and W. C. Reed, Vincennes, Ind.,
and J. Russell Smith, Swarthmore, Penn.
Acting Secretary—Dr. W. C. Deming, Wilton, Conn.

President Reed: In regard to the change in the constitution, that will have to go over until next year.

Mr. Olcott: The constitution provides that notice be given to this convention for action to be taken a year from now; or that thirty days before action is taken, the notice be sent to the members. It seems to me that inasmuch as the action proposed is fully understood, that Dr. Deming is available, and Mr. Bixby kindly consented while Dr. Deming was tied up in the war work to look after this work, that there really is enough for two, and as both are agreeable, this is the time to take that action to become effective a year from now unless you can bring it about quicker.

President Reed: I should think it is only necessary to take the action on that. If there is some one better posted on parliamentary law, who thinks entire action better be taken at this time, I will entertain a motion. If not, we will let it stand as it is at present.

Mr. Olcott: I move that it is the sentiment of this convention, and that the members should be notified through the annual report and the regular proceedings, that that action is contemplated—to divide the office of Secretary-Treasurer at the next annual meeting, and that the constitution be changed as follows:

That Article IV, Officers, be changed as follows: There shall be a president, a vice-president, a treasurer and a secretary, who shall be elected at the annual meeting; and an executive committee of six persons of which the president, two last retiring presidents, vice-president, treasurer and secretary shall be members. There shall be a state vice-president from each state, dependency, or county represented in the membership of the association, who shall be appointed by the president.

That Article VII, Quorum, be changed as follows: Ten members of the association shall constitution a quorum, but must include a majority of the executive committee, or two of the four elected officers.

Voice: I second the motion.

President Reed: It is moved and seconded that this matter come up at the next annual meeting to be voted on as presented by Mr. Olcott. All in favor say Aye; opposed, No. Carried. I believe we have a report of the auditing committee that should come up.

Mr. C. A. Reed: Mr. Chairman, I believe I am the sole member of the Auditing Committee who is present. I have to report that the committee has not acted, but I think we can do this if agreeable: If you will leave it to the committee to audit the account, and if the committee finds the account is not accurate, to report to that effect next year and bring Mr. Bixby to time, then; otherwise say nothing about it.

President Reed: I think we are willing to do it on that basis. Mr. Secretary, are there any other things that ought to come up that you think of?

Mr. Bixby: I have a resolution here if this is in order now. This resolution is sent from Mr. Littlepage.

"Whereas this Association is justly jealous of its character and standing among the nut-growing public of this western continent and especially among the northern nut culturists, amateur or professional; and

"Whereas this Association views with distrust and some alarm the growing and questionable practice of selling seedling pecan trees to the general public; and

"Whereas it developed at a recent meeting of the Southern Nurserymen's Association held at Atlanta, Georgia, that seedling pecan trees from the gulf states were being distributed in the territory north of the Ohio River; and

"Whereas this practice, if continued, will work a distinct disadvantage to the industry in general as well as to the planters in particular;

"Therefore be it Resolved, That this Association now and here vigorously record its view on this question as follows: That we protest against the above named practice and urge upon the nurserymen of the United States the importance of discouraging the practice of planting seedling pecan trees for orchard purposes in particular; and further that especially shall extreme caution be used to prevent the shipment of southern seedling pecan trees for planting in the territory north of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, and further be it

"Resolved, That the secretary communicate a copy of these resolutions to the President of the American Association of Nurserymen with the request that his organization take cognizance of this condition and take such steps as are compatible with its authority and sentiment to repress such reprehensible practice on the part of the American nursery trade."

I will introduce this as a resolution.

Voice: I second the motion.

President Reed: You have heard the resolution which has been seconded. Are there any remarks?

Mr. C. A. Reed: I would like to add a word of explanation. There are only two or three nurserymen in the South engaged in that practice. There are several northern men who are in the nursery business in the South who have raised the question as to the propriety of that practice, and the question has been discussed at the meetings of this southern association with a good deal of heat and vigor. The southern people will not plant seedling pecan trees at all, but these few nurserymen do a few hundred dollars' worth of business every year by sending their product to big nurseries here in the North, general fruit-tree nurseries and they in turn distribute these trees through the North. These northern friends of ours who are now in the South, put through a resolution asking that the matter be discussed at their meeting this year at Atlanta, the meeting held in August, by myself representing the Department of Agriculture. I was unable to be present, but I sent down a paper which was read by my associate in the office, and he tells us that ninety per cent of the southern nurserymen were with us in opposing that practice; that it is only those two or three and their associates who practice it. And it is as a result of that situation that this resolution has been proposed. Prof. Lake, secretary of the American Pomological Society, has been in the South working on pecans and is quite familiar with the situation, and he drew up this resolution. It is something that by all means should be stopped if possible. The southern pecan does not succeed in the North anyhow, and even it did, we do not want the kind of pecan tree up here that the southerners would not plant themselves.

President Reed: Are you ready for the question? All in favor of adopting the resolution as read, say Aye. Contrary, same sign. It is so Carried.

Mr. C. A. Reed: I would like to suggest that a copy of these resolutions be sent to the secretary of the Southern Nurserymen's Association, Mr. O. Joe Howard, Hickory, N. C.

Mr. Bixby: I have a telegram from Mr. Littlepage which I will read. "I regret exceedingly it is impossible to attend the meeting this year. Signed, T. P. Littlepage."

Mr. J. F. Jones: I make a motion that Dr. Walter Van Fleet be made an honorary member of this Association for his valuable work in nut culture and hybridizing.

Mr. Olcott: I second the motion.

President Reed: It has been moved and seconded that Dr. Walter Van Fleet be made an honorary member of this Association for his valuable work in nut culture. All in favor say Aye. Contrary, No. It is Carried.

Mr. Bixby: The place of the next meeting is decided before the meeting adjourns, I think, or else provision made for it.

President Reed: As I understand it, it is either decided or you vote to put it in the hands of the executive committee.

Mr. Bixby: Provision in some way is made for it. On that subject I would like to say a word. We have an invitation from Mr. Littlepage, and in considering the place of the 1919 meeting there were really three different locations spoken of—one Washington, D. C., one New York City or some point near there, and one Lancaster, Pa. Heretofore we have practically decided the place of the meeting on consideration of being able to see near there nut trees of interest. I think every meeting has been decided with that idea in mind. This year each of the three places offered promise of being very attractive in a year or two, but not in 1919. In the case of the meeting at Washington, we could see Mr. Littlepage's orchard of pecans, thirty acres in extent, which year before last put out a few flowers, and this year quite a number, and he expects nuts next year. There are also the many things to be seen around Washington,—the Department of Agriculture, and Dr. Van Fleet's work besides a number of other things. And at Lancaster, Pa., there has been a chance the past year to see some remarkable work on top worked hickories, that is, the early bearing of crops of fine nuts. Then again very soon on Capt. Deming's place at Georgetown, Conn., is going to be the greatest opportunity for topworked hickories anywhere to be seen. He has more young seedling hickories top worked to fine varieties than any one else that I know of. As a matter of suggestion it would seem to me well—this is only a suggestion, of course—that the matter be left with the executive committee, and next spring or summer when it is possible to get an idea as to which of these three places offers the most to see in the line of nut trees, then they could decide where it is best to go. That would be the suggestion that I would make.

Mr. McGlennon: One of the suggestions was Rochester, N. Y. I think there are things worth while there in nut culture to be seen, and I know that we who are interested in nut culture would like to have the convention there; and I know also our Chamber of Commerce in the city would be very happy to have it there. So that in considering the place for the next meeting, I hope Rochester, N Y., will be incorporated in the thought.

Mr. Pomeroy: Mr. President, I would also suggest you might come to Lockport, N. Y. Out northeast of Buffalo there were shipped eighteen hundred pounds of walnuts to the Buffalo market this fall. North of Lockport is a man who supplies the country stores with English walnuts. As long as there are any of these walnuts in the baskets exposed for sale, those which were purchased from the wholesalers from California are left unsold. I went into one store and the store-keeper had some home grown English walnuts out in the back room. I said, "Why do you keep them out here?" He said, "I have three bushels of California walnuts, and I keep these here until the others are sold. If I put these out in front, I would not sell the others at all."

Mr. Bixby: I would be glad to include Rochester, or Lockport, or any other place suggested, and leave it to the executive committee with the power to act.

Mr. C. A. Reed: Mr. President, we know pretty nearly what could be seen at most of these places next year. There is not going to be a great change in what there has been this year, and it seems to me the sooner we can definitely decide upon this thing and get it a matter of record, and plan for it, the better it will be. We can go around from one place to another. We want to go to all these places during the next three or four years, and we have a definite invitation from Mr. Littlepage; and while he didn't so state in his telegram, in conversation with him on Friday by telephone, he said he would like to have them come there the latter part of August or first of September; and to make the matter definite and know where we stand early in the game, I move we accept Mr. Littlepage's invitation for a meeting about the first of September.

Mr. Olcott: I second that motion, and add that at the Stamford convention, that is the very argument I made. Before that meeting it had always been left to the executive committee. It had been the custom of Dr. Deming, the secretary, to defer the matter of the place of meeting until a few weeks before the date for it. Nobody knew, and the committee decided, and the time was too short to get anything like the attendance we should have. If we should publish in the American Nut Journal for a year where the meeting is to be, you would get a year's advertising of that matter, and could plan better thereby.

President Reed: You have heard the motion.

Mr. Bixby: The only reason I had in making the suggestion I did, was the possibility of one place or the other showing more importance but as Mr. Reed said, we want to do all these places mentioned at some time. It does not make much difference which we do first. We should like to take first the place where there is most to be seen, of course.

President Reed: If there is no further discussion, all in favor of accepting Mr. Littlepage's invitation for Washington for the next meeting say Aye. Contrary, No. It is Carried.

J. F. Jones: The reason I did not push Lancaster is that some experiments on spraying are being conducted there and it will be a year before that will show up. The nut growers could see that better the year following.

President Reed: If there is nothing else, I believe we are ready to turn over the gavel to our new president.

Mr. C. A. Reed: Mr. President, there is an important committee you have not appointed. I was out of the room when Mr. Patterson suggested this morning that a committee be appointed. Has that been attended to?

President Reed: I expected to let the incoming president appoint that committee before we adjourn.

Mr. Smedley: I will make a motion that Mr. Patterson represent us and have the endorsement of this Association as to demanding more appropriations for the work in hand.

J. F. Jones: I second the motion.

President Reed: It is moved and seconded that Mr. Patterson be appointed to represent us before congress in connection with the appropriation.

Mr. Patterson: If everyone on the committee could go to Washington as soon as we can get at the House committee for a hearing, that would be the way to get action on the matter. Of course, the endorsement of the Association is good, and if you could get a committee of some one who could go down and help re-enforce it, there, we would appreciate it very much.

President Reed: I think the incoming president will be one who will be going down. If he will come forward, I am ready to turn over the gavel.

At this point, Mr. Linton, the newly elected president, took the chair.

President Linton: Ladies and Gentlemen I am sure that you will all concede that I have not sought official position, and no one could have been more surprised than I, when I was presented with the report of your committee. I have been much interested in the work that is being carried on by this association; and of course if I can be of any value to the association or to the cause in the position of president during this particular year, why I accept that duty. But I would like to impose one or two conditions. I know that your hearty co-operation will be given. That would be one condition. But I am sure that each and every one of you can assist in adding greatly to the membership of this organization. We should at least have fifty members in each state within our jurisdiction. That would mean, perhaps one-half of the states in the Union. That would mean one thousand members. Now, in accepting this position, I am going to ask each and every active member through his friends and acquaintances to solicit and secure twenty-five members. Now, I will double that amount, and agree during the year, to add fifty good members to the association. That means over one thousand during the year, and that is one goal that I hope we can reach during this particular year, 1920. So far as the growing of nuts is concerned, so far as the details connected with the work that you have been engaged in is concerned, I propose leaving those things to those whom I consider experts, Dr. Morris, our friend Reed from Washington, and others that I might name; but the particular lines that I would like to follow this year, gentlemen, and what I hope to receive your earnest support in is an addition to your membership so that it may exceed a thousand; and assistance in legislation throughout the country along the line that we have worked out in our peninsular state of Michigan. I am glad that you decided upon Washington as the place of the next meeting, and as I have intimated in my remarks heretofore, I believe we have there a Michigan Senator who will assist in national legislation along the lines that we desire, because they are right ones; and in his position as chairman of the committee on post offices and post roads of the country, being at the head of the highway legislation, there is no man in the United States as competent to help us along that line, and I feel sure that we will get that assistance and support. With these few lines I will close, and I sincerely hope you have not made any mistake at this session; and when we have rounded up our year's work, that we can all say it has been a successful one. I thank you. (Applause). The committee on Federal Aid that the incoming president was to appoint, I will name as follows: J. M. Patterson, Dr. Morris, Dr. Kellogg, Mr. Littlepage, Mr. Bixby, Mr. Jones and Mr. McGlennon.

Mr. Bixby: Senator Penney would like to say a word.

Senator Penney: I hadn't any intention of saying a word. But I am particularly pleased that you elected my friend, Mr. Linton, as president of the organization. I have known him a good many years, and I know he is an industrious worker. In anything that he undertakes to do, you will always see results. I am sure that in the lines which he has expressed himself as being anxious to cover, your membership, the matter of legislation, I am sure that you will see some results that will be very gratifying to the Association. I do not know as there is anything further I wish to say. But I have been very interested in these meetings. I am not a nut grower, and I hardly know one nut from another, excepting that I am like the squirrel, if I get hold of a good nut I like to eat it; but I have certainly learned a lot of things from this association, and I am very pleased to be present.

President Linton: I am going to ask Senator Penney to become a member of this association.

Mr. Bixby: He is a member.

Senator Penney: I have gotten two since I have been here, so I am going to pledge myself for two or three more for the next year.

Mr. Olcott: I think one subject should not be overlooked, and that is the matter of resolutions. There is Dr. Kellogg's very courteous offer and treatment to be remembered, and perhaps some other things. If there is not such a committee, I think some one ought to be appointed on it to report very soon before we close. I move that a committee on resolutions be appointed.

C. A. Reed: I second the motion.

President Linton: Gentlemen, you have heard the motion made by Mr. Olcott. Are you ready for the question? Those who favor the motion say Aye; opposed, No. The resolution is Adopted. I appoint Mr. Olcott, Mr. Bixby, Senator Penney, Mr. Jones and Mr. Patterson.

C. A. Reed: There is a little bit of news I would like to tell the members of the association. Yesterday afternoon, a gentleman who is a patient across the street at the sanitarium, came down to the nut exhibit in a wheelchair and looked on with interest at what was shown there, and presently he called Mrs. Reed over to talk with her a little and ask something about who was connected with that exhibit; and the next thing he asked me to sit down by him. He was not able to get around, to stand, and he told me this: that four years ago he met a Mr. Page from Tulsa, Oklahoma, a man who is evidently a man of a good deal of means in the oil business there, who is very philanthropic in his activities, a man who has adopted two hundred children, I believe it is; and he proposed to this gentleman, who was Mr. Dow of Jamestown, N. Y., that he go to Oklahoma to establish a nut arboretum. He was willing to set aside two hundred acres of land and to endow it with $200,000 if this Mr. Dow would go and take charge of it. He also offered to build a $23,000 house on the place. But Mr. Dow is director of the Leadsworth Forest Arboretum, some sixty miles up the Genesee River from Rochester, and of course he did not feel that he could leave the work he was doing there and devote his energies to a new work. I thought that was something that we northerners would be very much interested in, and I think we ought to see if that offer could not be taken advantage of.

Mr. Bixby: Can any one here tell me where seedlings of the big western shellback, Carya laciniosa, can be obtained? I would like to get 100 of them.

C. A. Reed: Probably the best place to get that information would be from the U. S. Forest Service. That bureau keeps in touch with such information. They have catalogs and they have lists of nurserymen having various trees including nut trees; the U. S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.

President Linton: Mr. Reed informs me that it is the intention to close this session at this time.

J. F. Jones: I don't think we ought to close without passing a resolution of thanks to Dr. Kellogg for the nice entertainment here, the free service, the rooms, etc.

Voice: I support the motion.

President Linton: You have heard the motion offered by Mr. Jones. We can take a recess and adjourn after we take the trip through the buildings.

C. A. Reed: If there is no one there but the president, officers and the committee, they would still have the authority to adopt these resolutions, and then properly adjourn.

President Linton: If that is the consensus of opinion, we will take a recess until called to order again by the chair following the trip through the buildings.

C. A. Reed: The idea was to take a recess until after our trip this afternoon and adjourn then. At that time this committee will be prepared with its resolutions.

President Linton: We can not fix a definite time. It will be following the afternoon session with Dr. Kellogg. If there is nothing more to come before us at this time, a recess will be taken until after that time.

The convention then took a recess and reassembled at 2 p. m. at which time an old fashioned straw sleigh ride was taken to the buildings of the Kellogg Pure Food Company. Here Dr. Kellogg met the party and conducted them through, explaining the various products made and the processes by which they were made, and also that the large plant of the company was a growth from a very humble beginning, started originally for the purpose of providing food for the Sanitarium that was impossible to procure any other way. Persons who had been guests of the Sanitarium, after leaving it, have wished to get some of the food products they had had when there, and in that way, a demand was made which had grown, till many of them were supplied to the jobbing trade. A most enjoyable lunch enabled the party to sample many of the products.

From the Kellogg Pure Food Company, the sleigh took the party back to the Sanitarium through which they were conducted and shown the remarkable facilities for providing the guests with every kind of medical treatment that had proved valuable. It would be difficult to find a place where apparatus for treating every form of disease is equal to that of the Battle Creek Sanitarium or where such facilities exist for providing patients with all means for their comfort and for the recovery of their health. A most interesting talk illustrated with lantern slides, showed the growth of this institution from a modest beginning in a dwelling house, 54 years ago. After this the convention reassembled and adjourned at 5 p. m.

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