Treasurer's Report
| Year Ending August 31, 1934 | ||
|---|---|---|
| RECEIPTS | ||
| Annual Memberships | $266.75 | |
| Contributing Memberships | 10.00 | |
| Sale of Reports | 29.00 | |
| Sale of Bulletins | 2.25 | |
| For Subscriptions to National Nut News | 8.00 | |
| _______ | ||
| Total | $316.00 | $316.00 |
| DISBURSEMENTS | ||
| Reprints, K. W. Greene (for Mr. Bixby) | $ 21.10 | |
| Printing 1931 Report, Balance, American Fruits Pub. Co. | 50.00 | |
| Subscriptions, National Nut News | 18.00 | |
| Printing 1932 Report, Lightner Pub. Corp. | 200.00 | |
| Expenses Downingtown Convention, J. W. Hershey | 13.82 | |
| Membership Dues, American Horticultural Society | 2.00 | |
| Expense Handling Surplus Reports, C. A. Reed | 9.69 | |
| Advertising, Lightner Pub. Corp. | 4.00 | |
| Printing 1933 Report, Lightner Pub. Corp. | 125.32 | |
| Release Expense of Account with Litchfield Savings Society | 1.68 | |
| Loss on Check | 2.00 | |
| Postage, F. H. Frey | 12.10 | |
| Postage and Miscl. Expense for 1933 Report, F. H. Frey | 19.92 | |
| Mimeographing, G. L. Slate | 2.25 | |
| Printing, Postage and Supplies, C. F. Walker | 12.45 | |
| Check Charges & Taxes | .68 | |
| _______ | ||
| Total | $495.01 | $495.01 |
| Excess of Disbursements over Receipts | $179.01 | |
| CASH ACCOUNT | ||
| Cash on hand or in bank as reported as of Aug. 31, 1933 | $306.01 | |
| Account in Litchfield Savings Society as of Aug. 31, 1933 | 15.94 | |
| _______ | ||
| Total cash on hand or in bank as of Aug. 31, 1933 | $321.95 | $321.95 |
| Excess of Disbursements over Receipts | 179.01 | |
| _______ | ||
| Balance, Cash in bank, August 31, 1934 | $142.94 | |
| Accounts, Due or Payable | None | |
Press and Publication Committee
Dr. Deming:
We have had one or two articles in each issue of the National Horticultural Magazine, published by the American Horticultural Society in Washington. The editor has promised to have in each issue of his magazine something relating to nuts. He is particularly anxious to get short articles with a single illustration, articles about a page long which will attract attention, be easy to read and stimulate interest in nuts. I would be glad to receive articles of that nature for submission to the editor.
It is unfortunate that we no longer have an official journal, the National Nut News having gone out of existence. We have an opportunity to make the American Fruit Grower, with which we have been acquainted a good many years, our official journal, and that will come up in the course of this meeting.
Membership Committee
Mr. Walker:
From our increase in membership—forty new members—and from their addresses, one is able to judge of the work of Prof. Neilson, he being very active in obtaining new members. There are others of our members who also have been active and to whom credit is due for the increase in membership.
An analysis of the membership of the past six years indicates that we are on the increase again. We have retained over 90% of those who were members last year. I feel as though we need not try to get everybody in the world to plant nut trees. But there is no reason why we should not greatly increase our membership.
Program Committee
Prof. Neilson:
At nine o'clock tomorrow morning busses will be at the hotel to take us to the Kellogg plant. About 10:30 we will proceed to the sanitarium. We will try and meet at the Kellogg Hotel at 12:00 P.M. where we are to be the guest of Mr. W. K. Kellogg for luncheon. After lunch, at one o'clock, we will board the busses and proceed to the Kellogg farm. At the farm we will look over the buildings for a few minutes, call at the Kellogg School, and then stop for a few moments and look over our bittersweet plantation. Then we will go on to the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary and see what is being done there in conserving wild fowl.
After we leave the sanctuary we will visit a block of about fifteen acres of hickory trees, where I have been doing top working experiments for the last three or four years. Then we will inspect our variety plantation of nut trees and proceed to Mr. Kellogg's estate. At 5:30 the Kellogg Company will provide motor boats to take us for a cruise on Gull Lake. At 6:30 we will have our dinner at Bunbury Inn on Gull Lake and then have a few addresses and a business session.
Report of Committee on Hybrids and Promising Seedlings
Dr. Zimmerman:
One or two interesting seedlings have come to our attention during the past year. One a hickory nut that was drawn to the attention of the Pennsylvania Nut Growers' Association January last. It is a rather good nut and bears very well. I think Mr. Hershey has some of the trees for sale.
The other, a very interesting shellbark, came to my attention. The nut is large, the best cracker for a shellbark that I have seen, the tree itself is beautiful and, although the party who owns it says it bears every other year, it seems to me to produce a good many nuts every year that I have seen it.
Another, probably worthless, but interesting, seems to me to be an English walnut x butternut hybrid. The party insists she planted walnuts from a typical English walnut tree, but the trees from these nuts, of which there are a number bearing small nuts, certainly have the earmarks of the butternut. These plants will be kept under observation and a later report given concerning them.
We have a number of first generation hybrids, but so far as I am aware we have no second or following generation hybrids in the nut line. It seems to me that if we plant a lot of the nuts from these first generation hybrids and, when the plants are large enough, distribute them to parties who will give them space and care for them until they come into bearing, somebody sooner or later will get hold of some valuable material. Work along this line I expect to advance through our committee as rapidly as practical. It seems to me that the seedlings of our first generation hybrids should not be destroyed as has frequently been done in the past.
Prof. Neilson:
I have seen quite a few hybrids between the heartnut and the butternut. I believe the Mitchel is about the best.
Dr. MacDaniels:
We found that the tree had stood the winter very well and that it was bearing a good crop. We brought along a few samples labeled the Mitchel hybrid heartnut. It looked to me to be a promising nut.
Prof. Neilson:
Mr. Mitchel thought it was a worthless butternut. I told Mr. Mitchel that I thought it was well worth saving and I hope that one of these days we shall succeed in propagating it.
The President:
Mr. Stokes, in Virginia, has located some black walnuts that will be excellent. Mr. Hershey's name and work have been mentioned. He writes me that the territory of the Tennessee Valley is a wonderful lay-out and he is putting on a contest for different kinds of nuts. He may have some desirable nuts to present later on.
Mr. Slate:
If Mr. Reed is not planning to discuss those Jones hybrids in his paper I wish he, or someone else who is acquainted with them, would make some remarks to be placed on record.
Mr. Reed:
We think that the two most promising of the Jones hybrids are numbers 92 and 200. Those were Mr. Jones' own numbers. About three years ago we began making an intensive study of them. Ninety-two seemed to bear better and be a little more promising than 200, and so it was named first. It was named Buchanan in honor of the only president of the United States who came from Pennsylvania. Last year number 200 showed up so favorably that it seemed well to name that one also, so just about a year ago the name of Bixby was suggested and it met with universal approval. That, I think, is all that I have to say about the hybrids. We are watching them very closely.
From here east we had a very severe winter last year. Apple orchards very, very old were killed all through the east and with them thousands and thousands of English walnut trees. In Washington we have practically no crop of filberts and our English walnuts were affected generally.
We have yet to find a single hybrid between black walnut and English walnut which appears to be promising. There is a record, but I think we should have brought to our attention from time to time what was known as the James River hybrid. It was an enormous black walnut tree that grew on the James River near Jamestown. It was visited in 1928 by Mr. Karl Greene and Mr. Hershey. Mr. Greene said that the tree measured thirteen feet in circumference. You don't often see trees as large as that in any part of the country. That is in a part of the country where the English walnut has not done well. The tree must have been somewhere around 200 years old when it died. It was probably grown from a hybrid between an English walnut and a black walnut. Our American colonists brought the English walnut with them about the same time they brought our first apples and peaches and plums and everything else. This tree throws some light on the question as to when the first English walnut first came to this country.
A week ago yesterday I was riding along a country road down in Maryland. I saw a row of trees. One tree in the middle of that row was as big as any other three there. I slowed up and looked at them more closely. The large tree was a hybrid and the others were not.
Committee on Exhibits:
On the tables Prof. Neilson has a number of plates of the northern pecan at its best. Besides that he has two remarkable specimens of hybrid hickories. One is a McCallister, and the other is of unknown origin. There are also on the tables other remarkable nuts grown in this part of the United States, in Ontario and in British Columbia. There are chestnuts, English walnuts, Japanese heartnuts and others.
Mr. Reed:
You will recall that one year ago I was made custodian of the back records of the association. Within two weeks of the time of last year's meeting I personally procured the reports which were stacked away in Mr. Bixby's barn, and took them to Washington. A little later Dr. Deming and the late Mr. Russell made a trip to Redding, Connecticut, and sent me 500 pounds of back reports. Still later Mr. Karl Greene brought to me about another 500 pounds of reports. I had then about 1900 pounds. We put them in the basement of the building where our office was and then we began to move around. It began to cost something to move them.
I communicated with Mr. Slate and found that there was abundant space at Geneva, and the authorities were willing that they should be housed there. So I had the reports tied up and arranged with a truck man to move them to Geneva. I made the arrangements with a man who agreed to move them for $25. Then he backed out. I didn't feel like incurring a greater expense by sending them by railroad, so I waited until last week and took a bundle from each year in my own car. They are in the secretary's care at Geneva at the present time. The rest of the reports will presently be stored in Mr. Littlepage's packing shed out in his apple orchard. There are still a few reports in the Bixby's barn and Dr. Deming can tell how many more he has.
The President:
Each current report will be sold at $1.00 per copy and old reports at 50c a copy. If someone wanted an entire set we would sell all eighteen or nineteen numbers now for $6.00.
The American Fruit Grower, published in Cleveland, Ohio, has agreed to have the magazine appear as the official journal of the Northern Nut Growers' Association.
Mr. J. T. Bregger:
We will deem it a privilege, and I'm sure an obligation, to take on this responsibility of acting as official journal of your society and give to you at least a column each month. We are already acting as official organ of other horticultural societies and it seems to work out very well. In addition to the column that your secretary would have each month you could run further articles on nut growing, which would be of additional interest to your members. You would have some 150,000 of our readers who are interested in fruit growing, and who would be interested in nut growing, as possible new members for your organization. They would receive your announcements and articles each month and you could get in touch with them, through that column, for additional membership.
Mr. Walker:
I move that the American Fruit Grower be made the official organ of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, that the secretary be the official correspondent with the American Fruit Grower, that the subscription price be paid by the treasurer direct to the American Fruit Grower, that the present membership fee remain the same, two dollars, to all members, with the privilege of receiving the American Fruit Grower. The motion was seconded by Prof. Neilson.
The President:
Mr. Ellis has offered to donate $10.00 this year, if it is necessary, to apply on subscriptions for the membership. I don't know that we will have to call on him for this but it is certainly a display of fine spirit.
Dr. Deming:
I want to express my great satisfaction that the American Fruit Grower has offered to act as our official organ on such advantageous terms. Fourteen years ago, before Mr. Bregger's career as an editor began, I edited a nut column in the Fruit Grower. The motion was carried.
The following named were elected as committee to nominate officers for next year: Dr. Deming, Colonel Mitchell, Professor Neilson, Mr. Weber, and Dr. Colby.
Resolutions Committee: Professor Slate, Mr. C. A. Reed, and Dr. Colby.
Motion was duly made, seconded and carried that; honorary membership in this association may be conferred upon any person by a majority vote of members present at any business session or by letter ballot of members in good standing and honorary membership should be conferred only on individuals who have rendered outstanding or meritorious service in connection with the promotion of interest in nut bearing plants, their products and their culture.
Mr. W. K. Kellogg and Dr. John H. Kellogg were nominated for honorary members of the Association and unanimously elected.
The Dietetic Importance of Nuts
By Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Michigan
Nuts, which supply the finest edible fats and proteins which science has discovered, occupy the smallest place in the nation's food budget of any of our substantial native foods. This is a remarkable situation well worthy of consideration in view of the fact that, according to Prof. Elliot of Oxford University and the eminent Prof. Ami of Montreal, and many other paleontologists, nuts were the chief diet of the earliest representatives of the race who appeared in the Eocene period of geologic time. At that time, according to Prof. Elliot, the regions inhabited by man bore great forests of walnut, hickory, and other nut trees, the fossil relics of which are found in great abundance in association with the remains of prehistoric man. It is significant, also, that man's nearest relatives, the gorilla, orangutan, and chimpanzee still stick to the original bill of fare. I once made an ape so angry by offering him a bit of meat that he threatened to attack me and finally, as I persisted in offering him the meat, seized it and flung it as far away as possible, then scrubbed his soiled hand with dust and wiped it on the grass to get rid of the taint of the meat. He gave every evidence of feeling deeply insulted. Biology classifies man as a primate along with the great apes and, according to the great Cuvier, assigns to him along with other primates, a diet consisting of nuts, fruits, soft grains, tender shoots and succulent roots.
The great ice sheet which crept down over the greater part of the northern hemisphere during the glacial period destroyed the nut forests. The greater part of the primate family, including man, moved South and survive today in Central Africa, where, along with their furry cousins, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, they still adhere to a dietary almost wholly of plant foods. Those who remained behind were compelled to resort to a flesh diet to avoid starvation. Flesh eating naturally led to cannibalism, and the historians tell us that only a few thousand years ago, the survivors of the glacial terrors who roamed the British Isles, from which the ancestors of most Americans emigrated, roamed the forests clad in the skins of animals and feasted upon their enemies.
When the grain-eating Romans conquered and civilized our barbarian ancestors and taught them agriculture, plant foods again became the chief sources of nutriment, but a meat appetite had been developed and is still characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, while most of the rest of the world are almost exclusively plant feeders. Four hundred millions of Chinese eat so little meat that it is, in the case of south China, not even mentioned in the national food budget. Sixty millions of Japanese eat an average of 4 pounds per capita. Two hundred millions of East Indians never taste meat. As a matter of fact, only Americans, English, Germans and Scandinavians are large meat eaters.
Evidently, the American meat appetite as well as the American sugar tooth is enormously exaggerated. It is somewhat encouraging, however, to note that the eating habits of the American people are changing. Within a generation, and especially since the World War, there has been a notable change in the national bill of fare.
More cereals are consumed than formerly, but the greatest per capita increase is shown in the consumption of fruits and vegetables, and especially greenstuffs, such as lettuce, spinach, kale, and other greens. This increase in the use of certain foods is not due to the fact that the American appetite is increasing or the American stomach enlarging, but to the spread among the people of scientific information concerning nutrition.
Through experiments upon rats and various other animals, including man himself, fundamental principles have been discovered and a real science of nutrition has been developed, the axioms, formulae, and basic ideas of which are as clearly established as are those of geometry and chemistry. We are no longer left to be led astray by guess-work or fancy in supplying our nutritive needs, and have verified the truth so aptly expressed by that shrewd old Roman philosopher, Seneca, who said, "There is nothing against which we ought to be more on our guard than, like a flock of sheep, following the crowd of those who preceded us."
This change in the eating habits of the American people has been brought about by disillusionment respecting the importance of meats. Fifty years ago, every physiologist taught that the liberal consumption of meat was essential. This idea was based, first, upon the supposition that protein, the chief constituent of lean meat, is the most important source of energy; and, second, the belief that food of animal origin is better adapted to human sustenance than plant foods, through having undergone a process of refinement and concentration in the transformation from plant to animal. Modern studies of nutrition have shown that both these ideas are without scientific basis.
Unfortunately for the nut-growing industry, and still more unfortunately for the American people, the claims of nuts to consideration in this re-adjustment of the bill of fare have been generally overlooked, and it seems evident that the only hope for the nut industry lies in the creation of a larger demand for these nutrients from the plant world by acquainting the public with their superlative merits. Of course, room must be made for the increased intake of nuts by lessened consumption of something which nuts may advantageously replace in the bill of fare. Most nuts consist almost exclusively of proteins and fat. Proteins and fats likewise are almost the sole constituents of meat. Nuts are thus the vegetable analogues of meat and are competitors for a place on the bill of fare.
Physiologists are agreed that the American people are eating too much meat, and it is the general spread of this conviction that has lessened the consumption of flesh foods in this country and has crippled the packing industry.
A few years ago, the meat packers, finding that the consumption of meat had fallen off nearly one-fourth since the beginning of the century, began a vigorous campaign of publicity to increase the demand for their products. A special board was established for the purpose and through the activities of this board an enormous amount of misinformation has been broadcasted which has influenced a number of people to "eat more meat to save the live stock industry," to use the packers' appealing slogan and incidentally to help the packing industry, and there has been some increase in the use of pork, although the falling off in the consumption of beef has continued in spite of unscrupulous efforts to deceive and mislead the people, to their injury.
The two greatest obstacles in the way of the nut growing industry are the ignorance of the people with respect to the value of nuts as staple foods and the frantic efforts being made by those interested in the meat industry to increase the demand for their products.
A counter campaign of education is needed to set before the people the true facts as revealed by modern chemical and bacteriological research, by the discoveries of nutrition laboratories and by the clinical observations of thousands of eminent clinicians.
The false claims for meat must be met, for it is only by lessening the consumption of meat that room can be made for the dietetic use of nuts. Here are some of the errors that should be corrected.