THE PRESIDENT: This discussion on the blight of the filbert is of intense interest to me. It is a considerable relief to us to hear these encouraging statements, because during our experiments, covering the past decade, the bugbear of all of our deliberations has been the possibility of blight wiping us out, it having been suggested at the time we imported plants that we would never get anywhere with them. I think we have little cause to feel very much worried on the subject of the blight.
It now gives me real pleasure to introduce to you our friend, Mr.
Pomeroy.
MR. POMEROY: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: Josephus says that he has set down various things according to his opinion and if anybody holds to another opinion he will not object. That's my position in regard to nut growing. I will tell you a few things that I believe and if you hold another opinion you are entitled to keep it.
Professor John Craig once referred to a thing that surprised me very much. We Americans believe we are a very energetic, smart people not to be fooled much in a trade. Well, he had statistics which showed that after we have shipped millions of dollars worth of wheat and cotton and various other products to Europe we receive our pay in the form of great quantities of nuts which we use for food, holiday nuts, all-year-round nuts. Now I believe that those nuts can be raised right here and we can pocket that money instead of leaving it in Europe.
I was a very small child when my father went to Philadelphia to visit the Exposition in 1876. While he was there he picked up a few walnuts which had dropped from a tree in front of his lodging house and brought them home and planted them. A very few years after he amazed us all by taking a load of nuts to Buffalo and obtaining more money for them than the hired man and I did for a large load of fruit.
At one time I put out some English walnuts in a cemetery as a memorial orchard and the trees are now doing fine. The other night my wife and I strolled over and looked at them and when we were on our way back we passed a neighbor's house where there were a number of maple trees on the lawn. I said to my wife, "Those maple trees are fifty years old, and there by the side of his lawn is a chestnut tree that is forty-four or five years old." She made the remark, "Those English walnut trees over there cast a much more beautiful shade than those maples," and it was true. I think Mr. McGlennon saw them.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes; that's so. I thank you very much, Mr. Pomeroy.
Mr. G. H. Corsan, of Toronto, Canada, is known as the "Canadian Johnny Appleseed." Mr. Corsan goes about the country and when he can find nuts and seeds of what he thinks are good trees and plants he gathers them up and arranges to distribute them. If Mr. Corsan will give us about ten or fifteen minutes I should certainly appreciate it very much.
MR. CORSAN: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Our friend here called me Johnny Appleseed, I suppose because I went around among my friends who had gardens and said, "Let me plant this," and I would plant a nut tree. I said, "Why don't you plant something with a utility value as well as a thing of beauty?" I said, "Why not plant something that will not only grow rapidly and cast a splendid shade but that will also return you something in the way of food?"
I first devoted twelve acres to the culture of nut trees. I afterwards added four more. I just planted seedlings. In the year 1912 I joined the Nut Growers' Association and I set out a hundred chestnut trees. When I found the blight was in them and I cut them all down but two. I have those two now and last year I gathered a peck of very large chestnuts from them which caused the Ontario government to take notice of what I was doing.