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 in all of those states. The place of the next meeting I think is very important. Now I think I have plainly stated my position in the matter and I am going to try to serve you another year. I hope that at the end of that year we will have our membership at least doubled. Let us try and treble it. I thank you. (Applause).
The next subject under discussion then will be the place of meeting.
The Secretary: The by-laws say that the place for the next meeting shall be selected by the convention assembled or in the event of failure in that by the executive committee. Sometimes we have done it one way and sometimes the other. The proper thing to do I think is for the advocates of the different localities to now present their attractions.
Mr. Pomeroy: Our vice-president when he left asked me to suggest Rochester, N. Y. While at Rochester Niagara county is only a short automobile or trolley ride away. In Niagara county are quite a good many walnut trees in bearing.
Mr. Rush: Mr. President, I invite this association to convene next year in Lancaster City, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We can show you a very prosperous nut nursery and some young bearing walnut trees and Harrisburg and other places of interest. I am satisfied that you can not meet at a more convenient place than Lancaster City. Therefore I extend the association a hearty invitation.
The Secretary: I would like to hear from Mr. Reed as to the attractions of the eastern shore of Maryland.
Mr. Reed: There are several places, Mr. President, where I wish you might go next year. One of those places is the eastern shore of Maryland. As I told you last year I regard the eastern shore of Maryland as one of the promising places of the whole East for the development of nut orcharding and I find there a great deal of latent interest and a great deal to see. I am a little disappointed that we have not some representatives here at this meeting from the eastern shore. I am sure that if we should decide to go there we would be received with enthusiasm and we would be shown something that would be quite a surprise to most of us.
Then another place that I would like to have considered for some meeting in the near future is the middle West. The Professor of Horticulture in Missouri is a warm personal friend of mine a classmate of mine in college, and he is very enthusiastic about the possibilities of nut culture in that state. He is waiting to be told or shown how to go ahead, and if we were to go out there I am sure he would follow the lead if we set the pace. He would take hold and push the nut industry in that section. In that same neighborhood is the orchard that Mr. Bixby told us about the chestnut orchard of Mr. Riehl of one or two thousand chestnut trees planted on hillsides that have never been plowed and which are giving Mr. Riehl a very lucrative income. Mr. Riehl is 83 years old and is not going to live always. We certainly ought to see that place while he is there. We have no invitation out there and none from the eastern shore and I am always in favor of going where we have an invitation. It would be my feeling in view of the present situation that we accept one of the invitations that have already been given to us.
Mr. Rush: We met once in Lancaster about eight years ago but at that time we had little to show. We had no nut nursery of any consequence at all and no bearing walnut trees at that time. Now we have them in their prime.
Dr. Morris: I would like very much to go to both places, the ones described by Mr. Pomeroy and by Mr. Rush.