To the Members of the International Apple Shippers' Association,
My Dear Friends:-

No. 11

New Year's Day should be the time for a second convention-not for the purpose of planning and plotting, but to take stock of where and what we are, to cement friendships, and to renew our courage to play our part, with happy heart, for another year. And because we cannot be together, I shall be bold enough to preach to you my second and last sermon, and with it go my best wishes for your Happy New Year.

Another year has rolled around. The signs of the times have changed, and 1913 flashes bright on the horizon of the dawning year. The earth once more has swung the circle round the sun,-a majestic circle of five hundred million miles. Three hundred and sixty-five times has it turned. on its axis, bringing day and night, light and darkness. Each day of twenty-four hours marked a stage of its journey, and the days were always changing. Days melted into weeks, and weeks into months, and still the old earth, true to its course, rolled on its way, held steady by its even balance of the forces that controlled it. Its axis always pointed toward the North Star. The seasons came in their appointed times, bringing winter, spring time, summer and autumn. Once more the earth rounds out its journey and draws near the point whence it started one year ago. And yet that point is not the same. The sun itself has been speeding through space at the rate of hundreds of millions miles a year, held to its stupendous course by some far distant star, whose light has never yet been seen or its greatness imagined.

To every mortal New Year's is the great milestone, as it is to Mother Earth.

We too have swung the circle of life's experiences in the year. Joy

and sorrow, success and failure, hope and disappointment have made up the light and the night of our days.

The seasons too have had their counterparts in our lives. Our ambitions have formed our seed time. The summer has seen the working out of our plans. The autumn has brought the fulfillment. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." And the winter with its New Year brings the time for a new start and new resolutions. "My past is against me," says Despair, but Hope replies, "My future is spotless."

We too, like the earth, have been held to our course by a central power greater than our own. Were it not so, what a zig-zag path ours would have been. As it was, the temptations and the sins, the regrets and the cares, are among the dead wood we are glad to leave behind in 1912. With or by that central force we have been carried along, until we are almost as far away as the earth from where we were a year ago. Older by a year; stronger by a year; character seasoned by a year; will more determined by a year; experience greater by a year; confidence in ourselves and in our fellows clearer by a year; richer in some way or other by a year; wiser by a year.

And perhaps the wisest and the best of all the year's wealth is the faith that a Father guides our way, like the way of the earth, through the mazes of time and space, to a destiny He has planned.

May health, happiness and prosperity be with you all through the coming year.

Edward N. Loomis.

A Beautiful Tribute To The Apple

A Masterpiece of Nature

From the Presbyterian Banner of Pittsburgh
December, 1912

FORTY MILLION BARRELS. Such is the apple crop of the country for this year, the largest ever gathered. From Maine to California the orchards have borne abundantly and poured a flood of rosy and golden. streaked and spotted, apples into our barns and markets and cellars and out upon our tables. Baldwins and Rambos, Golden Gates and Pippins and all the many varieties of this staple fruit have swelled the stream. An apple is one of the masterpieces of nature. A vast, complicated interplay of forces worked together to produce it. For years the tree grew from seed to trunk and branches, and then through many months it carried on the secret, subtle chemistry by which it distilled its juicy sweets into its ripened fruit. Bursting into fragrant bloom and bud in May, it then elaborated its sap into the flesh of the apple and flavored it with sugar, spiced it with wine and wrapped it in its thin but tough integument. The breezes fanned it, the showers baptized it, the sun kissed it and the frost mellowed it. It distilled its most delicate flavors from the dew and caught its colors from rainbows and sunsets. Earth and sun watched over it and the solar system cradled it in its care. That apple literally became a center of the universe, and all the stars revolved around it. After such wide toil and tender care, with so many virtues and graces lavished upon it, no wonder

that it comes to us as one of the choicest gifts of nature. And now it will presently appear on our tables prepared in many appetizing forms, apple sauce, apple butter, stewed and baked, and especially as that universal favorite, apple pie, or even better still, apple dumplings. It will be flavored and spiced so that its very odor will make the mouth water. But why cook an apple? The raw fruit, just as it fell ripe and mellow from the tree and came fresh and crisp from the cool cellar or with the frost of the orchard still upon it, needs no culinary art to improve it. It melts in the mouth and sends its delicious sweets in a stream of exquisite sensations down along the whole digestive tract. A knife spoils it; let it be crushed and crunched in the mouth and then it gives out its richest flavor and yields the greatest satisfaction.

A WHOLESOME FRUIT.

The apple is one of the most wholesome of our fruits and has healthgiving and medicinal virtues of the greatest value. It starts all the secretions into vigorous action and floods the system with a fresh tide of life. It is a friend of health and a foe of disease. It is food, tonic, condiment and cosmetic, all in one. It imparts its own virtues, and its wine kindles brilliance in the eyes and its ruddy colors plant roses in the cheeks. One can hardly eat too many of them, and after the heartiest meal there is always room for at least one apple more. And an apple is a social fruit. It flocks in great multitudes and heaps in the orchard, and it draws human beings together in fellowship. Sometimes there is only one thing better than an apple, and that is another apple that is being eaten by a friend. One does not enjoy an apple so well alone: it suggests comradeship and fellowship, and then its colors glow in richer hues and its flesh is more juicy. On a winter evening around the family fireplace it is a means of family unity and grace. Plenty of good apples will help to keep the children at home and in at night. When the neighbors come in the inevitable basket of apples always puts everybody at ease and in a good humor. Among the blessings of the year let us number our great apple crop. Forty million barrels are none too many. They will be poured out upon our people in a rainbow shower, and will bring health and gladness into many homes.

Mrs. Heath Discovers Why Apples Are High

Baldwins Most Plentiful, But At Retail, Grocer Asks
300% Profit. --Makes a Trip From Railroad

Float to Store for Housewives' League.

From New York Sun, Friday, December 27, 1912

Mrs. Julian Heath of the Housewives' League went out yesterday to see why apples are costing the consumer so much. Her campaign against the high price of eggs had taught her where to go, and she was pretty well satisfied after an investigation of the apple market that the fault this time lies with the retailer.

Mrs. Heath's expedition started from the office of E. N. Loomis, president of the International Shippers' Association, and went all the way from the cars filled with barrels of Spitzenbergs, Stark's Delicious, Northern Spies and rosy Baldwins to windows of retail grocers far up town. The long apple docks at the foot of Barclay street were lined with floats bringing apples from all the State over. Thirty-four cars came in yesterday, and the wholesalers told Mrs. Heath that this was a small number. At the height of the season there come an average of 100 cars, bringing 15,000 to 20,000 barrels, a day. And 75 per cent. of all the apples that come to the local market are Baldwins, as that is an apple that doesn't need all the care and attention bestowed upon its more aristocratic fellows.

Mrs. Heath looked down the long dock to see barrels everywhere filled to the top with Baldwins. The wholesalers were asking $2.25 for a barrel of number one Baldwins, that is to say apples that measured two and one-half inches and upward. She was told that never before in the history of the market had there been such a supply of apples. During the last few years, said the wholesalers, thousands of acres and millions of apple trees have been set in every part of the country where an apple could possibly grow. This year the apple crop amounts to over 40,000,000 barrels. The crop is being ground into cider, evaporated, shipped in bulk. barrel and box and is going into a multitude of storages for winter use.

So the first thing to be noted down in the investigator's book was the fact that the prices we pay for apples can't be charged to the supply. MRS. HEATH DOESN'T THINK IT IS THE WHOLESALER'S FAULT THIS TIME. She watched the apples coming off the cars for a while, was told in the midst of the clamor and dust and confusion of their unloading that she ought to come down on the dock at a real busy time, and then having learned that the wholesalers were charging $1.50 to $1.75 for number two Baldwins, those under two and one-half inches started out for the retailers.

SHE SAID SHE WAS SURPRISED AT TWO THINGS WHEN THE TRIP WAS DONE. FIRST, THAT IT WAS SO HARD TO FIND ANY STORES LARGE OR SMALL THAT CARRIED BALDWIN APPLES, AND, SECOND, SHE WAS ASTONISHED AT THE PRICES CHARGED. SHE WENT INTO LITTLE GROCERIES ALONG WEST STREET, ALMOST IN SIGHT OF THE DOCKS THAT WERE OVERFLOWING WITH BARRELS OF BALDWINS, AND WAS TOLD THAT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET BALDWINS, OR ELSE THAT BALDWINS WERE HIGH. SHE WENT FURTHER UPTOWN TO HEAR THE SAME THING. TOO HIGH OR TOO SCARCE, WAS THE INEVITABLE ANSWER TO HER REQUEST FOR BALDWINS.

In the second place, when she did get a price quotation, she almost gasped when she was told that number one Baldwins were selling at FIFTEEN CENTS A QUART OR THIRTY-FIVE CENTS A DOZEN.

Out came the note book and pencil again and the investigating committee of one did a little figuring. The result of this was that Mrs. Heath found that the retailer buying Baldwins at $2.25 a barrel and selling at fifteen cents a quart was making way over 300 per cent. profit. There are about ninety-six quarts in a barrel.