Northern Nut Growers Association, Report Of The Proceedings At The Tenth Annual Meeting. | Page 8

neighborhood, and have them affiliated
with the Northern Association; it would accomplish this result. And
afterward it occurred to me that perhaps that could be done through
state vice-presidents. But what is really needed is to get them together
in meetings. They won't come yet. They will when you get a larger
membership, but they won't come to the annual meeting of this
association where I think they would go to a community affair and talk
over matters and refer difficult problems to the Northern Association of
which they were affiliated members. In some way, a wheel within a
wheel could work at it that way, and we could increase membership in
that way.
DR. MORRIS: It is a rule in psychology that you have got to have
personal interest first. If Mr. Olcott's idea of having a local
vice-president offer prizes, no matter how small, for nuts in the vicinity,
and would also state that any one finding some remarkable nut would
have that nut named after him to go down to all time, you would have
two points there in self-interest. First, a five dollar prize to the best nut;
next the name going rattling down through time in association with it.
There are two points of personal interest. We may as well take it back
to the basic principles and begin with the psychology of the situation.
MR. KETCHUM: Mr. President, in regard to these vice-presidents, that
point looks to me very good for this reason. I saw it work out in the
Minnesota State Horticultural Society. They had a vice-president in
each congressional district. I was vice-president in the third district one
year myself From them reports were sent from their district by people
who were interested. They were asked to fill out blanks about
conditions as they found them in their neighborhood and we got great
good from it. Then this vice-president was to make a general district
report from the reports sent him, and hand it in at the annual meeting. It
was quite a success.
DR. MORRIS: There you have civic pride brought into your
psychology.
MR. KETCHUM: That was in the third district which included the

northeast part of the state. It was quite a large district geographically,
and I sent out something like seventy of these blank reports, and while
the interest was very slight, I think I got 23 field reports in return, and
out of those 23 were some nine or ten that were of some considerable
importance; but it was a great big help to me in making out my report
together with what I knew in my own location. The percentage of
reports that came back showed that there was great interest taken by
those persons.
DR. MORRIS: You can arouse local pride in any locality.
PRESIDENT REED: I have tried that in our own state in the last two or
three years, at county fairs and local district horticultural meetings.
Several times I have offered prizes out of my own pocket individually;
then I have gotten other parties to help in some cases, and some
exhibits even at county farmers' institutes, even very creditable exhibits
and they seemed to attract as much interest even as the school exhibits.
I know of one case at Martinsville two years ago this winter where the
nut exhibit was almost as large as the fruit exhibit, and I think it
attracted more attention; and I think there was only something like ten
dollars spent in order to get it out. I think that work along that line,
missionary work of that kind, is going to do us more good than almost
any other endeavor.
MR. OLCOTT: I do not think that the industry is old enough or strong
enough yet, perhaps, to operate that state vice-president plan as it
would be perhaps later on, for this reason, that if you have a state
vice-president, you narrow the activity in that state to that immediate
locality. But it would probably be much better, instead of that, to
endeavor to get each member to form the nucleus of a local circle, and
so have ten or a dozen in a state, instead of one.
PRESIDENT REED: I think that suggestion is better.
MR. OLCOTT: That was my original idea, and the state vice-president
idea came in afterwards.
MR. MCGLENNON: How many states are included in the northern

association territory?
MR. BIXBY: There is no limit.
DR. MORRIS: Northern is a relative term.
PRESIDENT REED: I don't think there is any clearly defined line
where the Northern Association is.
MR. OLCOTT: For the reason that men live in the North are interested
in lands in the South, and vice versa.
PRESIDENT REED: There are twenty-three vice-presidents on the list
here, in the last published report.