Northern Nut Growers Association

SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING

SEPTEMBER 1 AND 2, 1915

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK

The sixth annual convention of the Northern Nut Growers Association was called to order in the convention hall of Powers Hotel, Rochester, New York, on Wednesday, September 1, at 10:15 A.M., the president, Dr. J. Russell Smith, presiding, and thirty-two people being assembled.

THE PRESIDENT:  Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the Northern Nut Growers Association, the meeting will please come to order.

With an organization of this sort, the main purpose of the meeting is the dissemination of information, but it is necessary that certain business shall be conducted to keep the organization going.  Some business is dry; usually the reports of our secretary-treasurer are not, and the first order of business, I think, should be to hear from our secretary-treasurer.

MR. LITTLEPAGE:  I should be glad to have the floor for a moment, Mr. President.  In the Congressional Library at Washington City are many very beautiful and attractive inscriptions and quotations, one of which has always appealed to me as a lawyer, and I have repeated it many times: 

     “Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her voice is
     the harmony of the world.”

Mr. President, I have noted very many times that the voice of the law is sometimes silent.  It speaks only through those in authority and there should always be some emblem of authority.  I therefore took the liberty, Mr. President, of having made for you a gavel from the wood of an Indiana pecan tree, where as a youth I lived and learned of this most delicious of all the nuts, and I take pleasure in presenting it to you, and if anyone doubts the hardiness or hardness of the Indiana pecan, I authorize you to demonstrate both.

I am presenting you duplicate gavels, Mr. President, one of which I desire to have you turn over to your successor in office as an official emblem of his authority, to be used at future meetings; the other I am presenting to you as a personal tribute for your most excellent work in behalf of northern nut culture.  This gavel I shall ask you to place among the trophies in your beautiful mountain home, where the birds sing sweetly, the sun shines brightly, and the breezes murmur softly; and where the days are made to rest and the nights are made to sleep.

THE PRESIDENT:  Mr. Littlepage, not being prepared for this, and not being naturally eloquent, I am unable to make a speech.  However, as a part of the way out of the difficulty, I accept this one officially with great pleasure, and personally accept the other with deep gratitude, and desire to express the appreciation of the meeting.

The pecan is calling the walnut meeting to order.  Last year we went to see the pecan; this year we come to see the walnut, which, has done more than any other nut in the East.