Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

SIXTEEN big pecan nuts on a single small lower branch of one tree in our big, bearing orchard on our Calhoun County Orchard Plantation. This picture, in natural colors, from a photograph taken in late September, 1919, gives an idea of the prodigious number of nuts that a single large, bearing tree will yield.

Paper Shell Pecans

The first quarter of the east front of our bearing pecan orchard. As far as the eye can see, stretch row after row of fine, big pecan trees (compare with man for size); many of which have borne over two hundred pounds in a single season.

What better evidence could you wish of the adaptability of soil and climate to pecan growing?

All illustrations of pecan trees in this book were made from photographs taken on our plantations of over 7000 acres in southwest Georgia—where pecans thrive best.

A Few of the Noted Authorities and References

Government Statistics.

Famous Food Authorities.

Prominent Magazines Quoted.

Noted Agricultural Authorities.

The above photographic illustration shows a big, bearing pecan tree on our plantation, near the house. For size, compare with the men shown in the foreground.

From the beginning of the world food production has been the most important of the activities of man—but food production has frequently taken uneconomic channels. Even before the war in Europe started, the tendency toward changing standards in food production was marked.

In one of America’s leading periodicals, we read: “Tree crops is the next big thing in farming,” says J. Russel Smith, after an 18,000–mile journey through the nut growing countries.

The man who is alert to changing food standards, who realizes how largely the cattle herds of the world have been depleted during the World War, who has learned how long it will be before they can be built up, will see in this condition an opportunity paralleled only in a small way by the noted investment opportunities of the past.

About a hundred years ago the railroad offered an investment opportunity which the Vanderbilts were wise enough to see—and to seize. 4You know that the Vanderbilt wealth has lasted through generations—increasing year by year.

About fifty years ago there was a similar opportunity offered in steel—demanded by the rapidly growing industries. The names of Carnegie and Schwab head the list of the famous “thousand steel millionaires”—made rich by foresight.

Forty years ago electricity offered its opportunities to Edison—and to many others who have become extremely wealthy because they combined courage with foresight.

Marvelous as have been the fortunes in railroads, in steel and in electricity, we are today, says the Luther Burbank Society in its book, “Give the Boy a Chance,” “facing an opportunity four hundred times bigger than the railroad opportunity was a hundred years ago, eight hundred times bigger than electricity offered at its inception, fifteen hundred times bigger than the steel opportunity which Mr. Carnegie found—because agriculture is just by these amounts bigger than those other industries.”

From land—the most permanent basis of wealth—immense fortunes of today and tomorrow are being drawn. America is beginning to see a new vision,—its agriculture is taking a newer, more profitable form.

What is the Biggest Future in Agriculture? When James J. Hill staked his all in apples and received in return a profit estimated at ten million dollars—he was merely a pioneer in the new type of farming.

Yet the pecan comes into bearing as early as the apple orchard and remains in bearing many times as long, says Bulletin No. 41, of the Alabama Department of Agriculture.

It is particularly significant that the strongest advocates of tree agriculture are those familiar with conditions in nut growing countries. Consider that fact in connection with this statement of Luther Burbank, the Edison of Agriculture: “Paper Shell Pecans of the improved varieties are the most delicious, as well as the most nutritious nuts in the world. They are higher in food value than any other nuts, either native or foreign.”

In a prominent agricultural weekly we read: “The tree that yields a pound or two of nuts at five years of age is counted upon for twenty to fifty pounds by the tenth year, and after that the yield grows beyond anything known in fruit trees, because the Pecan at maturity is a forest giant.”

In the face of such facts, is it not wise to consider carefully the interesting facts on Paper Shell Pecans found within?

“Pecan production is destined to become one of the most important lines of orchard development in the United States.”—Cong. Record of the United States, p. 1101, Vol. 54.

No matter what may happen, the demand for nourishing foods is sure to grow so long as the population increases. Railroads, steel, electricity—all are recent developments, none of them indispensable to mankind. But existence itself depends on nourishing foods.

“Then,” you say, “no business should be surer than that of supplying food to the growing population of America.”

For food standards are changing. Prove that fact, if you will, by the figures of the U. S. Census Bureau for the years 1900 and 1910, a period unaffected by the World War.

During that period the population of the United States increased from 75,091,575 to 91,972,266—an increase of virtually 223
10 per cent. Therefore, the production of any foodstuffs should increase by the same percentage during that period to provide for the same consumption per capita.

Has the consumption of beef increased during that period? Apparently not—for there were 8.7 per cent. less cattle on the farms in 1910 than in 1900. Nor was there any material increase in imports. That there was not a corresponding increase in the price of beef during this period, is indicated by the fact that the value of all cattle on American farms increased only 1.6 per cent. between 1900 and 1910—an increase only one-fourteenth as great as the increase in population.

There was a loss of 7.4 per cent. in the number of swine on American farms and a decrease of 14.7 per cent, in the number of sheep—the inevitable result of which loss while population was increasing to the extent of 223
10 per cent. was an increase in price per pound in pork, ham, bacon, mutton, etc., which automatically cut off a large part of the demand.

When urging the necessity for close study of the food problem, President Wilson pointed out the fact that during a ten-year period there had been a loss of 29 pounds of animal flesh per capita per year. With such a record it is obvious that some foods to replace meats must be found.

Why Spend Millions For Imported Nuts?

“We are annually importing between 60,000,000 and 70,000,000 pounds of nuts at a cost of between $12,000,000 and $13,000,000, while we export nuts worth less than a half million dollars. Why should we spend millions of dollars each year in buying nuts from foreign countries, when we can grow the pecan, the equal of any other nut, either native or foreign, in unlimited quantities?”—Congressional Record of the United States, Vol. 54, No. 27.

Poultry was the only exception among meats to this history of diminishing supply, increased prices and diminishing demand. Yet the gain in the number of all fowls on American farms was only 17 per cent., while the population was increasing 22.3 per cent. The American production of nut foods was increasing 55.7 per cent. in the same period without beginning to meet the demand.

Though the increase in value of the American nut crop was 128.1 per cent., still the increase in consumption required an increase in imports so great that in 1910 America was supplying only one-fourth of the nuts it was eating; while in 1900 it supplied half.

Government figures, taken from a leading nut publication, show that in 1900 the value of nuts imported into the United States was $3,484,651. By 1910 it had risen to $12,775,196, which is 365% of 1900 importations, although the population of the United States increased only 22.3% during that ten-year period.

In 1919 there were $57,499,044 worth of nuts imported, which is 450% of the importations in 1910, although the 1920 census shows an increase of only 15% in population since 1910. Nut importations in 1919 are 1650% of those in 1900, while population increased only 40% between 1900 and 1920.

We see, therefore, that there is a gain in nut importations between 1900 and 1910 twelve times as great as the gain in population; that the later increase is so great that this gain between 1900 and 1919 is 39 times as great as the increase in population. Surely this is conclusive evidence of the great increase in nut consumption in the United States, when we remember how greatly the American nut crop was increasing during this period.

These authentic figures astonish even the man who has learned by experience that “nut meat is the real meat” of greatest food value; for they show what great number of his fellow countrymen have proved their belief in the same fact. The man who has looked upon nuts as a holiday diet alone, cannot fail to see his error, when he realizes that this increase in the importation of nut meats in 1919 compared to 1900 is nearly nine times as great as the increase in population; despite the largely increasing American production.

Higher education in food values has led people to realize the necessity for different and more varied diet—and this educational development has been facilitated also by economic conditions.

As population increases, land becomes more valuable. As land becomes more valuable—intensive farming is practiced. Grazing becomes virtually impossible under such conditions; and, despite all the efforts of the Department of Agriculture experts, cattle raising is pushed farther and farther from the large centers of population. Increased transportation and costs of refrigeration mean increased meat prices—even the importation of large quantities of South American beef between 1910 and 1914, for instance, failed to keep meat at a price low enough so that it could constitute the large food element which it once was on the American table.

asks Field Illustrated for March, 1919. A question of great significance, from a publication of unquestioned leadership on scientific cattle breeding. A question graphically illustrated by this self-explanatory chart.

OUR AVAILABLE MEAT SUPPLY (PER INDIVIDUAL)

IN 1880 WAS
HOGS	CATTLE	SHEEP
1	7 10	7 10

IN 1900
8 10	9 10	6 10

IN 1917
6 10	6 10	½

SHALL WE CEASE TO EAT MEAT
OR DRINK MILK
OR WEAR WOOLEN CLOTHES

Field Illustrated shows that, the country over, it takes an average of three acres to support a single full grown cow through the summer season alone. It shows that wheat is the great competitor of the meat crop, that wheat has driven livestock from the western ranges, and that during the past four years wheat has been driving the dairy cows and the beef steer from the eastern and middle western farms.

“Whenever there is pressure for food,” concludes Field Illustrated, “and animals must compete with humans for the cereal products of the fields, then animals are pretty likely to lose out. An acre of corn will feed ten times as many people in the form of Johnny Cakes as it would if converted into meat.”

This statement is in striking accord with the conclusions reached by Graham Lusk, one of the two American representatives to the Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, who wrote in December, 1918, “It is, therefore, axiomatic that in times of scarcity one must not give to pigs food which can nourish human beings.” For further data, see pages 14 and 15.

The call of the United States Food Administration for meatless days, for porkless days and for every day a fat saving day, taught a lesson that America will never forget.

Food experts have for years emphasized the fact that Americans eat too much animal flesh. Physical Culture says:

“About forty per cent. of our American bill of fare is of animal origin. In England the percentage is but twenty per cent. of the total food, in Continental Europe it is less, and in Japan it is not more than five per cent. Yet the Japanese have astounded the world in every test of endurance.”

“‘The American soldier is eating 100 per cent. too much meat,’ said the world famous Dr. Wiley; while Dr. Gordon J. Saxon, director of the laboratory for cancer of the Oncologic Hospital, Philadelphia, was quoted by the Philadelphia North American as ascribing the wonderful resistive powers of the French soldiers to the fact that they lived on a meagre supply of high protein foods, like animal flesh, and were given an abundance of fats and carbohydrates. He laid stress on the excessive cost of our American diet with its high ‘animal intake,’ and this was also emphasized by the booklet, ‘War Economy in Food,’ issued by the U. S. Food Administration, which characterized animal flesh as the most expensive of staple foods in proportion to food value.”

Americans are just learning that the cause of most of their bodily ailments is the securing of fat by eating animal flesh. As the Literary Digest well says in its March 9th, 1918, issue:

“Fats are chiefly valuable as fuel for the body. But in addition to being consumed and turned to energy, fats are also readily stored away by the body, alongside muscle and bone; as a reserve in times of illness or physical exertion.

Chief among the functions of protein is its importance as a builder of bodily tissues. It is structural. The part it plays is like that of iron in a locomotive.”

Once built, the body, like the locomotive, needs only sufficient building material (protein) to rebuild wornout portions; but it needs motive material (fat) in far greater proportion. Yet high animal flesh diet, which has been the American custom, puts into the system a far greater amount of protein than is needed and too little fat. The system cannot absorb this excess protein, and sluggishness, intestinal derangements, autointoxication and flesh-borne diseases are the inevitable result.

“Fat is fuel for Fighters,” said the U. S. Food Administration. It urged civilians to avoid waste of fats because fats are necessary to those who must withstand extremes of climate, stand in water-soaked trenches and indulge in extreme physical activity.

As Good Health for March, 1918, pointed out, “Fats are fuel foods! The daily requirement is two to four ounces.”

There is a way to get this required quantity of fat without the excessive protein intake which is the inevitable result of our high animal flesh diet. By following this plan America can multiply its industrial efficiency, and benefit the physical welfare of all.

In his speech to the National Nut Growers’ Association, at Biloxi, Mississippi, Dr. Kellogg emphasized the necessity for fuel foods and the need for less proteins and albumens. He said:

“To nuts, then, we must look for the future sustenance of the race.... Half a century hence the nut crop will far exceed in volume and in value our present animal industry.”

He emphasizes the fact that all experiments have proved that “Nut protein is the best of all sources upon which the body may draw for its supplies of tissue building material,” while at another point he adds, “On account of their high fat content they are the most highly concentrated of all natural foods.” At great length, he compares the ease of assimilation of nut fats with that of the other source of fat, and concludes, “nut fats are far more digestible than animal fats.”

Necessity is the mother of invention. If America had utilized in the past its full opportunities to grow pecans—the best of all nuts in high fat content with the perfect ratio of protein—we could have shipped to our soldiers abroad the nourishment most needed in most condensed form, protected from all contamination and free from all putrefactive bacteria. It would require approximately a tenth of the cargo space and would need no refrigeration. It would require no cooking; could be munched on the march, and would be assimilated more readily than animal fats and proteins.

It requires but a glance at any newspaper or magazine to realize that vegetable fats are taking the place of animal fats—and that the source of virtually all the new products along this line is nut oil, peanuts and cocoanuts being the largest sources of supply to date. Our 1915 Pecan Book quoted Prof. H. Harold Hume, then State Horticulturist of Florida, Glen St. Mary, Fla., as saying:

“According to analysis, the Pecan is richer in fat than any other nuts—70 per cent. of the kernel is fat. The pecan may at some time be in requisition as a source of oil—an oil which would doubtless be useful for salad purposes—but it is never likely to be converted into oil until the present prices of nuts are greatly reduced.”

Since then pecan prices have had a decided tendency to increase because the demand is growing more rapidly than the supply; and the chances of the pecan being used for oil are more remote than ever. Yet one of the great reasons for the increase in demand is increasing public knowledge of the pecan and its wonderful food value. For the pecan is proved richer in fat than any other nut, with the right proportion of easily assimilated protein, and free from any irritating membrane such as makes some nuts difficult of digestion by those who have weak stomachs.

Nut meat is Nature’s food product for supplying fats and proteins, superior in every way to animal flesh. Dr. Kellogg, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, said:

“Nuts are rich in fat and protein. On account of their high fat content they are the most highly concentrated of all natural foods. A pound of nuts contains on an average more than 3,000 calories or food units, double the amount supplied by grains, four times as much as average meats and ten times as much as average fruits or vegetables.”

For example, according to Jaffi’s table, ten different kinds of our common nuts contain on an average 20.7% of protein, 53% of fat, and 18% of carbohydrate. Among all nuts the pecan has the largest percentage of fat and the best balanced proportion of protein, analysis showing 12% protein, 70% fat, and 18% carbohydrate.

Meat (round steaks) gives 19.8% of protein and 15.6% of fat, with no carbohydrate. A pound of average nuts contains the equivalent of a pound of beefsteak and, in addition, nearly a pound of butter and a third of a loaf of bread. The nut is, in fact, a sort of vegetable meat. Its composition is much the same as that of fat meat, only it is in much more concentrated form.

Knowing that the nut is a highly concentrated food, the question naturally arises, can the body utilize the energy stored in nuts as readily as that supplied by meat products?

The notion that nuts are difficult of digestion has really no foundation in fact. The idea is probably the natural outgrowth of the custom of eating nuts at the close of a meal when an abundance, more likely a superabundance of highly nutritious foods has already been eaten, and the equally injurious custom of eating nuts between meals. Neglect of thorough mastication must also be mentioned as a possible cause of indigestion following the use of nuts.

“The fat of nuts exists in a finely divided state, and in chewing of nuts a fine emulsion is produced so that nuts enter the stomach in a form best adapted for prompt digestion,” says Dr. Kellogg.

Pecans Furnish The Balanced Ration

“The pecan is a nut of immense economic value. The pecan furnishes practically a balanced ration. It is a highly concentrated and highly nutritious food. Compared with round steak, it contains one-twelfth as much water, two-thirds as much protein, from four to six times as much fat and has between three and four times as great fuel value.

Pecans contain most of the elements essential to the building of the frame and body tissues. The food value of pecans is rapidly becoming generally recognized, and it will not be long before the pecan will be extensively used not only as a substitute for certain classes of food, such as meats, but also a substitute for food of all classes.”—U. S. Congressional Record, Jan. 12, 1917.

“There are abundant indications,” says the Journal of the American Medical Association for September 21, 1918, “that nuts, which have long found a valued place in the dietary of the diabetic without detriment to his health, will grow in popularity as foods for the well.”

“The exigencies of war time have emphasized anew those properties of nuts as foods which remove them from the category of luxuries and place them on the list of substantial components of the day’s ration,” it adds in its editorial comments on the experiments of Professor Cajori, of Yale University. “It should be remembered,” it states, “that bulk for bulk they (nuts) belong among the most nutritive foods ordinarily available.”

Opposing the prejudice that nuts are difficult of digestion, it adds, “Cajori’s studies lead him to the conclusion that if nuts are eaten properly and used in the diet as are eggs, meats and other foods rich in protein, they have a physiological value on a par with that of staple articles.” Only in the case of the chestnut—because of its large starch content—was cooking desirable.

Commenting upon this article, Good Health Magazine for January, 1918, says: “For nearly half a century we have advocated the use of nuts as a staple element of the dietary of man.”

As Good Health points out, these conclusions of Professor Cajori are in harmony with the suggestions of the United States Food Administration that nuts “should be counted as part of the necessary food and not eaten as an extra.” “We are led to believe,” adds Good Health, “that the occasional indigestion following injudicious eating of cheese and nuts is probably often due to forgetting that they are very substantial foods, and eating them at the end of an already substantial meal.”

The experiments of Dr. Hoobler, of Detroit, Michigan, in the Woman’s Hospital and Infant’s Home, showed that for nursing mothers a diet consisting largely, 50%, of nuts, was far superior to any other dietary, and in every particular giving nearly 15% greater flow of milk, with 30% greater food value, and that the mothers took the diet readily and enjoyed it. (Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 12, 1917.)

THE SECOND QUARTER of the east front of our big, bearing orchard. To realize the immense size of this orchard, add to this picture the trees on page one, and remember that these together show only one-half of one side of this orchard.

“Beefsteak has become a fetish with many people; but the experiments of Chittenden and others have demonstrated that the amount of protein needed by the body daily is so small that it is scarcely possible to arrange a bill of fare to include flesh foods without making the protein intake excessive. This is because the ordinary foodstuffs other than meat contain a sufficient amount of protein to meet the needs of the body. Nuts present their protein in combination with so large a proportion of easily digestible fat that there is comparatively little danger of getting an excess,” states Dr. Kellogg.

“In face of vanishing supply of animal flesh it is most comforting to know that meats of all sorts may be safely replaced by nuts not only without loss, but with a decided gain,” he adds.

Among the other advantages of nuts and animal flesh which Dr. Kellogg cites are the freedom from waste products such as uric acid, urea, carmine, etc., which cause so many human ills.

Nuts are clean, sweet and aseptic, free from putrefactive bacteria; while ordinary flesh foods contain three to thirty million putrefactive bacteria per ounce.

Nuts are free from trichinæ, tape worm and parasites, and from the possibility of carrying specific disease which is always present with animal flesh. “Nuts,” says Dr. Kellogg, “are in good health when gathered and remain so till eaten.”

“Beefsteak has a certain food value,” says Good Health for January, 1919, “though far less than is generally attributed to it, but in addition it embodies toxic elements, waste products from the animal’s body, contained in the venous blood, always poisonous, which gives the beefsteak its red color.”

“These elements are muscle poisons and brain poisons. They cause fatigue in the animal from which they are derived and in the man who eats them.”

“An experiment by the late Victor Horsley, a London surgeon, proved that in concentrated form these poisons completely paralyze the brain cells.”

“Do we need meat?” asks Alfred W. McCann, noted food authority, in Physical Culture. He answers his own question by pointing to conclusive proof of Anthony Bassler and others, that the human system cannot utilize over two ounces of protein a day. Yet four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, pork or lamb chops, etc., contain all the protein the system can utilize, while cereals, milk, eggs, nuts, etc., add to the quantity. He proves by the figures of former Secretary Houston, of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and of Dr. Clyde L. King, University of Pennsylvania, that Americans consume 80 grams of protein daily, compared to 44 grams for France before the war; 14 grams for Japan; 26 for Russia; 27 for Austria. He indicts Americans as “Kidneycides,” overtaxing the kidneys by this excess protein diet, and bringing on constipation, biliousness, headache, catarrh, rheumatism, etc. He emphasizes the disadvantages of animal flesh as a source of protein, shows how vegetable sources of protein are purer and safer.

The Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, the most authoritative food body ever gathered, “voted that meat was not a physiological necessity.” Dr. Graham Lusk, one of the American Commissioners to that body, suggests cutting the American meat ration in half. That this is readily possible is shown by the November, 1919, Monthly Crop Report of the United States Department of Agriculture. Page 116 gives the annual average meat consumption in the United States as 179.9 pounds per capita—while best authorities agree with the statement of Alfred W. McCann that 91 pounds would be more than ample. Dr. Lusk comments on the fact that in England “The reduction of meat in the dietary produced no unfavorable results.”

Dr. Kellogg in an address at Biloxi, October, 1917, said that the officials of the United States Department of Agriculture foresaw this condition and the increasing prices for animal flesh over twenty years ago. Since then the increase of our human population and the decrease of our animal population has so greatly exceeded their estimated figures that the question, “Is meat imperative to complete nutrition?” has become an imminent one.

Animal flesh supplies protein and fat. We have shown on page 10 how nuts supply the necessary fat and protein. Dr. Kellogg emphasizes the fact that nuts supply proteins of such a character that they render complete the proteins of cereals and vegetable foods.

“This discovery is one of the highest importance since it opens a door of escape for the race from the threatened extinction by starvation at some future period, perhaps not so very remote,” adds Dr. Kellogg.

“From an economic standpoint,” he adds, “the rearing of animals for food is a monstrous extravagance. According to Professor Henry, Dean of the Agricultural Department of the University of Wisconsin, and author of an authoritative work on foods and feeding, one hundred pounds of food fed to a steer produces less than three pounds of food in the form of flesh. In other words, we must feed the steer thirty-three pounds of corn in order to get back one pound of food in the form of steak. Such an extravagant waste can be tolerated only so long as it is possible to produce a large excess of foodstuffs. It is stated, as a matter of fact, that at the present time scarcely more than ten per cent. of the corn raised in the United States is directly consumed by human beings. A large part of it is wasted in feeding to animals. This economic loss has been long known to practical men, but it has been regarded as unavoidable since meat has been supposed to be absolutely essential as an article of food.”

“Think of it,” comments Good Health, for June, 1918, “100 pounds of perfectly good corn, in exchange for three pounds of beef, and the pound of beef when obtained is worth less as a food than a pound of the original corn. Ninety-seven pounds wasted just to satisfy a cultivated appetite, or appetite based on ignorance.”

“In view of these facts,” stated Dr. Kellogg, “it is most interesting to know that in nuts, the most neglected of all well known food products, we find the assurance of an ample and complete food supply for all future time, even though necessity should compel the total abandonment of all our present forms of animal industry.”

“The planting of seven or eight million acres of nut trees might supply the whole country with an abundance of fat, so that it would no longer be necessary to waste corn in feeding to pigs to obtain an inferior quality of fat,” says Good Health.

A panoramic view in our large orchards, showing a fraction of one side which is not illustrated in the other pictures. Can you, looking forward fifteen years or more, see in this a picture of your own pecan unit trees sturdy and healthy, their branches thickly covered with pecans, filling out under the summer sun? The soil is the same, the climate the same, results should be better with the finer varieties planted.

Consider what it would mean if America could take its many million acres of pasturage and get from each twenty times the food value! Of course, no thinking man would claim that every acre of pasturage is available for nut raising; but where the change can be made, that gain is possible.

As Dr. Kellogg points out, it takes two acres two years to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds; an average of 150 pounds per year per acre. The same acre planted to walnut trees would, he states, produce 100 pounds per tree per year for the first twenty years; which means 4,000 pounds of nuts from an acre of 40 trees. The food value of the 150 pounds of steer cannot exceed 150,000 calories or food units; while the nut meat from the same acre equals 3,000,000 calories in food value. As Dr. Kellogg concludes, “Twenty times as much food from the nut trees as from the fattened steer, and food of the same general character, but of superior quality.”

As Dr. Kellogg previously pointed out: “A pound of pecans is worth more in nutritive value than two pounds of pork chops, three pounds of salmon, two and a half pounds of turkey or five pounds of veal.”

While the price of nuts is by some considered high, Dr. Kellogg directs attention to the fact that “even at present prices the choicest varieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equivalent food values are compared.”

Experiments by Dr. Hoobler, Detroit, and at Battle Creek Sanitarium, prove that nuts “Possess such superior qualities as supplementary or accessory food that they are able to replace not only meats, but even eggs and milk.”

It must be remembered that the period in which the use of nut meat grew over fifteen times as quickly as the population increased was before the war conditions made every man consider food values more carefully. Right up till 1914, the year in which the war in Europe started, there was a steady increase each year in the production of nuts and the importation of nuts, yet prices kept soaring on all the better varieties because the greatly increasing supply failed to keep pace with the increase in demand.

Though the importation of nuts in 1910 had been valued at over thirteen million dollars, and this was nearly four times as great as in 1900—it kept increasing until in 1917 it amounted to nearly thirty-three million dollars. The importation of nuts in 1917 was nearly ten times as great as imports for 1900, yet these imports and the increasing American production failed to meet the demand.

These figures from U. S. Government reports show that any one who assumes that nuts are a holiday luxury is entirely wrong. That the public wants nut meat the year round, that the only drawback to a still greater increase in consumption is the shortage of the supply of fine nuts is proved by United States Department of Agriculture figures.

“The demand for walnuts is growing much faster than the supply. We do not produce in America more than twenty per cent. of what we consume, and it will take fifty to a hundred years, with all the encouragement of the nut experts, to raise enough walnuts to supply the home demand.”

he stated a condition which applies with manifold greater force to the consumption of pecan nuts.

It is true that the California production of Walnuts doubled during ten years, while the importation trebled—yet in spite of this five-fold production English Walnuts constantly increased in price. Since then the price of walnuts has increased steadily every year, despite increase of supply until in November, 1918, the price per pound was 80% higher than at the same time in 1914, according to the Monthly Crop Report for December, 1918. Yet the 1918 crop was nearly twice as large as in 1914, according to Statistician H. E. Pastor, well known as an authority on western crops.

The price of pecans increased 50% on the commonest sorts between 1900 and 1910; and from the December, 1918, Monthly Crop Report we see that the 1918 price per pound on all pecans was over 38% higher than for 1917; Georgia, which has the largest percentage of paper shell pecans, showing the highest price per pound.

It is true that in Walnuts a condition has come about as in other nuts—that the increasing demand is for the finer, higher priced grades. What are the points of superiority that have led to this great increase in public demand? Why are old established black walnut trees less valuable as profit producers than English Walnut trees only a quarter as old and producing only a fraction of the quantity of nuts?

Third—Attractiveness in appearance of the nut and of the nut meat when removed.

Now compare the fine Paper Shell Pecan with the English Walnut on every one of these four points of public demand.

It is contained in a shell so thin that it is easily broken in the hands without the use of nut crackers. The partitions between the kernels average as thin as in the English Walnut, and the average person will, in less time, remove more whole kernels of the Paper Shell Pecan than of any other nut.

As to flavor and food value let such experts as Luther Burbank answer. (See Foreword, page 4.) Remember that his answer is certainly unbiased, for he is a patriotic native of California where America’s largest crop of walnuts is produced—and that State produces no quantity of Paper Shell Pecans.

As to attractiveness in appearance, of both the nut and the nut meat, you and your friends are the best judges. People who know both nuts have already handed in their verdict favorable to the paper shell pecan. In addition, the pecan has been endowed by nature with a shell which is air-tight—and therefore keeps many times as long without losing its fine flavor or becoming dry and tough.

“The Most Prized of All Nuts For Domestic Uses”

In Bulletin No. 30, of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., we read regarding Pecans: “In the course of time, however, as they are more widely grown, they will become the most prized of all nuts for domestic use, and it is probable that when the supply is large they will be preferred abroad to the best Persian nuts.”

IN OUR ESTABLISHED ORCHARDS stretch row after row of these sturdy, strong-trunked, well established pecan trees, which after severe pruning are forming immense heads with a profusion of nut bearing branches.

The pecan is the one nut suitable for eating the year round. And the present tendency is toward the year-round use of nuts.

Another reason why the finer pecans are surer to maintain their high prices than any other nuts is found in the fact that Walnuts of the finest grades are being raised in quantities in California, Oregon, Washington and other States, and in England, France, Italy and South American countries—while the territory in which the Paper Shell Pecan attains its highest state of perfection is confined to a 40–mile radius in southwestern Georgia, embracing those portions of Calhoun, Dougherty, Lee and Mitchell counties, which are nearest Albany.

Is it any wonder that the former State Entomologist of Georgia, Mr. E. Lee Worsham, whose name is virtually always included as one of “the three big men in his line of endeavor,” wrote: “In my opinion the pecan growers of South Georgia have the finest horticultural proposition in the United States.”

“Among the Highest Priced Horticultural Products of America”

“Pecans of the second class bring $12,500 a carload. As a result of the superior merit of this class of pecans and the limited extent to which they are grown, they are now netting the growers in certain districts a value per volume of product ranking them among the highest priced horticultural products grown on a large scale in this country. Carloads weighing 36,000 pounds each were recently (Oct. 1916) shipped from the Albany district of southwest Georgia to Chicago brokers at 35c. a pound or $12,500 a car. These prices were for pecans of the second class, the firsts bringing still higher prices.” United States Congressional Record, Vol. 54, No. 22.

Mention Pecan to any one who has tasted the improved paper shell variety and they will assume that you are talking of Paper Shell Pecans. For the person who cracks and eats paper shell pecans feels it almost a sacrilege to call the common wild pecan a pecan.

Yet there are thousands of Americans who have never tasted paper shell pecans, and who think of pecans only as wild pecans, grown largely in Texas.

Pecans are divided in three general but radically different classes, as the description and cuts below indicate.

The ordinary wild pecan is native to America. The earliest French explorers found that one of the staple foods of the Indians was this palatable nut which grew in the forests of the south, and in that portion of Mexico adjoining the Gulf States. Pecan trees in Texas and Louisiana have been found which were over five hundred to seven hundred years old—which were still yielding large crops of nuts.

There are in the Southern States wild pecan trees of which the records go back to the first civilization on this continent.

The pecan tree is so symmetrical and beautiful that it is called “The Queen Shade Tree of Many a Southern Home.” Its fruitage is so prolific that it is said to be “one of the most astonishing food engines in all nature, yielding literally barrels of nuts.”

“Your Pecan Is Superior To Our Walnut,” Says Burbank

In the American Nut Journal, May, 1915, we read: “Luther Burbank is credited with the following statement regarding the pecan tree: ‘If I were young again I would go South and devote my life to propagating new species of the pecan. Walnut culture is the leading horticultural product in California, makes more money for us and makes it easier than anything else, and your pecan is superior to our walnut. The longevity of the pecan orchard and its immense earning power make it one of the most profitable and permanent of agricultural investments.’”

The reason for this long life is that the pecan is the hardiest of all nut trees—free from all ordinary tree pests and diseases because it is of the hickory group, and the longest lived member of that group. The lack of surface moisture—the great enemy of most trees—is not a disadvantage to the pecan, for it has a remarkably long tap root which goes down so deeply into the ground that it draws moisture from the sub-soil. Since the blooming period is late in Spring, the buds are not injured by frost.

The wild pecan has been a popular nut, rivaling, because of its superior flavor, such other nuts as the walnut, chestnut, shellbark, hickory-nut, etc. This popularity was secured despite its many drawbacks—for the shell of the wild pecan is hard and the partition walls between the kernels thick and bitter. There was too little meat and too much difficulty getting it—but the experts saw in the great demand for pecans, despite these disadvantages, the promise of rich reward for improving the pecan.

The seedling pecan is the next step toward pecan perfection. Larger than the wild pecan, and thinner shelled, it equals or surpasses it in flavor, depending upon the variety of seedling under consideration. Selling at an average price of 35 to 45 cents per pound, which is double the cost of the wild pecan, it has so much more meat and it is so much more accessible, that it is always a better paying purchase for the housewife. So justly popular has the seedling pecan become that the wise dealer and the discriminating housewife will have nothing to do with the inferior, thick-shelled pecan, which is brightly tinted and polished to disguise the inferiority.

The Pecan Makes More Progress Than Other Nuts Made In Centuries

“With practically no improvement as a result of culture and breeding, but taken directly from nature, many of the wild pecans afford an exceedingly desirable product. Unconscious, and, therefore, unsystematic selection and planting of pecan seed about dooryards during a period of less than 200 years has developed varieties of such desirable quality that the pecans most successfully compete with other species, like the almond and the walnut which have been under cultivation for many centuries.”—Congressional Record for January, 1917.

Had the work of experts not gone further than establishing the improved Seedling Pecan, it would have justified all efforts—for the seedling pecan bore justifiable comparison with any other nut on the market in food value and accessibility; until the Paper Shell Pecan was developed from budded trees.

The Paper Shell Pecan has an air-tight shell so thin that it is easily broken in one hand by a gentle pressure. Kernel is large, easily removed, of flavor so much finer that any observing person can distinguish it from any other pecan by taste alone.

Instead of a bitter partition wall which imbeds itself in the nut when it is cracked, as in the wild pecan, the paper shell pecan has a thin, tissue-like membrane which is easily removed.

With the paper shell pecan a larger portion of the total weight of the nut is meat than with any other nut, with the possible exception of the finest almond. And this meat of the paper shell pecan contains seventy per cent. fat, while that of the almond contains but fifty-four per cent.

It has no equal from the standpoint of size, appearance, accessibility of meat, size of kernel, and fine flavor. The only disadvantage is the limited supply—for there is but a small territory in which soil conditions and climate are right. The walnut is raised in England, France, Italy and in large quantities in the three Pacific coast states, and in smaller quantities elsewhere. The paper shell pecan seems to flourish best within a forty-mile radius around Albany, in Southwest Georgia. Of the half million budded pecan trees in the world, two hundred and forty thousand, or practically half, are in this forty-mile radius. Were complete records of yield accessible, it would be seen that this half of the budded trees has produced far more than their portion of the crop.

While State Entomologist of Georgia, Mr. E. L. Worsham, wrote: “The Pecan Industry has developed beyond the point where it matters not what you or I believe. It is a success. Results are being produced of wide interest and of permanent character, and the industry in the Albany district in the hands of competent men has wonderful potentialities. The hundreds of thousands of dollars invested by shrewd business men in Commercial Pecan properties, after personal investigation, argues that the development being recorded in the Albany district is meritorious.”

First, the Seedling Pecan Nut is Planted in the Nursery

This picture shows a corner of the Nursery on our Calhoun County Plantation, in which thousands of young trees have been grown. Selected seedling nuts from our bearing seedling orchard (in the background) have but recently sprouted, and are just above ground when this first picture is taken.

A Few Years Later in the Same Nursery Corner

One of our orchard unit owners inspecting the nurseries two years later. The vigorous, sturdy two year old trees have been budded to the standard paper shell varieties.

The Sturdiest Budded Trees are later Transplanted while Dormant, into the Orchard Units

Illustration at left shows one of our unit owners, Mr. A. E. Pretty, Dawson, Yukon Territory, standing at a dormant tree in recently planted units purchased by Alaska and Yukon people.

Illustration at right shows Mr. Henry E. Morton, President of the First State Savings Bank and of the Morton Mfg. Co., Muskegon Heights, Mich. (owner of 45 units on our plantation) standing at the same tree, three months later.

Both pictures made to same scale, as figures of men show. (See letter of Mr. Morton, page 50.)

THE 12 OZ., “GIFT BOX” of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans, which has been ordered and re-ordered by pleased purchasers in every section of the United States and Canada—and in many foreign countries, including Mexico, Cuba, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, China, France and Great Britain.

are selected for their superior quality from among the finest nuts produced anywhere in the pecan district. They are the choice of thousands of satisfied customers, everywhere, because they are the finest flavored nuts which Nature produces.

They are uniformly large in size, thin in shell and well filled with nut meat, as shown by illustration in natural colors on outside cover.

Their plump kernels—of delicious flavor and wonderful nutritive value—are easily removed whole without the use of nut crackers. By following the simple directions in every box, the thin shell is easily cracked with your bare hand.

THE 10 LB. CARTON for family use—the logical second purchase of many pleased customers.

They are packed in the beautiful 12–oz. Gift Box shown above; and sold at $1.25 per box, under this Money Back Guarantee:—“Eat six at my risk—if dissatisfied, return the balance within ten days and get your $1.25 back”; yet out of thousands of packages sent out, less than six packages have ever been returned.

One shipment of pecans, boxed, ready to send out—photographed in the packing room at Manheim.

Though our Gift Boxes have enjoyed a remarkable sale during the Holiday Season, our business is by no means limited to that period. Orders for large quantities are received throughout the year from individuals for use in their homes; but since each year’s supply has been exhausted in a few months, we have found it necessary to refund money continuously month after month until the new crop was harvested.

Numerous purchasers of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans have re-ordered many times in a single winter—while many others who have first bought the 12–oz. box have ordered in large quantities up to 200 pounds, rather than be compelled to order so frequently.

We have customers who buy by the barrel for their own table, and some who have ordered two and three barrels in a single season. Each barrel contains about 175 pounds.

Our experience selling these high quality pecans shows that there is no question whether the public will pay the increased price. The real problem is to secure more pecans to meet the constant increase in demand. The whole southern section of the United States does not produce enough paper shell pecans of this standard to fill the demand for them.

I enclose check for 10 lbs. of Hess Pecans. Could you still take my order for another 10 lbs.? I wish you to place me on your orders for 75 lbs. of the pecans from next fall’s crop.

Will you please take my order for twenty pounds of Hess Pecans from the next crop? The nuts are just splendid, and we never tasted anything like them before for flavor.

The 70 lbs. Hess Pecans received just before Christmas were eminently satisfactory and disappeared like hot cakes. I am enclosing check to cover the following order: 10 lbs. Ex. Fancy, 20 lbs. “A,” 10 lbs. “B.”

The barrel of pecans arrived the day before Thanksgiving. The nuts are gone and I am ready for more; wish the entire order before the Xmas holidays.

F. B., Los Angeles, California (in the heart of the finest walnut district), ordered 22 oz. box for $2, Feb. 13th, 1917. March 11th, 1917, wrote: “They are unquestionably the very best I ever ate, and I am wondering if you have more to offer, and if so, the price in bulk.” Aug. 2, 1917, order booked for Fall, 1917, delivery, 50 pounds Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans.

February 26th, 1918, sent his third re-order for 50 lbs. of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans for delivery, Fall, 1918, for $50.

In 1919, purchased 20 lbs., remitting $25.00; 1920, bought orchard units on our plantations.

Order received, Dec. 11, 1917, from Dr. M. B., Wabash, Ind., for $1 box of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans.

Jan. 8, 1918, “Enclosed find check for $5 for which ship pecans like the 12 oz. box recently sent me. They are the finest I ever ate.”

J. C., Seattle, Washington, wrote Jan. 29, 1917: “The size, quality, and flavor are all of the very highest. They are richness itself. Regarding food value, I question if there is any nut on earth equal to it. I wish I had a barrel of them. You ought to plant at least 10,000 acres.”

April 10th, 1917, ordered 10 lbs. more for Fall, 1917, delivery, saying, “They are the very best on earth.”

Says the world famous food authority, Dr. J. H. Kellogg

Dr. J. H. Kellogg, head of the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium, is a world famous expert on nuts. His writings, based on a half century of research, have shown that pecan meat is suitable for “every month in the year, for all climates, all work and all ages of mankind (except infants)”, as Good Health stated. He has directed attention to the fact that pecans give all the food elements that animal flesh gives, in better proportion and with assured freedom from impurity and disease. He has made clear the vital importance of vitamines, found only to a very slight degree in animal flesh, but profusely found in nuts.

His unquestioned leadership in this field gives added importance to this letter:

Battle Creek Sanitarium

Hess Pecans are the finest nuts I ever saw. What a blessing to the world it will be when these fine products of the vegetable kingdom come to be better appreciated by the public.

From Another Food Authority

It is not strange that Hess Pecans are so much appreciated; they are so good to eat. I ate a dozen at my supper and feel that could everyone eat them every one would be benefited.

The Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecan is its own best advocate. Those who taste it, quickly see why such superior pecans sell readily at $1.25 per pound, while wild pecans are selling at 35c. per pound. The only difficulty is that not one person in a thousand has ever tasted the improved Paper Shell Pecan. Any thinking person, checking over the records of increasing sales year after year, is sure to agree with Burbank, America’s foremost horticulturist, when he says, “We have now one pecan where we ought to have a million.”

The barrel of Hess Pecans that you sent me got here in good condition, weight just as you say—202 lbs.—all right. They are certainly fine nuts and fine to eat. Nuts and apples make a fine meal, take that from me. Friends of mine think they are the best nuts (pecans) they ever came across. My advice to the public—more nuts, less meats and there would be less sickness. I have lived on nuts, fruit and vegetables for the last four years and never sick.

Received safely the 12 oz. box of Pecans which you so promptly sent me on receipt of price. The pecan is unknown out here, and the arrival of this stranger caused no little excitement. The pecan is all you claim for it—we all pronounce it perfect.

The box of Hess Pecans arrived O. K., but they didn’t last long. I never saw such a wonderful product in my life, and as for food value—we need not worry about Beef becoming short or extinct.

They are the first pecans that I have ever seen and I must say that they come entirely up to your description and are splendid nuts.

I am in possession of the 10 pounds of the Paper Shell Pecan. Without doubt it is the finest nut that exists on earth. I am happy I have bought 5 Units of your wonderful plantation.

I have received the box of Hess Pecans. I like them so well that I enclose payment herewith, and request you to send a box to Mrs. G. D., New Orleans.

The 10 lb. Box of Pecans you sent me came to hand and are good, fresh, and very fine. I enclose you my check for $25 for two more 10 lb. boxes.

I received the box of Paper Shell Pecans, and enjoyed them immensely; would say they are by all odds the best I have ever eaten. I have also eaten the Creole Pralines of New Orleans, and the nuts used in that confection, although good, do not compare.

I am in receipt of the 10 lb. package of Hess Paper Shell Pecans, and I wish to state that they are the very finest and best flavored that I have ever tasted. You have produced a wonderful nut and it is all that you claim.

A high official of the city of New York wrote: “Such pecans never were seen before in our neighborhood. They are all you advertised them to be. I sent a box on to my daughter in Boston.”

From another, whose husband is at the head of a publication which enjoys national prestige as an exponent of the finest nuts and other foods by mail order, we received the following letter, along with the second order: “Enclosed find check for which send package of your Hess Pecans. Kindly ship these at once as we wish them for Thanksgiving.”

Why take more of your time with detailed copies of letters from customers ordering and re-ordering Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans? Is not the fact that re-orders were received in itself the best evidence of superior quality when it is considered that the selling price of many of these shipments was $1.25 for 12 ounces, or at the rate of $1.65 per pound?

The man whose wife wrote the last letter questioned whether any one would pay this price—for an addition of fifty per cent. of the price of the average paper shell pecan was too much, in his opinion. He questioned the price before he sampled the nuts and noticed how much they were preferred in his own home and among his friends. After that the price was forgotten and the recollection of superior quality led him to re-order, just as it did many others.

For the past several years we have had to confine our sales almost entirely to mail orders, because the supply has failed to increase quickly enough to meet the demand. But in 1914 we made a test in one American city of only 51,000 population (based on the 1910 census) through one wholesale grocery firm. Paper shell pecans had not been previously known in this section, their salesmen said that it was absurd to attempt to market a 12–oz. box of Hess Brand Pecans at the retail price of $1.00, then prevailing. Yet grocers re-ordered and re-ordered till our available supply was exhausted—the demand created by the nuts themselves astonished all concerned.

The city in which this test was made was not our home town. It does not stand above the average in per capita wealth—nor is there any evidence to show that the people of this city are more likely to be interested in pecans than any average American. To make such a test in a large city like New York was impossible—for the entire yield of a 100,000–acre plantation, planted twenty trees to the acre, could not supply a week’s demand there, if New York bought pecans in the same proportion as the city cited above.

A leading agricultural publication says:

“Tyler is a Texas town with about 12,000 people who eat a carload of pecans every year. If New York ate pecans at the same rate, it would consume our whole crop.” (“Whole crop” refers to all of America’s crops combined, which is also the world’s crop.)

There are many reasons for this remarkable demand for the finest grade pecans—despite the higher price—which reasons are briefly indexed on the five following pages.

The greatest of these reasons is the superior quality of these pecans, as shown by tests on pages 33 and 34—the fact that they have a greater content of easily digested nut meat, of attractive appearance and greatest nutritive value, which nut meat is easily accessible, due to their thin shells.

There is a strong movement the world over toward nut meat as the “true meat,” in which some have joined for religious reasons, some for ethical reasons, others from dietetic or hygienic considerations—and many others because of increasing knowledge of food values.

The Seventh Day Adventists will refer you to the twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, which reads:

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” They reason that according to this passage “true meat” grows on trees, and in this belief they are joined by many others for ethical, dietetic and hygienic reasons.

A 3½ YEAR OLD TREE on our plantation, photographed August, 1920. October it bore many clusters of large, fully developed pecan nuts.

Everywhere in America there are large numbers of people, organized and unorganized, who will not eat the flesh of any animal. In sanitaria of all sorts there is a tendency to reduce to the minimum the use of all animal meat or do away with it entirely. In one system of forty sanitaria there are practically no drugs used because the patients are put on a perfected diet system in which nuts are substituted for animal flesh. At Battle Creek Sanitarium alone, under Dr. Kellogg, over 10,000 patients have adopted the meatless diet. Nut meat is largely used there to replace animal flesh.

Many physicians who specialize in diseases of the intestinal tract are advising the use of uncooked foods. Dr. Kellogg, in his book, Colon Hygiene, sums up one strong argument in simple, non-technical language when he says on page 223: “Raw food resists the destructive changes which are produced by bacteria, while cooked food makes no such resistance.”

Nut meat is practically the only source of both protein and fat, in large proportions, which it is safe to eat uncooked. This statement is readily proved by high authority.

In the Congressional Record for January 6, 1917, we read: “Nuts occupy a unique position in the list of important food products, in that, with the possible exception of a few other fruits, in the raw condition they alone afford a fairly complete and balanced food for human beings.”

The fact that nut importations in 1917 were nearly ten times as great in value as those in 1900—while the consumption of animal flesh had failed to even keep pace with the increase in population—is evidence of increasing public recognition of the great and varied advantages of nut meat over animal flesh.

Possibly you will find this increase in the consumption of nut meats even more surprising when you consider that there was practically twenty per cent. less butter sold from America’s farms in 1909 than in 1899, according to U. S. census figures. In other words, the consumption of butter, which is the principal table article competing with nuts in fatty content, was falling off to four-fifths during practically the same period while the consumption of nut meat was increasing so rapidly.

Perfected pecan nuts contain more protein than beefsteak, and almost as much fat as butter. Isn’t it only natural that people should want their nourishment and fat in this concentrated form—hermetically sealed and kept pure by nature? Is there any such assurance of purity and cleanliness on butter—or on beefsteak?

Place a Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecan on a hat-pin, light the nut meat and notice that it burns like a candle because it is seventy per cent. fat.

“At this age (eight to ten years) the best parts of the orchards under the most favorable conditions and in favorable years will not infrequently produce from twelve to fifteen pounds per tree. The average number of trees per acre of the orchards already planted is twenty. Twenty trees per acre, each averaging twelve pounds, yield two hundred and forty pounds per acre.” Speech of Congressman Frank Park, Jan. 6, 1917, as reported in the Congressional Record.

The young women of America, who have changed so largely from soda water and ice cream to nut sundaes, may not realize that they are getting increased nourishment—but that is the case. That this is no small element in the consumption of pecans is evidenced by the fact that one druggist alone uses 1,500 pounds of crushed pecan meat per year for nut sundaes—while hundreds might probably use as many if the true figures were known.

Enos H. Hess, Second Vice President, and some stockholders of the Keystone Pecan Plantation.

Nut candies are in such great demand that the best confectioners are astonished. But not all nuts are fit for use in summer. The confectioner who is anxious to produce a quality product, places his dependence upon the pecan—the finest of nuts—which nature has furnished in an air-tight shell, which assures satisfaction the year round. The confectioners of New Orleans—a hot weather city—long since learned their lesson and that city is almost as much noted for its pralines—a pecan nut confection—as for its wonderful fete, the Mardi Gras.

Pralines were too good to be confined to New Orleans alone. Along the boardwalk at Atlantic City and other watering places, and at the finer confectionery shops of the larger cities, they are in good demand. There is no other way to make acceptable pralines except by using pecan nuts—the finest pralines require that the nuts be whole, which, in turn, indicates another need for paper shell pecans.

“A Greater Future Than Any Nut Raised In This Country”

“It is not many years since these delicious nuts, the Paper Shell Pecans, were first introduced to the people of the North, and wherever they have gone they have met with instant and cordial favor. The Paper Shell Pecan has a greater future than any other nut raised in this country. It is a most delicious nut.” Geo. K. Holmes, noted authority on agriculture, Washington, D. C.

One remarkable fact about the improved paper shell pecan is that it is at the same time richer in protein and fat than other nuts, yet is more digestible. People who say, “I cannot eat nuts because I suffer from indigestion,” are surprised to hear of pecans being prescribed by physicians—until they try the Paper Shell Pecan themselves and find that it agrees even with the invalid. Unlike other nuts which contain less fat—it can be eaten in quantity without salt without any ill effect. This is probably due to the fact that the improved pecan contains an oil which seems to possess many of the lubricating and healing qualities which are found in olive oil.

The digestibility of pecan fat is an established fact—pecans are used largely at such scientifically conducted sanitaria as those at Battle Creek as a substitute for meat and corrective diet in troublesome cases of intestinal derangement.

Consider the many fortunes made in olive oil—then remember that even if scientific research should show that pecan oil is not so beneficial as olive oil, the pecan has many manifest advantages in its more appetizing form, assurance of cleanliness and purity, etc., which makes its future promising.

No authority has ever questioned the nutritive value of the pecan. Even the wild pecan, which is far inferior in nutritive qualities to the Paper Shell Pecan, has received high recommendation from eminent authorities. But the fact that this nutriment was locked up within a hard shell, separated by a partition so strong and bitter that it was seldom possible to get out a satisfactory kernel, kept the wild pecan from enjoying the wide popularity it deserved. The introduction of the improved seedling and paper shell varieties not only led to an interest in these improved varieties, but caused such an increased demand for all pecans that prices rose on even the poorest wild pecans. But the public found that the best pecans are the cheapest in the end—and the demand for pecans has increased most rapidly on these grades from which the largest kernels, containing the utmost in nutritive value, could most easily be removed whole.

From one of the largest nut-tree nurserymen in the world:

“The demand for pecans of all descriptions is increasing faster than the supply.... The large pecans that we raise bring from 50 cents per pound up to $1.25. We do not think that the price will ever drop a great deal, though a great income can be had even at 25 cents per pound or even lower if trees are ten or more years of age. If one had $1,000 to invest he would be satisfied with 7%, which is $70, yet five or six trees will bring in this income. There are no diseases or insects that are bad on the pecan, nothing like as bad as with the apple, peach, etc., nothing that is anywhere near ruinous. Pecan trees are naturally a wild tree and therefore very hardy.”

Fourth, Average Paper Shell Pecans, retailing at an average price of about 75c per pound.

This comparison—on the five points (A-B-C-D-E) detailed below on this page and on the following page—shows which gives you the most for your money.

A—Before Cracking.—Though size of the nut whole counts for but little in judging pecans, as compared to the quantity and quality of the meat within the shell, those making the test were interested to note that even in the case of the few paper shell pecans in Class Four which seemed larger than an average Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecan, these larger shells were later found to be only partially filled with meat, or with many kernels shrivelled.

B—Opening Process.—The Hess Brand Paper Shell was found to open more readily in the hand without nut crackers, than did the other classes of nuts when nut crackers were used. When the fragments of shell were compared it was easy to see why—superior thinness of shell distinguishes Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans.

The meat in the Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans filled the shells completely, while large air spaces were noted in many varieties in Class Four.

C—Separating Meat From Shell.—When various lots of nuts were carefully opened, in separate piles, a careful comparison was made of the meat and shells in each pile.

“Nature has prepared the soft shell pecan for man’s food by making the kernel easier both to extract and to digest,” says a well known pecan specialist.

34The number of whole kernels was counted—no other pecan had four-fifths as many whole kernels as were found among the Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans. The common wild pecan and the common seedling had such hard shells that the meat was practically all broken to small fragments in opening the shells. No detailed comparison was necessary between these crumbs of nut meat, mixed with shell and pith, and the whole kernels or half kernels of the Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans.

D—The Pith Test.—In the Hess Brand Paper Shell and in the Paper Shell Pecans of the Fourth Class there was practically no pith—the inner partition taking the form of a thin membrane which was easily removed, instead of the thick, bitter wall of the two cheaper classes of pecans.

E—The Final Test.—When the nut meat, which was in appetizing or edible form, was separated from the shells and partitions in each case, it was found that for table use the Hess Brand Paper Shell gave the greatest weight of nut meat for every dollar invested in the nuts, carriage and opening costs included. The average paper shell variety which costs nearly as much as the Hess Brand Paper Shell was a poor second, followed closely by the Third Class (the selected seedlings), while the two cheap grades were in the end the most costly investment—because they yielded so small a quantity of satisfactory nut meat for each dollar invested.

This is also confirmed by many other tests, which show that even including small particles of nut meat, which are far from appetizing in form, the wild pecan and the common seedling yield less than four pounds of meat to each ten pounds of nuts; the Selected Seedling Pecan and the common Paper Shell about five pounds of meat to each ten pounds of nuts; and the Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecan about six and three-quarters pounds of meat to each ten pounds of nuts.

With such superiority proven for Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans, it is no longer a question whether the public will pay the higher price. It is paying it.

The nuts certainly are life size and look good enough to eat. Every one who was so fortunate as to get some of the nuts, and they were quite a few, pronounced them the finest ever. Here is wishing all good things for the pecan company.

Our only problem NOW is to meet the demand for the highest grade Paper Shell Pecans.

Not only because of the superior food value of pecans; nor only because of their many advantages as the purest, most condensed of all natural food products, but also because of their alluring flavor. As Prof. Hutt, Ex-President of the American Pomological Society, well puts it, “Once a pecan eater, always a pecan eater.”

It is simply marvelous how hungry the world is for these fine pecans, and it will be hungry for many years to come because the increase in supply does not keep pace with the rapidly increasing demand for high quality pecans. The obvious remedy, therefore, is to produce more fine pecans by planting more pecan orchards.

Small branches showing how pecan nuts grow.

on our plantations in South Georgia once their wonderful root system is established.

Above—C. L. Cudebec, of Denver, Col., and Fred. W. Burger, of Boulder, Col., (right) at a tree planted in 1919 on one of Mr. Burger’s units. Photo six months after planting.

Above—A picture to same scale, of same tree, one year later. The growth in one year is shown by portion of tree above hand of boy (Maurice Forman, of Nogales, Arizona).

Pecan trees on our plantations—3½ years old.

Like all tree crops of value, pecans do not bear the first few years after planting. During this period before bearing begins, the greatest care and attention are necessary—once the pecan orchard is well established, the trees are hardy as an oak.^[1]

1. In the proceedings of the National Nut Growers Association we read of many pecan trees which have remarkable records for long life and great yields. It tells of one tree, now 110 years old, which has borne every year for thirty years, bearing 400 pounds of nuts in a single season. Another is now 75 years old and has borne every year for forty-one years—largest annual crop being 800 pounds, average crop over 500 pounds per season for thirty years past. Another property has borne as high as 900 pounds per year and has borne every year for forty-one years.

Our co-operative, profit-sharing plan gives your pecan orchard the benefit of the skill and experience of our trained horticulturists, and of mechanical facilities which it would be impossible for the average pecan orchardist to possess.

Our pecan orchard plantations, totaling over 7,300 acres, are all located near Albany, Georgia, the “hub of the pecan universe.” The land has been approved by experts of highest standing as possessing the rare character of soil necessary.

Corroborating these opinions is the fact that we have right on our property many pecan trees, bearing seedling nuts in large quantities, despite the fact that they were planted thirty trees to the acre fifteen and twenty years ago. Now only twenty Paper Shell Pecan trees are being planted to the acre, because of their vigorous growth. These trees will undoubtedly increase in size and in annual yield every year till they are forty years old—and bear their maximum crop for a century or more.

The Keystone Pecan Company was organized and incorporated for the purpose of planting its property with Paper Shell Pecans on a co-operative and profit-sharing basis. That is, of the 7,395 acres, 5,400 acres will be sold to investors, the investor buying as few or as many acres as he desires. From the beginning the company has been planting the property to Paper Shell Pecans of standard varieties, twenty trees to each acre-unit. It cultivates and cares for the trees and the land for a period of five years from planting of orchard units, and the charge per acre-unit includes land, clearing, furnishing trees, planting, cultivating, care, etc. After this period the company shares with the unit holder in the profits from the nuts as explained on page 38. Our unit plan is considered by conservative investors as the safest, most equitable and most profitable plan to plant our large Pecan Orchard Plantations in the shortest possible time.

Under this attractive plan the company agrees to sell to investors land up to 5,400 acres from its plantations. The interest of the company and its obligation does not cease with the sale of the land, for on each acre-unit are planted twenty pecan trees of the finest standard varieties.

The company further obligates itself to do all the cultivating necessary—caring for the young trees and the land for a period of five years from original date of planting orchard units, replacing at its own expense all trees that die, so that at the end of that period your orchard will have twenty healthy, thrifty trees. All this is done without expense to the buyer. The total net proceeds from any nuts grown during this development period, will be paid to the Orchard Unit Owner after deducting 12½ per cent. commission for gathering and marketing.

After the five-year development period the Company will, at the option of the unit owner, enter into an agreement to operate the property as agent for the unit owner on the most profitable basis, for such period of time as shall be mutually agreed upon, fertilizing and farming the land, cultivating and pruning the trees, as well as gathering and marketing the pecans, receiving, after the necessary expenses are deducted, 12½% of the profits, 87½% being paid to the Orchard Unit Owner. Under the co-operative profit-sharing agreement and plans as outlined there should be enormous profits.

As the expense of developing is distributed over a number of years, the company has arranged to sell the orchard units on small monthly payments, thus placing a golden opportunity within the reach of all investors and giving them a chance to make their money work as effectively for them as if they themselves were operating on a large scale.

Remember, you become absolute owner of the acre of land in your orchard unit. The land is cleared, the pecan trees are planted, cultivated and cared for as a whole on a large scale. This is co-operation under a system which relieves you of every worry and which makes for economy and large profits.

“The pecan industry is a husky infant with almost boundless possibilities. We are building an industry, which, for generations, should yield its bountiful crop of delicious food and bring millions of dollars to our citizens.” Congressional Record of United States, page 1478, Vol. 54.

There are many people who know of the great successes made in pecan growing in this district, who would be glad to buy five, ten or twenty acres of our Pecan Orchard Plantation. The land in itself would undoubtedly be a good investment, because cases are on record showing increase of double and treble value on land which does not have an orchard. But this would not be of any great advantage in solving the problem of supplying more of the finest pecans unless the purchaser had the knowledge, skill and time to bring his trees to the bearing point.

Even assuming that he could himself bring the trees to bearing, his ability to market his product advantageously could not possibly equal that of a co-operative group of orchardists, who have the most skilled supervision service and the advantages regarding marketing which come from collective effort.

With several carloads to ship instead of a few barrels, the large orchardist is in a position to command the very lowest rate and to reach the market in just the right season.

Ask any member of a Citrus Fruit Exchange whether he has made more money since he joined that organization than he did before, and he will tell you an interesting story which cannot fail to convince you of the advantage of collective marketing. Yet oranges and grape fruit, the products of the members of these exchanges, are perishable in such a short time that the benefits derived are small compared with those gained by co-operative marketing of Paper Shell Pecans.

There are other advantages of collective effort which exceed even the advantages in marketing. Among them is the advantage of skilled supervision at minimum cost. The professional or business man can live in the North, enjoying the income which his specialized efforts assure, yet be growing his pecan orchard in the South under the supervision of expert pecan horticulturists whom he could not possibly afford to retain for a plantation of less than a thousand acres and with labor costs reduced to a minimum by such skillful management and the use of the most modern mechanical appliances such as tractors, etc.

He need not lose an hour from his regular business to supervise the gathering and marketing of his crop of pecans. While he makes money at his own business, his orchard unit also makes money for him without sacrificing his time.

Each twenty-tree unit is platted off on the plan of our property and indicated with an Orchard Unit number.

The purchaser of an Orchard Unit secures absolute ownership of his land, but each entire plantation is operated as a whole. This plan has made it possible for us to clear the land, plant, cultivate and care for the young trees at a fraction of the cost which would be necessary if the units were operated separately.

Illustration at left: Upper picture shows James J. Best, Canton, Ohio, photographed June, 1918, at one of the newly planted trees on his 21 acre-units. Picture below shows same tree two years later. Great growth of head and thickening of trunk result from our intensive cultivation.

The cost of land, cost of clearing and cost of setting trees, etc., is of such magnitude as to be almost prohibitive to any person developing a small acreage. Under the Orchard Unit Plan this cost is reduced owing to the scope of the undertaking. It is generally conceded that when you develop orchards in large tracts of 1,000 acres each or more, the cost of machinery, equipment, live stock, management and other essentials—distributed over the whole area—is therefore far lower per acre than when you develop a limited area, such as five, ten or even fifty acres. A small orchard managed on a small scale cannot produce pecans nearly as economically as if that small orchard is a Unit under large plantation management.

The company gains also by the natural increase in value of the 2,000 acres of fertile pecan growing land which it is holding for itself under the same conditions which apply to any unit in the 5,400 being sold.

Two of our six tractors at work on one of the 51 acre-units owned by Mrs. C. J. Balliet, Lehighton, Pa., pulling Roderick-Lean 24 disk harrows. Note also on page 43 the mule drawn plows.

The Keystone Pecan Co. has set as its goal the production of pecan orchards second to none. To achieve this, all work is planned many months ahead of operations, every detail carefully considered and specifications drawn which cover every phase of the work from the planning of the tree rows, the planting of the young, dormant, budded, paper shell pecan trees, to the care and cultivation of these trees throughout the entire development period. These specifications cover the selection of trees of the standard varieties, the size and quality of the trees, the methods by which they are dug in the nursery, the size of the hole in which they are planted and the methods of planting; with especial attention to the character of the soil placed in the tree holes and the methods of replacing the same. The proper system of fertilizing when planting and at each subsequent stage is carefully outlined and all other work is done under the supervision of skilled experts.

Hoe hands augment the tractor and mule cultivation by hoeing around every tree on the plantation at approximate 10–day intervals during the growing season.

The cultivation at the various periods of the year and the various stages of growth is provided for and carried out with utmost care. The Keystone horticulturists insist upon intensive cultivation using mechanical, mule and man power, each in its separate sphere to complete their carefully planned system. The use of powerful tractors for plowing and harrowing with 24–disk Roderick-Lean harrows has produced results which would otherwise be unattainable. Throughout the growing season a thorough harrowing at ten-day intervals conserves the moisture, destroys noxious vegetation and so improves the condition of the soil that its sturdy, vigorous growth continues.

At certain stages tractor cultivation is augmented by mule drawn plows which in alternate plowings turn the soil to and from the trees. These are followed by Planet, Jr. Cultivators.

This work is further augmented by hoeing squads working under thorough supervision (see cut at right). The result of this intensive cultivation is growth—quick growth—substantial growth.

L. J. Cooper, President of the First National Bank of Waycross, Georgia, clearly states the whole proposition, when he says: “The pecan industry is in its infancy, but is being developed very rapidly in this immediate section. It is considered one of the safest industries in South Georgia, and the profit is O. K. once you get the trees in good bearing condition.”

Far-sighted business people are investing in pecan orchards because their investigation proves that the bearing pecan orchard is “one of the most profitable and permanent of agricultural investments.” See statement of Luther Burbank, the Edison of Agriculture on page 19.

Below is a table showing a conservative estimate of the probable yield of an acre orchard unit in this district. The figures are not guaranteed, but are to the best of our knowledge and belief accurate and authentic.

The first column in this table refers to the number of years from planting in the orchard units.

	Per tree, based on average records of varieties developed	Average yield per tree, nuts at 40c. a lb	Average income per tree	Income per unit

4th year	a few nuts.
5th year	2 to	3 lbs.	2½	lbs.	$1.00	$20.00
6th year	4 to	5 lbs.	4½	lbs.	1.80	36.00
7th year	7 to	9 lbs.	8	lbs.	3.20	64.00
8th year	10 to	12 lbs.	11	lbs.	4.40	88.00
9th year	18 to	25 lbs.	21	lbs.	8.40	168.00
10th year	37 to	50 lbs.	43⅓	lbs.	17.33	346.60
15th year	100 to	150 lbs.	125	lbs.	50.00	1,000.00
20th year	150 to	300 lbs.	225	lbs.	90.00	1,800.00

44J. R. Pinson, near our Mitchell Co. plantation, reports 685 pounds from 246 trees, an average of 2.8 pounds per tree, in the fifth year.

R. P. Jackson makes affidavit to a yield of 1,056 pounds the fifth year from his 259 pecan trees, or an average of 4¼ pounds per tree.

The Monticello Board of Trade, Monticello, Florida, directs attention to 95 trees of finest paper shell pecans owned by H. C. White, at Putney, Georgia, which bore 380 pounds of nuts in the sixth year.

J. R. Pinson reports a yield of 2,450 pounds from a 13–acre orchard in its seventh year, average of 190 pounds per acre, or 9½ pounds per tree.

B. W. Stone, Ex-President of the National Nut Growers’ Association, reports a yield of 1,300 pounds from 3 acres the eighth year, which figures over 20 pounds average per tree.

I. P. Delmas reports a yield of 9,750 pounds of pecans from his 325 trees in the ninth year, an average of 30 pounds per tree.

T. S. McManus reports 165 pounds of nuts from one tree the tenth year. He states that he can show average yields of 50 to 75 pounds at ten years.

Theo. Bechtel, President of the National Nut Growers’ Association, reports a yield of 100 pounds in the 10th year and of 185 pounds in the 13th year.

A 3½ year old tree on our plantations on which 44 nuts were counted by the men in the picture, A. S. Perry, Secretary of the National Nut Growers Association, Thos. F. Miller, Allentown, Pa., Prof. W. S. Hafer, Womelsdorf, Pa., and by Frank R. Ritter, Fleetwood, Pa. The nuts, being still small and practically the same color as the foliage, cannot be seen in the photograph.

B. W. Stone, in his book, “The Pecan Business,” tells of one tree which in its seventh, eighth and ninth year bore an aggregate of 200 pounds of nuts. The same tree bore 106 pounds in its tenth year.

I. P. Delmas reports a yield of 235 pounds of pecans from a tree thirteen years old.

John D. Gunn reports a yield of 268 pounds in a single season from one of his paper shell pecan trees.

Henry E. Morton, President of the Morton Mfg. Co., large manufacturers of heavy machinery, Muskegon Heights, Michigan, standing beside a 3½ year old tree on one of the 45 units which he owns on our plantations. Note on page 49 Mr. Morton’s statement that these strong-trunked, heavy-headed trees exceeded his expectations. Note also his comment on the benefits of our Medium Height Pruning System in producing large spreading heads with a great increase in the number of nut bearing branches.

Picture below shows our Field Secretary at a 3½ year old tree which by its sturdy trunk and spreading head shows the advantages of our thorough cultivation and Medium Height Pruning System.

“I firmly believe that commercial pecan growing is one of the most promising horticultural possibilities of the South. There is now a greater demand for all kinds of nuts than ever before, a demand that our growers will not be able to catch up with for years. The pecan is undoubtedly the finest, most nutritious and most delicious of nuts. The world must get her supplies of pecans from us (in the southern section of the United States) and as yet we do not begin to supply the local demands, to say nothing of producing for export.”

W. N. Hutt, Ex-President, American Pomological Society, Ex-President, National Nut Growers Association.

In recent years the selling price of pecans at the orchard has been more than double the price used in our table. No one can tell how much higher pecan prices may go. On Patrician Pecans—introduced by us in the 1920 season—we have found an exceedingly large demand at $1.50 for a 12–oz. box, which is at the rate of $2.00 a pound, and have received many strong commendations from purchasers. These de luxe pecans have been sold into all sections of the United States—including such southern states as Mississippi, Florida, Texas, etc.—and into Canada, Alaska, France and other foreign countries; not in the 12–oz. package only, but also in 10–lb. cartons and barrel lots.

We are intentionally conservative. We want the investor in our twenty-tree orchard units to be agreeably surprised that the yield is greater and the price secured per pound higher than our table shows. Our interests and those of the investor are identical—selling an orchard at the low price shown on the application blank (page 71) benefits us little unless the return secured from the gathering and sale of nuts is satisfactory.

“For the person who is willing to wait a few years there is no more profitable investment than a grove of pecans,” says J. B. Wight, Pecan Nurseryman and Grove Owner.

Under our co-operative plan the investment is reduced to the minimum during the waiting years. As shown by application blank at rear of this book we offer an acre-unit planted with twenty pecan trees of standard varieties on an easy deferred payment plan.

From the moment you put down your first payment, the contract of sale protects you—in the opportunity to reap profits from the constantly increasing yields of pecans when the trees begin to bear, and in the opportunity to gain by the $100 a year increase in value of your acre-unit. For the most authentic information shows that each acre pecan orchard unit increases in value each year at the rate of at least $100.

Figure it out for yourself—carefully and conservatively. Though the price now being secured for the nuts is far higher than the price used in the table on page 42, we would rather that you base your comparisons on the figures in that conservative table. The case is strong enough on that basis.

An Increase in Value of $100 per Year per Acre

Mr. E. B. Adams, formerly Secretary of the Albany, Ga., Chamber of Commerce, writes: “Each season the pecan groves enhance in value, it being agreed by eminent pecan authorities that properly cared for pecan groves increase $100 an acre in value each year.”

This is an investment where your principal increases and your income gets larger as the years roll by.

We must have more finest grade paper shell pecans to meet the increasing demand. America demands more. When this market is supplied—which date seems generations distant—there are limitless opportunities open for export business.

The pecan is a food in demand all year around, yet the constantly increasing supply is exhausted in a few months.

No ordinary increase of plantings would meet the need. Our Co-operative Profit-Sharing Plan is the most direct, most effective solution of the problem.

The opportunity is enormous. To make right use of that opportunity requires large planning and large plantings. We have now four thousand acres of pecan trees planted and growing on our plantations—to establish these, fertilize, cultivate and care for them until bearing would involve an outlay so prodigious that it is good policy for our company to welcome the co-operation of a limited number of unit owners, assuring maximum efficiency on all our acreage at a minimum expense for planting, care, cultivation, gathering crop, marketing nuts, etc.

In one of our 3½ year old orchards, showing sturdy trunks and heavy heads.

A 3½ YEAR OLD TREE on our plantation. Observe the massive trunk, the sturdy limbs, the great spread of nut bearing branches.

Far-sighted people, who, after thorough investigation, have invested in Pecan Orchard Units under our co-operative plan, are found in every section of the United States and Canada, and also in many foreign countries, such as Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, the British Isles, South Africa, India, etc.

You will find them from Sanford, Maine, on the East, to Oakland and Lompoc, California, on the West; from Miami, Florida, and El Paso, Texas, on the South, to points as far North as Alaska. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta and Columbus, Georgia; Pittsburgh, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Jacksonville, New Orleans and other large cities you will find those who are providing for the future by putting their money in Keystone Pecan Orchard Units.

The strongest believers in our co-operative orchard proposition are keen business people, with ability to get at the facts, who have visited the plantations themselves, and have seen for themselves our bearing pecan orchards, our nursery, our planted units, their intensive care and cultivation. On their return many have bought additional units—or recommended the investment to their friends. The progress made is so evident that it convinces all who see it.

Prospective investors and owners of orchard units are welcome any time at the plantations in order that they may see for themselves just what progress has been made and is being made. It is necessary that we shall have undisputed control of the orchard during the first five years—the period when closest cultivation is required—in order that we may make good on our guarantee and turn over to you a successful orchard at the end of that period. But we shall be glad to have you establish a bungalow or cottage on the ground at any time afterward.

A few typical letters from unit owners who have visited the plantation are found on the following pages.

Ever since 1917, when I purchased my 45–acre pecan orchard from you, I have been wanting to go to see it, and several times had all arrangements made, but unforeseen events arising suddenly in my business prevented my going until now.

Of course, I satisfied myself before buying that an investment in your pecan orchards is sound and profitable, and I received your reports from time to time showing progress, so that I knew my trees were receiving the best of care and were growing nicely, and yet naturally I wanted to see them. I am happy to say that my orchards were fully as good as reported—the thrifty, strong-trunked, heavy-headed trees are in many respects better than I expected.

Your Medium Height Pruning System has produced wonderful trees. They are developing thick, strong trunks and branches, and large, symmetrical heavy heads. Your thorough cultivation, with tractors, mules, and hoeing around the trees by hand, on every part of the plantation, keeps the soil in the best possible condition to promote growth.

The foundation idea underlying all your plans seems to be service, and as a manufacturer of many years experience selling to many of the largest concerns in this and other countries, I have learned that service and the application of the Golden Rule are the foundation of all success. All businesses and all persons are measured by the service they render.

My visit to your plantations has shown me that your Company places service always foremost, and that you stand for a square deal. In cultivation and pruning and in every way the trees are treated as individuals and each tree receives individual attention. When the thirty-five hundred acres now planted will have passed through the development years, the Keystone Pecan Groves will be a place of beauty and will be a perennial source of profit to the owners of the units.

I have also visited your offices at Manheim on various occasions, and have found the equipment and organization there fully as complete and as efficient as that on the plantations. I have met several of the directors of the company, all of whom stand high in their communities, and are known as men of honor and ability. Mr. Elam G. Hess, the president of the Company, I have found to be a man of integrity and uprightness in his dealings, who has demonstrated exceptional ability in building up an organization which renders expert and conscientious service to the unit owners.

In my travels I have investigated the pecan market and its possible future. I have tried to buy Paper Shell Pecans in the different cities from Kansas City and Minneapolis, East as far as Boston, but find it is possible to get them during only a few months of the year. The orchards now planted will be able to supply only a small fraction of the demand already existing for these pecans, and with your marketing facilities reaching to all parts of the civilized world, the opportunities in this field are unlimited.

By the time I am back in Dawson, I will have travelled 11,000 miles to visit the Keystone Pecan Plantations. Long as this trip is, what I saw there well repaid me for the effort.

Throughout this district (around Albany) I made inquiry regarding the Keystone Pecan Orchards and heard that your orchards were noted not only for their large size but also for the extra care and cultivation given the trees. The advantage of these high scientific standards and thorough supervision are apparent all over the property. I was pleased to see over a hundred thousand pounds of ground bone meal being put around the trees to fertilize them. It is such extra effort that leads to biggest results.

“Our Interests Are in Safe Hands,” Says Rev. George W. Lutz, Unit Owner.

Your plantation is large—very large. The soil is real pecan soil. When I saw thousands upon thousands of pecan trees—budded and large bearing trees—in the same kind of soil, on all sides, I no longer asked myself the question whether my units were of soil on which the pecan would grow into a productive and profitable orchard. When I saw the kind of trees you planted—thick-stemmed and healthy trees, and the splendid care given them as regards cultivation and scientific pruning, I was still better satisfied.

But I am convinced, now that I saw it all, that soil, climate, moisture and virile trees, necessary as these are, they are not the whole thing in producing a thrifty pecan orchard. These factors mixed with brains grow the pecan. I congratulate your company, first of all, upon the fact that you have a real executive in your energetic President. Mr. Elam G. Hess. It is this master mind that has planned so wisely and soundly for the future. Every unit holder with whom I have talked has the fullest confidence in his integrity and ability. In my opinion, therefore, the affairs of your company and the interests of the unit owners are absolutely safe in his hands.

Finally, permit me to congratulate you upon your and our good fortune in securing the services of Mr. William P. Bullard as Horticulturist. Mr. Bullard is without a doubt the best-posted pecan man in the country today. He is not a theorist but very practical. A visit to his well-kept bearing orchard and nurseries was a most delightful one. I am absolutely confident that what Mr. Bullard has already done in his own orchard he can accomplish for you and all unit owners—grow a productive and profitable pecan orchard in the shortest possible time.

Well Pleased, Want Entire Block for My Family, Writes California Physician and Food Expert

As a food the pecan stands second to no other natural product. During the twenty years in which I have studied food values—and throughout my years of practice as a physician—I have noted the great need for this pure, fresh, easily digested nut as a source of fat and protein.

My visit to my pecan orchards this week showed me that conditions on your plantations are highly satisfactory. Your work in preparation and planting had been most thoroughly done, and the remarkably thrifty condition of the trees shows that they have established good root systems. The wonderful progress made by your trees shows the advantage of your thorough cultivation and scientific pruning. This should mean bigger yields—and bigger profits.

I am well pleased with all I have seen. Please let me know by return mail whether you can give me the entire block on which my units are located for our own immediate family.

Buying 10 More Units—A Good Investment

As I went carefully over your entire pecan plantations during the past week, I have studied with special care the growth made by the trees which are now 1½, 2½ and 3½ years old, for I have orchards of all three of these ages. The growth made by them shows that your methods are right, and I know that your thorough care in cultivation and fertilizing brings about even greater progress for the future. Your methods of pruning my older trees have produced exceptionally sturdy trunks, and heads which show a three-fold increase of nut bearing branches.

I am perfectly satisfied with the progress you are making and the fact that I have just bought ten additional units is proof that I consider the investment a good one.

Practically every thoughtful man looks forward to the time when he may have a home where the winter rigors of the Northern climate shall not sap his vitality. No one need apologize for this longing—or consider it a sign of lack of vigor or backbone.

For the tendency toward establishing a home in the South is not based alone on this desire for an agreeable, equable climate. It is founded on sound economic principles.

Where Winter Does Not Consume What the Summer Produces

In the North, the winter consumes the food which the summer produces. In the fertile sections of Southern Georgia a succession of crops, properly planned, makes the whole year productive.

Vegetation is so rapid that in a few years a home is surrounded by a growth of trees, shrubbery and growing crops.

Government statistics show a surprisingly slight variation between Winter and Summer in Southern Georgia. Here there is no enervating humidity compared to that found in the Northern and Central Atlantic States.

The home of our Assistant Horticulturist—shaded by the big bearing pecan trees.

Here is the ideal home—“Where the sun shines bright and the meadow’s in bloom”—where good fishing and hunting abound—where the call of the “Bob White” is heard from September to March—where the 52outdoor life is the natural, healthful life the year round.

A plantation house of the Keystone Pecan Company on its Calhoun County Orchard Plantation. From left to right: Elam G. Hess, President of the Company; M. G. Esbenshade, Secretary and Treasurer; and Thos. F. Miller, Sales Manager.

Here, with the fine southern town of Albany only a short distance away, with fine roads extending roundabout in all directions, you may live on a typical plantation. While Nature, soil and sun combine to produce profitable crops on the pecan trees which have been turned over to you a thrifty orchard, you may fish, boat or swim on the beautiful Lake Marcelia—a twenty-five acre lake right on your plantation.

We expect eventually to erect a club house or hotel on the banks of the lake, where unit owners may be accommodated should they wish to spend their vacation here hunting and fishing.

When you live amid such surroundings you really live. The country all about is so attractive that many a man in the North would be glad to pay $650 or $750 for an acre on which to build a southern home. If he planted on that acre only enough pecan trees to yield an average income of $45 per year, he would have six per cent. interest from his money. One tree should yield more than $30 per year, on an average, from the tenth to the twentieth year from planting. Why be satisfied with a single tree when there is room for twenty trees and a small bungalow on your acre?

Office of the Clerk, District Court, Boulder County, Col.

I have lived many years in Colorado and have been in close contact with the agricultural development of the west. I have long believed that Walnut growing in California was one big opportunity. During the past two weeks I have visited your plantation in Georgia and have travelled over it from end to end. Since that visit I am more thoroughly convinced than ever that you have the finest nut growing proposition in this country.

The wonderful way in which I found the trees growing on the ten orchard units which I had previously bought has led me to purchase more units, and I expect to buy still more later.

You have the soil, the climate and the organization to produce successful pecan groves.

Because the most conservative statement of yield from our pecan units sounds too good to be true, we have found that it was necessary to urge prospective purchasers to investigate every phase of the company.

For this reason, the men who have invested most largely are always the men most capable of getting at the real facts—and acting on their own knowledge—manufacturers, merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, salesmen, accountants, teachers, preachers, farmers and others of the most intelligent classes are becoming owners of orchard units because their investigation has shown:

First. That the Company is financially strong—a $215,000 corporation, which received its charter in 1911 from the Superior Court of Georgia. Subsequent to the incorporation, the Company purchased what its officers believed to be the finest plantation in Calhoun County for the growth and development of Paper Shell Pecans. The plantation with recent additions, all located around Albany, Georgia, totals nearly 7,400 acres of land, which has been or is to be planted to pecans. From the date of the purchase the Company has expended large sums of money annually upon the development of the property and each passing year sees a greater expenditure upon property development and permanent property improvement. Latest approved methods are sought and applied; and notwithstanding all this the Calhoun County Plantation is subject to a lien of only twenty-seven thousand dollars, the Dougherty County Plantation to only five thousand dollars, the Mitchell County Property to only ten thousand dollars. For the purpose of safeguarding the unit owners a special trustee was appointed whose duty it is to see that the company’s receipts from orchard sales are appropriated to the development of the orchards sold, the planting of new orchards and the reduction of the lien until the same shall have been extinguished entirely. This result will be achieved before the Company shall have conveyed one-half of its orchards—a unique record among modern business concerns. The Trustee plan was specially devised for the protection of Unit buyers, and we know of no Company that has devised a safer plan. It is the result of the most careful consideration given in the interest of the unit buyer. When you are safe, we are safe also.

The books of the Keystone Pecan Co. are audited quarterly by Certified Public Accountants, Vollum, Fernley & Vollum, of Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

54Second. That the orchards are under capable supervision. The active officers of the Company were close students of pecan growing for years previous to 1911.

Realizing the fact that the making of profits depends in part on the skill of the orchardist, the Company has employed educated, practical horticulturists who have large pecan groves of their own, where they earned reputations as orchardists that secured them highest recommendations of well known authorities. The fact that such men accepted positions with the Keystone Pecan Company is a tribute to the possibilities of these plantations.

For resident plantation managers they chose pecan men of excellent reputation, who had demonstrated exceptional ability in handling the problem in all its phases.

Third. That the Company has the character of soil, the kind of budded trees, and the shipping facilities needed to fill the demand for better grade pecans which comes from all over America and abroad. The immediate district in which our plantations are located is the natural home of the pecan. We have an excellent warehouse site on the Central of Georgia Railroad, at Bermuda Station, a passenger station and warehouse on the Dougherty County Plantation, and all portions of our plantations are favorably located for shipping.

Fourth. The Company has demonstrated also that its management is capable and efficient. Every one is interested heartily in the success of the orchards. All are men of unquestioned honor and ability; as inquiry in their home cities will prove. They are, as the following pages show, men old enough and experienced enough to capably manage the business, yet young enough to retain their business capacity and vigor for many years to come.

Fifth. That a marketing organization has been developed which has successfully sold paper shell pecans all over the world, and that the demand for these superior pecans far exceeds the supply.

“The Supply Will Never Equal The Demand”

From the former President of the Albany, Ga., Chamber of Commerce, J. A. Davis, we hear: “The strongest evidence of my belief in the future of this wonderful development is that I have just planted a grove of one hundred acres. I know of no agricultural or horticultural industry which, with proper attention, holds promise of returns half so large as the pecan in Southwest Georgia. Both our soil and our climate are peculiarly adapted for the production of the finest nuts in most abundant yield. These nuts are the size and quality which make them absolutely the finest nut on the market. They will always command a fancy price because the supply will never equal the demand.”

ELAM G. HESS

and Pennsylvania State Vice President of the National Nut Grower’s Association, is a resident of Manheim, Lancaster Co., Pa., and is well and favorably known, not only throughout Lancaster County, but in many parts of America. Mr. Hess, who is forty-three years of age, worked on his father’s farm in Lancaster County until he was eighteen years of age. He taught public school for five years, prepared for college at Perkiomen Seminary, graduating in 1902, and in 1906 graduated from Gettysburg College. He had acted as a traveling salesman during his summer vacations for Underwood & Underwood, New York, and had built such a reputation for fair dealing among the best class of trade that he was appointed field manager, along with Mr. Thomas F. Miller. After serving in this capacity for two years, he was sent to England to represent the same company.

In his travels he was impressed with the opportunities which existed for finer grade pecan nuts, and began to make an exhaustive study of their production and their selling possibilities—one result of which has been the formation of the Keystone Pecan Company.

Mr. Hess devotes his entire time to the success of the Company, and is an acknowledged authority on pecan nuts, their growth and their marketing.

L. B. Coddington

is a resident of Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he has been successfully engaged in the Wholesale Rose Growing Industry for twenty-four years. The cut flowers from his greenhouses are sold wholesale in New York City and Brooklyn and nearby towns. He is well known as one of the largest rose growers in the United States.

Enos H. Hess

lives on the farm on which he was reared—R. F. D. No. 3, Lancaster, Pa. He is 50 years of age. He is noted as a truck farmer, selling his own products to Lancaster City consumers at famous Lancaster Markets, which he attends twice a week.

Willis G. Kendig

is the well known corporation lawyer of Lancaster. He is widely known as a lawyer of keen discrimination regarding commercial enterprises, and the fact that he and so many associates from the richest agricultural county in the United States place their money in this Georgia pecan orchard is evidence of its worth. Mr. Kendig is 45 years of age; the son of a doctor of Salunga, Pa., who also enjoyed a most excellent reputation in his field.

M. G. Esbenshade

lives on the farm in Lancaster Co. on which he spent his boyhood days. (R. F. D. No. 3.) He is noted throughout the county and beyond as a successful grower of tobacco. He is 45 years of age, a graduate of Lancaster Business College, a director of the Farmers’ Association of Lancaster County, one of the founders of the Agricultural Trust Co. of Lancaster, of which he is a director.

In his extensive travels throughout the United States he has visited nearly every State. Mr. Esbenshade has received valuable first hand information on the growing and marketing of large food crops—especially nuts. In 1895 he traveled widely in Florida, paying special attention to orange and citrus fruit groves and pineapple fields, and in 1897 he worked with the large growers of wheat in Dakota and California and in the apple orchards of Colorado. In 1905 he made another trip south, studying the groves along the Gulf Coast in which wild and seedling pecans were raised, since which time he has made several trips throughout the South with special reference to Paper Shell Pecans.

B. L. Johnson

resides at Allentown, Pa., and has been Sales Manager for that district—embracing important counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey—for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, a $16,500,000 corporation, which is known all over the world. Mr. Johnson is known throughout the Allentown district as a self-made man, who has, at an early age, held positions of trust and responsibility because of his earnest and efficient work and his remarkable business judgment.

Joseph Seitz

is a native of Lancaster Co., residing at Mountville, Pa., formerly a farmer, now a dealer in leaf tobacco.

From a commercial standpoint the pecan is by far the most important of native nuts. Its smooth shell, attractive appearance, abundant production, plump kernels, which are usually extracted with ease, and high quality are largely accountable for its popularity. Page 23, Bulletin 160, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Thomas F. Miller

is 46 years of age. A graduate of State Normal School and also of Lebanon Valley College, and taught public school three years. He has had long, successful experience in selling, and was sixteen years in the employ of Underwood & Underwood, and was associated with Elam G. Hess, President of the Company, as Field Manager, appointing and drilling hundreds of successful salesmen for their Travel System. He resides in Allentown, Pa.; member of the Chamber of Commerce, of Allentown, and is favorably known as a man of high ability and good reputation.

A. S. PERRY

Field Secretary of the Keystone Pecan Company, and Secretary of the National Nut Growers Association.

A. S. Perry, Field Secretary, Keystone Pecan Co.

A. S. Perry, Field Secretary of the Keystone Pecan Company, is not only one of the best known pecan experts in America, but is also thoroughly in touch with the best pecan land in Southwest Georgia, of which he is a native. For practically a hundred years his family has lived or owned land in Calhoun County—his grandfather’s farm being only ten miles from our Calhoun County Plantation.

Was educated at the Southwest Georgia Agricultural and Military College (a branch of the State University) and also at Emory University. In addition to his general and agricultural education, he studied law and was admitted to practice in all courts of Georgia—specializing in Commercial Law.

Has had much practical experience in pecan growing—orchards near Cuthbert, established by Mr. Perry, are recognized as of such high grade that his services have been in great demand for establishing new orchards, top working old seedling orchards to paper shell pecans and similar expert horticultural work. In addition to the National Nut Growers’ Association, of which he has been elected secretary for the fourth successive term, he is a member of the Georgia-Florida Pecan Growers’ Association, Georgia Horticultural Society and Alabama Horticultural Society, and is in demand as a speaker on pecan culture before these organizations.

Why Mr. Coddington, Vice President of the Keystone Pecan Company, Bought More Units

After spending last Saturday and Monday inspecting the entire plantation, I am highly pleased with the progress made since my last inspection.

The trees of this year’s planting have taken hold in a remarkable fashion—the growth made since last March is so wonderful that it is hard to believe.

The trees of the preceding year’s plantings look well, but the greatest surprise of all was the earlier plantings. The trees in Block 1 A, for instance, prove the advantages of the Keystone Medium Height Pruning System. In many cases they have made five to six feet growth since they were pruned last Spring—and the thickening of the trunks and all the branches proves that those trees will be well able to carry heavy heads and bear large crops of pecans.

In the old bearing orchard the foliage was of the same healthy deep green color noted all over the plantation. But the best proof of their vigor was the fact that on many of these trees all the branches were loaded down with big nuts, nearly ripe.

After a lifetime contact with growing things, I am so well pleased with the conditions on the plantation that I have, as you know, purchased additional units.

Why Mr. Miller, Our Sales Manager, Bought Seven Additional Units

In May, 1915, I wrote you that my interest in this new industry and my ambition to some day own a pecan orchard dates back before the Keystone Pecan Co. was in existence. My study of this improved nut, its food value, the whole world to supply, its advantage over other tree crops, in harvesting, packing, shipping, not perishable, beside the long life of the trees and the small expense of up-keep after the fifth year, and the wonderful yield satisfied me that it was the safest and most profitable industry I know.

When you conceived and formed the Keystone Pecan Company with its co-operative plan, I saw my opportunity, and invested and purchased Units. Having been in business with you for so many years and knowing your capacity to plan big business and your ability to carry your plans to perfection, also the other members of the Company being known as clean, honest and progressive business men, gave me entire confidence. When you wanted me to become sales manager, I decided to visit the plantation. In company with some of my friends, I made my first visit. We were delighted, beyond expression, with everything. Competent management seemed to be working out a perfect system.

Now, after nearly five years of continual work with you in selling the Keystone Pecan Orchard units, I want to compliment you more strongly than ever on the way you have planned and are making good. The progress has been beyond our most sanguine expectations. Each year I have visited the plantation from one to three times accompanied in every case by Unit Owners. My friends have always been well pleased with what they saw on their orchards, but the marked progress the past year, under your expert plantation organization, is such as to fire every Unit Owner with the desire to own more units, fertilized, pruned, cultivated and cared for under your system.

A total of over 200 additional units have been purchased during the past year by unit owners who have visited the plantation with me. Many of these purchased their first units two, three, or four years ago, before visiting the orchards. This is the strongest evidence that the conditions on the plantation must be right. I was glad I could add seven more units to my own number during the past year, and hope to further increase my holdings. I can see now why Mr. William P. Bullard, your horticulturist, expressed surprise that the Company was selling these units at so low a figure.

WM. P. BULLARD, Executive Horticulturist Keystone Pecan Company. Former Secretary of the National Nut Growers’ Association.

Of William P. Bullard, the American Nut Journal of Rochester, N. Y., said: “He is a grower of many years’ active practical experience, and is familiar with all the problems of production and selling from the growers’ standpoint.”

Mr. Bullard is widely known as a careful, conservative man, who emphasizes the importance of thorough cultivation and fertilizing during the first five years, in order to establish orchards that will produce beyond the average. The favorable reputation of this large company and its well known desire to produce superior orchards for its unit owners, naturally draws to it experts of big calibre and broad experience. (See letter of Rev. Lutz, page 50.)

On these Calhoun County Plantations, we have as resident horticulturists and orchard managers, W. J. Moran and G. W. West, practical pecan men of long experience, and with the proven ability to produce orchards up to the highest standards. Mr. Moran has been in pecan orcharding since boyhood, having been first associated with the Simpson Nursery Co. and later having developed one of the finest orchards in the district; Mr. West is an excellent manager of large bodies of farm labor, with long experience in pecan tree cultivation.

The pruning of the older trees and the budding of the seedling trees in the nursery is all done by O. C. Starks, pruning expert, or under his supervision.

R. C. Simpson

R. C. Simpson, President of the Simpson Nursery Company of Monticello, Florida, and C. A. Simpson, Secretary and Treasurer of that Company, are both horticulturists of the highest reputation. They are pecan growers of recognized ability, and this plantation shows the advantages of their thorough skilled supervision.

R. C. Simpson, President of the Simpson Nursery Co., is now 38 years old. Born at Vincennes, Indiana, where both his grandfather and father were leading nurserymen. Graduated from Vincennes University in 1901 and from Cornell University in 1905. While in college he pursued the study of Agriculture, specializing in horticulture, and in 1905 was granted the degree of Bachelor of Science in Horticulture by Cornell University, one of the most advanced agricultural institutions in America.

Went South in 1906 to pursue his practical work in pecan culture and established the nurseries of which he is now the head. His fourteen years of practical experience in pecan growing in the South, backed by his long preliminary training have made him one of the most successful men in America in his line.

C. A. SIMPSON, Secretary and Treasurer of Simpson Nursery Company, First Vice President National Nut Growers’ Association.

C. A. Simpson

C. A. Simpson, Vice President, National Nut Growers’ Association, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Simpson Nursery Company, was born at Vincennes, Indiana, 1876—is 45 years old. Graduated from Vincennes University in 1895, and from Purdue University in 1898.

Has had business experience in engineering department of large telephone manufacturing company, and was Assistant to Chief Engineer, when he went South in 1911 to become his brother’s partner in the Simpson Nursery Co.

He has had wide experience and is widely known for his skill in propagating pecan trees and developing pecan groves.

J. B. Miller, of Baconton, Ga.

whose supervision extends over our Mitchell County Plantation, is a successful pecan grower and business man known throughout this district. He was born in this section, 45 years ago and has had lifelong contact with agriculture of all types in this district. He is among the pioneers in the pecan business, having developed successful orchards and a fine pecan nursery.

He is, in addition, well known as a manufacturer of Naval Stores, and dealer in general merchandise, and is connected with a leading banking institution of Baconton.

J. R. Miller, of Baconton, Ga.

Mr. Miller is a younger brother of Mr. J. B. Miller and has been associated with him in the handling of his farm interests and the development of his pecan nursery and orchard. He is an able business man, 40 years of age. He has acquired a reputation around this district as being one of the most practical farmers and pecan horticulturists and is particularly well versed in field practise and in the supervision of cultivation.

Assistant to the Miller brothers in the cultivation of these orchards is Mr. Dukes, who has had many years of experience in the care and development of pecan orchards and is in addition noted as one of the best experts in South Georgia, in the mechanical cultivation of the tree rows.

Alexander Pope Vason

Alexander Pope Vason is one of the foremost business men of Albany, Georgia, being president of the Fowltown Farms Company, and of the Albany Warehouse Company; Vice President of the Citizens’ First National Bank of Albany; Director of the Albany Trust Company, and a member of the Albany Board of Aldermen, Board of Education, etc. He is above all a practical horticulturist and farmer, having been the pioneer in the peach growing industry in South Georgia. While a graduate of the University of Georgia, it is as a practical man, able to get the best results from his farm labor, that he is most noted.

James P. Champion

James P. Champion, one of the leading business men of Albany, Georgia. He has been identified all his life with agricultural development in this district, having risen to the position of Manager, Secretary and Treasurer of the Albany Warehouse Company, manufacturers of fertilizer, and large cotton factors, because of his rare foresight in regard to farming and horticulture throughout the surrounding district. Was associated in first successful peach orchard in this district, the Vason and Champion Peach Orchard; is Secretary and Treasurer of the Fowltown Farms Company. Has served as Director of the Albany Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of Liberty Loan Committee of County in 3rd, 4th, and 5th drives. Director of Exchange Bank of Albany, Georgia.

Alva W. Barrett

Alva W. Barrett was born in North Carolina and lived in Florida in his early days. In 1910 became connected with the Albany Grocery Company, of Albany, Georgia, following which date he made most careful study of farms and farming throughout the district, handling up to 1917 a large amount of farm real estate. In 1917 he organized the Consolidated Motor Company, which has become under his management the leading automobile business of Southwest Georgia, continuing his farm development all the while.

He is the owner of the large, successful farms immediately adjoining our Lee County property, and is also a most substantial business man.

He has served as a director of the Albany National Bank and is now director of the Georgia Bank and Trust Company.

C. C. McKnight of Senoia, Georgia

C. C. McKnight of Senoia, Georgia, is known, not only as one of the largest land owners in his country, but also as a practical farmer and business man. He is 41 years old, was born in Georgia, and has for twenty-one years been known as a large dealer in mules, wagons, farm implements and supplies of which his practical farming experience makes him a keen judge. For fifteen years he has been active in the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Senoia, and has been Vice President since 1910—during which time deposits have increased nine fold. He is also Vice President of the Newnan Bank and Trust Company of Newnan, Georgia, which has a capital stock of one-half million dollars.

R. C. BERCKMANS, who has an international reputation as an authority on horticulture and nut growing.

Robert Craig Berckmans

Member of the P. J. Berckmans Company (Nurserymen), Augusta, Georgia, 1883–1917, when above business was sold by him and his brother. Nurseries were established by his father in 1856—he is of the third generation that has followed this profession.

He established the famous Berckmans Bros.’ Farm and Peach Orchards, at Mayfield, Georgia, some twenty years ago, the products of which are known on all Eastern and Western markets.

He has been identified with some of the largest developments in the South in horticultural lines, and is known to all horticulturists and nurserymen of the United States and many foreign countries.

Was President Georgia State Horticultural Society for the past ten years, succeeding his father, who was President for 34 years and the only President that the Society had ever had up to his death.

Member Georgia State Board of Entomology for past ten years and just re-appointed for the next six years.

Has traveled extensively in foreign countries, studying horticultural conditions with the view of applying these to conditions here in America when practical.

Think it over. Let your own judgment decide. Ask yourself these questions in regard to any investment under consideration.

What is the security back of my investment? In the Keystone Pecan Co. there is an acre of land which becomes yours on the payment of price shown on page 71. Remember this—you own the acre of land itself.

Land is the safeguard of this safe investment. Land cannot burn up, cannot be stolen; land cannot be wiped out by panics. The biggest trusts base their bond issues and their mortgages on land—yet the manufacturing plants which are built on that land may, due to panic, fail to produce enough to pay interest on the bonds or mortgages. Many of the largest industrial companies have suspended or decreased dividends since the European War ended, yet nature continues to provide foodstuffs and man still needs to eat them.

Productive land is the best of land investments. Tree crops are the profitable crops, which make land most productive. Note on page 37 that a leading farm paper tells of single pecan trees making more human food than a whole acre of Kentucky blue grass.

England Likes Hess Pecans

In Gardening, Illustrated, a prominent weekly published in London, England, we read: “The shells of the Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans are thin and easily broken and the body of the nut in this variety is larger, fuller and better flavored than is usual with pecans. The pecan may rightly be regarded as a food of very highest value. It contains 70 per cent. of fat. Its texture is delicate, and it can be digested easily. * * * The demand for the Paper Shell Pecan is constantly increasing and is well in front of the supply.”

67The pecan is the surest of profitable crops—because after the first five years, during which we assume all the risks, the pecan is among the hardiest of trees. Gathering the nuts and selling them represents the bulk of the effort required after that.

You cannot be deceived on this score—the plan on page 38 shows that our interests are mutual. Would we deceive ourselves—could we afford to take any chances if we did not know that the pecan is as hardy a tree as the hickory or oak, and a surer profit payer than any other crop of any sort?

We could not have such assurance on a fruit tree—for every farmer knows that apples and peaches are subject to many perils of frost, storm, blight, borer, and of loss in shipment. Pecans are hardier than hickory nuts, they cannot be shaken off the tree till ripe. Citrus fruits—like oranges and grape fruit—are liable to frost, and spoil so quickly that it is impossible to hold them long before marketing. Paper Shell Pecans can be held a year without losing their delicious flavor and nutritive value; for nature has provided them with a perfect container (shell) which shuts out impurities and prevents deterioration.

There can be no glut of fine pecans—because they can be raised only in limited territory, they have the whole world for a market and the whole year for a selling season. As the famous Luther Burbank well says (see page 26): “We have now one pecan where we ought to have a million to create a market.”

An assured increasing market for perfected pecans, at an excellent profit, is back of every dollar you invest here.

The young man. To provide an income for later years. “He must,” says the American Fruit and Nut Journal, “look to a business that will increase in value and returns. The improved pecan orchard fulfills all these requirements. It is safe, pays little at the beginning, but increases its income gradually, and when ten or fifteen years old will yield ten times more than the same money would in any other business.”

In Health Culture, for December, 1915, we read: “There is but a small territory in the United States in which soil conditions and climate are right for pecans. Of the half million budded pecan trees in the world nearly half are in Calhoun and Dougherty Counties, Georgia. Sufficient is known of the yield to claim that this half of the budded trees has produced far more than one-half of the crop.”

“The chief interest in the pecan centers in its high food value for mankind. The flavor is greatly in its favor; also the pecan surpasses all others in the percentage of fat, the comparison being made with walnuts, peanuts, filberts, almonds, and cocoanuts.”

To provide now while his earning power is at its greatest, for those years when his energy begins to ebb—let him plant his money where it grows. As J. B. Wight said before the American Pomological Society: “Plant a pecan grove, and when you are old, it will support you.... It will lighten your burdens while here, and when you are gone your children and your children’s children will rise up and call you blessed.”

To provide an annuity for their wives and families, which will exceed in annual return any equal investment for the purpose and which will yield a growing income each year. No father wants to look forward and see the home broken up for lack of income, the wife deprived of comfort and the children deprived of education—because he put off till the morrow, which never comes, this investment for their protection.

Business and professional incomes vary greatly. There should be some provision for the years of reduced earning power—when conditions beyond your control cut into a mere fraction the satisfactory income of last year. Because pecan orchards have their foundation in land, because Nature yields her crops abundantly despite wars and panics, because the demand for Paper Shell Pecans was not affected by the hard times in the winter of 1914–15, you know that here is a dependable source of income. The period of uncertainty on pecans is the first five years—when we assume the risk!

says Ben Franklin. Are you saving for the “rainy day”? Ask yourself that question—and insist on a fair answer.

Accept no excuses—excuses will not provide for you and your loved ones in years to come.

Don’t say, “I’ll begin to invest when I get a larger income.” If your income were reduced a tenth today—you would manage to live on the balance. Put that tenth now where it will protect you against “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

Orchard Unit Applications Are Enclosed For Your Convenience

Select Which You May Desire, Full Cash Payment Or Deferred Payments

Keystone Pecan Company

Plantations in Calhoun, Dougherty, Lee and

Mitchell Counties, contiguous to Albany, Georgia

Northern Office

Woolworth Building, Lancaster, Pa.

President’s Office

Manheim, Lancaster County, Pa.

Please Mail all Applications and Checks to Keystone Pecan Company, Manheim, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

If any unit holder, who is paying for his unit on the monthly payment plan, and who has made all his payments promptly on the dates called for by contract, should die after twelve monthly payments, in addition to the initial payment, and all subsequent payments having become due up to the time of his death have been paid, but before his entire contract price of $650 has been paid in full, the company will, upon satisfactory proof of death (suicide excepted), furnish to his beneficiary a deed to his unit or units and all further payments on same shall cease. This protects the family or estate of the unit holder who meets his monthly payments promptly against all possibility of loss due to his death. The right to change the beneficiary is reserved to the unit holder, provided he notifies the Company in writing.

In case of my death please make deed to

——————————————————————————-

(Here insert name of beneficiary)

——————————————————————————-

(Signature of purchaser)

Each Orchard Unit will be sold under the following conditions: $10 down when application is made for the Orchard Unit, and $10 per month per Unit until it is paid in full. No interest is charged on deferred payments. Should one prefer to pay full cash for one’s Orchard Unit, a discount of ten per cent. will be allowed on the amount of cash paid, and the deed will be delivered at once.

Upon receipt of an application, together with the first payment, an Orchard contract will be prepared and executed and forwarded. Upon the completion of the payments, the deed will be delivered.

Remember that the price quoted covers every expense of the five-year development period.

The contract of sale shows that the purchaser may, after the five-year development period is over, locate his home on his units and look after his own trees, managing his property entirely independent of the company. But we believe that our management and our method of marketing will prove so economical, efficient and satisfactory that the unit owners will always want the company to manage their units and harvest and market their pecans for them.

If any unit owner, who is paying for his unit on the monthly payment plan, and who has made all his payments promptly on the dates called for by the contract, should die after twelve monthly payments in addition to the initial payment, and all subsequent payments having become due up to the time of his death have been paid, but before his entire contract price has been paid in full, the company will upon satisfactory proof of death furnish to his heirs a deed to his unit or units and all further payments on the same shall cease. This plan protects the family or estate of the unit holder who meets his monthly payments promptly against all possibility of loss due to his death.

The Pecan Tree—Nature’s Most Powerful Food Producer

A leading farm paper, in an article on pecans, published the following, “The nut is nutritious, very nutritious, and we already have numerous instances of one good big tree making more human food than the best acre of blue grass in all Kentucky. Plainly, the tree-nut method beats the grass-meat method of feeding men. Tree crops are to be the agriculture of the future.”

In natural colors from photograph of Lake Marcelia, taken week of June 16, 1919. Note on the large live oak tree at right the beautiful red flowered trumpet vine which wends its way among the glossy green ferns, and further out on the branches the beautiful grayish Spanish moss which stands out so vividly against the luxuriant evergreen leaves of this tree. Mr. Cudabec, orchard unit owner from Denver, Colorado, seated at end of boat, is holding up a fine black bass, measuring a foot in length, which he caught after he rowed but a few rods from the firm, sandy beach which surrounds this lake.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

ELAM G. HESS, Manheim, Lancaster County, Pa.
Keystone Pecan Orchard Plantations	President Keystone Pecan Company
in Southwest Georgia—Calhoun, Dougherty, Lee and Mitchell Counties	Pennsylvania State Vice President of National Nut Growers Association

Paper Shell Pecans

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Few of the Noted Authorities and References

Government Statistics.

Famous Food Authorities.

Prominent Magazines Quoted.

Noted Agricultural Authorities.

FOREWORD

Right Foods—The Increasing Demand

Why Spend Millions For Imported Nuts?

Poultry Gains Fail to Equal Increase of Population

“Shall We Cease to Eat Meat?”

Why America Must Eat Less Animal Flesh

Nut Meat Gives Fat and all Needed Protein

Nut Meat is Superior to Animal Flesh

Pecans Furnish The Balanced Ration

Nuts—A Staple, Necessary Food

Nuts Versus Beefsteak

Nuts—The Safer Source of Protein

Grow Pecans—The Ideal “Fat” Food

Twenty Times As Much Food Per Acre

Nut Meat The Real Meat

The Finer The Nut—The Greater The Demand

“The Most Prized of All Nuts For Domestic Uses”

The Pecan—The Year-round Nut

“Among the Highest Priced Horticultural Products of America”

“What is The Paper Shell Pecan?”

“Your Pecan Is Superior To Our Walnut,” Says Burbank

The Hardiest of All Nut Trees

The Pecan Makes More Progress Than Other Nuts Made In Centuries

The First Three Steps In Establishing Paper Shell Pecan Orchards

First, the Seedling Pecan Nut is Planted in the Nursery

A Few Years Later in the Same Nursery Corner

The Sturdiest Budded Trees are later Transplanted while Dormant, into the Orchard Units

Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans

We have Sold Tons of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans

A Few Typical Cases of Re-orders

“The Finest Nuts I Ever Saw”

Says the world famous food authority, Dr. J. H. Kellogg

Battle Creek Sanitarium

From Another Food Authority

More Evidence of Superiority on Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans

The Highest Priced Pecans—Yet Demand far Exceeds Supply

A leading agricultural publication says:

Why This Phenomenal Demand for Finer Pecans

Nuts Meet the Demand For Uncooked Foods

Pecans For Sundaes and Candies, Etc.

“A Greater Future Than Any Nut Raised In This Country”

Maximum Food Values In Condensed Form

From one of the largest nut-tree nurserymen in the world:

A Test Which Proves The Best Pecans Cheapest In The End

More Pecan Orchards—A Vital Necessity

How Pecan Trees Do Grow

Our Co-operative Profit-Sharing System

We Sell You The Land, And Establish Your Orchard

The Practical Answer—The Unit Plan

Our Pecan Orchard Plantations Are Divided Into One-Acre Units

SERVICE Which Build Productive Orchards

One of the Safest Industries—The Profit is O. K.

3½ Years’ Growth

Our Figures are Intentionally Conservative

An Increase in Value of $100 per Year per Acre

Why Do We Sell Orchard Units?

Our Investors Are Found All Over The World

Finds His 45–Acre Orchard Better Than He Expected

Your Extra Efforts Lead to Bigger Results Says Unit Owner From the Klondike