How To Write Special Feature Articles, page 259 by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
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All this set Manager Peet to thinking. "Strickland hasn't got an automobile and has lots of other work to do," he reasoned; "but why, if he had a car and could give all the time necessary to such work, couldn't the same results be had in orchards all over the county? Why can't this farm bureau put on a spraying service?"
He put the idea up to the executive committee of the bureau. The idea was good, they agreed, but it would cost at least $500 to try it out the first year. The bureau didn't have the available funds.
"Tell you what," they finally said: "If you want to get out and rustle up 500 new members at one dollar each to pay for this thing, we'll authorize it."
Peet was telling me about it. "Here the bureau had been working for four years with a paid-up membership of about 375," he said, "and if I believed in my idea I had to get 500 more by spring. It was February eighth when the committee gave me this decision. Well, I did it in time to start the ball that spring!"
He got the new members because he had a service to sell them. Arrangements were made whereby the county was divided into six zones, varying in soil and topographic conditions. Criterion orchards were selected in each zone. The inspector, with the aid of daily telegraphic weather reports and through constant inspection of the criterion orchards, decided when the hour struck for the most effective spraying of these orchards.
In the meantime Manager Peet and the inspector had worked out a code system for spraying instructions and put this into the hands of the growers in the six zones. When it came time to spray, the telephones from headquarters in Lockport were put to work and the code message sent to certain orchardists; these in turn repeated the instructions to a number of other orchardists agreed upon, until every member had received the message.
The scheme has worked. The first year there were 800 members who took this service; the second year--1918--there were 900; this year there are 1500. I