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[Illustration:

  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


[Illustration]

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._




                           TABLE OF CONTENTS


 Economic Value of the Pecan, 4, 10, 14, 15

 Right Foods—The Increasing Demand, 5

 Less Animal Flesh—More Pecan Meat, 5, 6, 16

 Shall We Cease to Eat Meat?, 7, 8

 Nut Meat Gives Fat and All Needed Protein, 9

 Nuts a Staple Necessary Food, 11

 Nuts Versus Beefsteak, 12

 Nuts, the Safer Source of Protein, 13

 Grow Pecans—the Ideal Fat Food, 14

 Twenty Times as Much Food Per Acre, 15

 The Finer the Nut the Greater the Demand, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

 The Pecan—the Year Round Nut, 18

 What Is the Paper Shell Pecan?, 19, 21

 The Hardiest of All Nut Trees, 20

 Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34

 Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans Please All Who Eat Them, 25, 26, 27, 28

 We Have Sold Tons of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans, 24

 Nuts Meet the Demand for Uncooked Food, 30

 Maximum Food Value in Condensed Form, 32

 More Pecan Orchards—A Vital Necessity, 35

 How Pecan Trees do Grow (Illustrated), 22, 36, 43, 45

 Our Co-operative, Profit-Sharing System, 37, 38, 39, 40

 Service—Which Builds Productive Orchards, 41

 Each Acre-Unit Increases in Value $100.00 a Year, 46

 Units Fully Paid in Case of Death, 70

 One of the Safest Industries—the Profit is O. K., 42

 Yield of Orchard Units, 42

 Our Investors All Over the World, 48

 Letters from Owners Who Visited Our Plantation, 49, 50, 52, 59

 An Ideal Southern Home, 51, 52

 Investigate the Company—Its Management and Its Officers, 53 to 65

 No Investment Could Be Safer, 66, 67

 Who Should Invest, 67, 68

 Application Blank, 69, 70


             A Few of the Noted Authorities and References


                         Government Statistics.

 U. S. Congressional Records, 4, 5, 10, 30, 38

 Alabama Dept. of Agriculture, 4

 U. S. Census Bureau, 5, 6, 16, 30

 President Wilson, 5

 U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 57

 U. S. Food Administration, 8


                        Famous Food Authorities.

 Dr. Graham Lusk, 7, 13

 Physical Culture Mag., 8, 13

 Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, 8

 Dr. Gordon J. Saxon, 8

 Dr. J. H. Kellogg, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 26, 30

 Professor Cajori, of Yale, 11

 Dr. Hoobler, Detroit, 11, 15

 Alfred W. McCann, 13

 Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, 13

 Dr. Elmer Lee, 26


                      Prominent Magazines Quoted.

 Literary Digest, 8

 Good Health, 8, 11, 13, 14

 Journal of the American Medical Association, 11


                    Noted Agricultural Authorities.

 Luther Burbank, 4, 19, 26, 67

 American Nut Journal, 19

 Field Illustrated, 7

 Prof. H. Harold Hume, 9

 Prof. Henry, of Wisconsin Univ., 14

 E. Lee Worsham, 18, 21

    Copyright, 1921, Elam G. Hess, Manheim, Pa., Issued Jan., 1921.

[Illustration:

  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.
]




                                FOREWORD


=Food is the need of the day—of every day.=

=Food is the need of the future.=

=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. You 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?

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

 “_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.




                   Right Foods—The Increasing Demand


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.”

Correct, provided you supply the right food.

[Sidenote: Food standards are changing]

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 22–3⁄10 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.

[Sidenote: Less beef, less pork, more nut meat]

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 22–3⁄10 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.

[Sidenote: A loss of twenty-nine pounds per capita on animal flesh]

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 Gains Fail to Equal Increase of Population


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.

[Sidenote: Nut consumption increases thirty-nine times as greatly as
           population]

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.

[Sidenote: The public forced to cut down on animal flesh—grazing land
           scarcer]

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.




                     “Shall We Cease to Eat Meat?”


[Sidenote: Available supply of pork, beef and mutton shrinking]

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.

[Illustration]

                     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

                   Copyright 1919, Field Illustrated

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.

[Sidenote: Animals must not compete with human beings for cereal foods]

“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.




                 Why America Must Eat Less Animal Flesh


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.

[Sidenote: Americans use twice as much animal flesh as any European
           nation]

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.”

[Sidenote: Excessive in cost, wasteful, and the cause of illness]

  “‘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.”

[Sidenote: Fat is needed; securing it through eating animal flesh is the
           source of trouble]

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.

[Sidenote: Fat is essential to withstand exposure]

“=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.

[Sidenote: Two to four ounces daily are needed]

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.




               Nut Meat Gives Fat and all Needed Protein


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:

[Sidenote: Nut production destined to exceed animal industry]

  “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.”

[Sidenote: Pecans supply the proper ratio of fat and protein]

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.

[Sidenote: The public is changing from animal fats]

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 Superior to Animal Flesh


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?

[Sidenote: Nut meat is readily digestible]

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.




                     Nuts—A Staple, Necessary Food


[Sidenote: Long valued for diabetics—a good food for all]

“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.”

[Sidenote: “Not luxuries—but among the most nutritive of foods”]

“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.”

[Sidenote: Ideal food for nursing mothers]

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.)

[Illustration:

  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.
]




                         Nuts Versus Beefsteak


[Sidenote: Animal flesh supplies too much protein for bodily needs]

  “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.

[Sidenote: Nuts—clean, sweet and pure—do not deteriorate like animal
           flesh]

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=.”




                    Nuts—The Safer Source of Protein


[Sidenote: Why add to your load the burden of the tired steer?]

“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.”

[Sidenote: “Do we need meat?” asks Alfred W. McCann, famous food
           authority]

“=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.

[Sidenote: “No” answers the world’s most authoritative food body]

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.”




                    Grow Pecans—The Ideal “Fat” Food


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.

[Sidenote: Nine-tenths of our corn fed to animals]

  “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=.”

[Sidenote: Seven or eight million acres of nut trees would supply all
           needed fats]

“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.

[Illustration:

  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.
]




                   Twenty Times As Much Food Per Acre


[Sidenote: 3,000,000 calories per acre from nuts; only 150,000 from
           beef]

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=.”

[Sidenote: Nuts as a Substitute for milk and eggs]

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=.”




                         Nut Meat The Real Meat


[Sidenote: Nuts imported 1917, nearly ten times as great as in 1900]

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.

[Sidenote: Pecan nut meat a year-round necessity]

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.

When J. C. Cooper wrote in a leading agricultural weekly:

  “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.




                The Finer The Nut—The Greater The Demand


[Sidenote: Increased demand is for finer nuts]

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?

=First=—Thinness of shell and ability to get out the kernels whole.

=Second=—Superior flavor and food value.

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

=Fourth=—Ease of keeping nuts for longer periods and using them readily.

[Sidenote: Paper Shell Pecans meet every demand]

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.”

[Illustration:

  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—The Year-round Nut


[Sidenote: Can be raised at best in a forty-mile radius]

=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.




                    “What is The Paper Shell Pecan?”


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.

[Sidenote: Wild Pecan—a staple food among Indians]

[Illustration]

=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.

Like the oak, no one ever knew a Pecan tree to die of old age.

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 Hardiest of All Nut Trees


[Sidenote: Pecan trees fear no drought]

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=.

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: Seedling superior to wild grown 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.

The Paper Shell Pecan

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=.

[Sidenote: The paper shell pecan—the queen of all nuts]

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.

The paper shell pecan is the Queen of all nuts.

[Sidenote: Quality unequalled but supply is limited]

[Illustration]

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.”




    The First Three Steps In Establishing Paper Shell Pecan Orchards


        First, the Seedling Pecan Nut is Planted in the Nursery

[Illustration:

  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

[Illustration:

  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:

  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.)
]

[Illustration:

  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.
]




                     Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans


[Sidenote: Selected for finest flavor—and superior quality]

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.

[Sidenote: Sold the world over—under this Money Back Guarantee]

[Illustration:

  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.

[Illustration:

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




           We have Sold Tons of Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans


[Sidenote: The 12 oz. gift box leads to orders for 10 lb. cartons or 175
           lb. barrels]

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.

[Sidenote: America does not produce enough pecans of this standard]

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.

                                                           ELAM G. HESS.




                    A Few Typical Cases of Re-orders


                                        Detroit, Mich., Jan. 30, 1919.

[Sidenote: Bought twenty pounds—orders 75 pounds for next season]

  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.

                                                                 W. H.

                                   Sawyerville, Quebec, Mar. 18, 1919.

  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.

                                                              R. G. B.

                                           Reading, Pa., Jan. 6, 1919.

[Sidenote: Had 70 pounds orders 40 pounds more]

  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.”

                                                              W. O. L.

                                                         Nov. 7, 1919.

[Sidenote: Orders 3 barrels later]

  Please enter my order for 3 barrels of fancy grade pecans.

                                                              W. O. L.

                                                         Dec. 2, 1919.

  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.

                                                              W. O. L.

[Sidenote: Buying in 50 lb. lots]

  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.

  Nov. 27, 1917, sent check for $50 in payment of 50 pounds.

  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.

[Sidenote: 16 pounds in less than three months]

  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.”

  Jan. 24, 1918, sent check for $10 for more nuts.

  Feb. 9, 1918, bought orchard units.

[Sidenote: “Wish I had a barrel”]

  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.”




                      “The Finest Nuts I Ever Saw”


        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

                                   Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 18, 1918.

  Mr. Elam G. Hess, Pres.,
    Keystone Pecan Co.,

  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.

                                                        J. H. Kellogg.


                      From Another Food Authority

                                         New York City, Dec. 27, 1916.

  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.

                     Dr. Elmer Lee (_Formerly Editor Health Culture_).

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.=”




     More Evidence of Superiority on Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans


                                        Covington, Ky., Jan. 16, 1919.

[Sidenote: Over 200 pounds in a single order]

  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.

                                                              F. J. L.

                                  Auckland, New Zealand, Mar. 8, 1920.

[Sidenote: “Perfect” says New Zealand purchaser]

  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.

                                                              F. L. G.

                                        Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 29, 1919.

[Sidenote: Food value superior to beef]

  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.

                                                        H. J. W., M.D.

                                              Goulburn, Jan. 14, 1918.

  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.

                                                              C. F. M.

                                         Cleveland, O., Dec. 24, 1919.

[Sidenote: “The finest nut on earth”]

  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.

                                                                 M. M.

                                      New Orleans, La., Dec. 30, 1918.

  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.

                                                              C. F. L.

                                      South Bend, Ind., Dec. 13, 1919.

[Sidenote: Liked 10 lb. box, orders two more]

  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.

                                                                 A. J.

                                          San Jose, Cal., May 3, 1919.

[Sidenote: By all odds the best]

  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.

                                                         W. S. M., Jr.

                                          Wharton, Tex., Dec. 4, 1919.

[Sidenote: Wonderful flavor; it is all that you claim]

  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.

                                                              R. A. G.

                                                        Quanah, Texas.

[Sidenote: More praise from Texas]

  “Finest pecan I ever ate.”

                                                                 E. S.




        The Highest Priced Pecans—Yet Demand far Exceeds Supply


[Sidenote: A few more commendations from many received]

  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.”

[Sidenote: Re-orders and the cash—prove superiority]

  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.

[Sidenote: Impossible to supply dealers’ demands]

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=.

[Sidenote: New York City can consume the world’s supply]

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.)




              Why This Phenomenal Demand for Finer Pecans


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.

[Sidenote: The superiority of these finer pecans]

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.

[Sidenote: The movement toward nut meat as the “true meat”]

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.

[Sidenote: By religious, ethical and hygienic organizations]

[Illustration:

  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.




                Nuts Meet the Demand For Uncooked Foods


[Sidenote: The most perfect uncooked food]

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.

[Sidenote: Less butter-fat demanded, more nut-fat]

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.




                  Pecans For Sundaes and Candies, Etc.


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.

[Sidenote: The pecan is the concentrated form of nourishment.]

[Illustration:

  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.




                 Maximum Food Values In Condensed Form


[Sidenote: Greater digestibility]

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.

[Sidenote: Convenient, condensed nutriment]

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.”




        A Test Which Proves The Best Pecans Cheapest In The End


[Sidenote: A comparison of equal weights of five grades]

A comparison was made of equal weights of the following grades of
pecans:

=First=, Common wild pecans selling at about 25c per pound.

=Second=, Common seedling selling at about 30c per pound.

=Third=, Selected seedling selling at an average price of 40c per pound.

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

=Fifth=, Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans selling at $1.25 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.

[Sidenote: Tested on five counts]

=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.

The 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=.

[Sidenote: The most meat per dollar from the highest priced nuts]

=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.

                                         Oskaloosa, Ia., Jan. 8, 1920.

  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.

                                                                 R. S.




                 More Pecan Orchards—A Vital Necessity


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

America demands more fine pecans—it is hungry for them.

[Sidenote: “Once a pecan eater, always a pecan eater”]

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.=”

Wherever the improved pecan goes—the world over—it creates its own
market.

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.

[Illustration:

  Small branches showing how pecan nuts grow.
]




                        How Pecan Trees Do Grow


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

[Illustration: June 1919 ↢ SAME TREE ↣ July 7, 1920]

 Above—C. L. Cudebec, of Denver,     Above—A picture to same scale, of
 Col., and Fred. W. Burger, of       same tree, one year later. The
 Boulder, Col., (right) at a tree    growth in one year is shown by
 planted in 1919 on one of Mr.       portion of tree above hand of boy
 Burger’s units. Photo six months    (Maurice Forman, of Nogales,
 after planting.                     Arizona).

[Illustration:

  Pecan trees on our plantations—3½ years old.
]




                 Our Co-operative Profit-Sharing System


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]

Footnote 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.

[Sidenote: Trained specialists and our exceptional equipment on your
           units]

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.

[Sidenote: Twenty Paper Shell Pecan trees of standard varieties on each
           acre-unit]

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.




            We Sell You The Land, And Establish Your Orchard


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.

[Sidenote: All trees that die replaced without charge]

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.

[Sidenote: Crops marketed for you]

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.

[Sidenote: Sold on easy monthly payments]

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.

[Sidenote: You own the land]

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.




                   The Practical Answer—The Unit Plan


[Sidenote: Expert supervision at lower cost than hired help by our plan]

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.

[Sidenote: Co-operative marketing assures higher profits]

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.

[Sidenote: Live at home raise pecans in Georgia]

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.




     Our Pecan Orchard Plantations Are Divided Into One-Acre Units


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

In each of these units twenty pecan trees are planted.

=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:

  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.




                SERVICE Which Build Productive Orchards


Intensive cultivation by Mechanical Power—Mule Power—Man Power.

[Illustration:

  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.

[Illustration:

  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.




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


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

   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

[Illustration]

[Illustration: ½ Year Old 1½ Years Old 2½ Years Old 3½ Years Old]

J. 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. A. Kernodle reports 17 pounds per tree the sixth year from a group of
trees.

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.

[Illustration:

  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.




                            3½ Years’ Growth


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.

[Illustration:

  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.




               Our Figures are Intentionally Conservative


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.




                     Why Do We Sell Orchard Units?


We can answer that in a few words.

To raise money to establish more pecan orchards.

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.

[Illustration:

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




               Our Investors Are Found All Over The World


[Illustration:

  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.

[Sidenote: Investigations on the grounds prove our statements
           conservative]

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.

[Sidenote: We are glad to have you visit the plantations]

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.




           Finds His 45–Acre Orchard Better Than He Expected


[Illustration:

  Sturdy main branches, resulting from our Keystone System of Pruning.
]

       =Writes Prominent Manufacturer of Muskegon Heights, Mich.=

                                            Muskegon Heights, Mich.,
                                                        July 15, 1920.

  Keystone Pecan Company,
  Manheim, Pa.

  Gentlemen:

  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 growth already made shows that your methods produce unusual
  results.

  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.

                           Yours very truly,

                                                      HENRY E. MORTON.


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

                                                       April 21, 1920.

  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.

                                A. E. Pretty, Dawson, Yukon Territory.


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

                                        Pennsburg, Pa., June 26, 1919.

  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.

                                                  (Rev.) Geo. W. Lutz.


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

                   238 E. 46th St., Los Angeles, Calif., July 6, 1920.

  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.

                                                      A. Robt. Hauter.


                 Buying 10 More Units—A Good Investment

                                        Fleetwood, Pa., July 14, 1920.

  Ritter Hosiery Company.

  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.

                                                      Frank R. Ritter.




                         An Ideal Southern Home


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.

[Illustration:

  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 outdoor life is the
natural, healthful life the year round.

[Illustration:

  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.

                                     Boulder, Colorado, June 26, 1919.

  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.

                                                      Fred. W. Burger.




               Investigate The Company And Its Management


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:

[Sidenote: Why your investment is secure]

=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.

=Second. 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.”

[Illustration:

  ELAM G. HESS
]


                              ELAM G. HESS

President of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Reference: Keystone National Bank, Manheim, Pa.

[Illustration:

  L. B. CODDINGTON
]


                            L. B. Coddington

First Vice President of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Note Mr. Coddington’s letter on page 59.

Reference: Summit Trust Co., Summit, N. J.

[Illustration:

  ENOS H. HESS
]


                              Enos H. Hess

Second Vice President of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Formerly a director of the Ideal Cocoa Company, Lititz, Pa.

Reference: Farmers Trust Co., Lancaster, Pa.


                            Willis G. Kendig

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company, and Corporation Counsel

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.

Reference: Fulton National Bank, Lancaster, Pa.

[Illustration:

  M. G. ESBENSHADE
]


                            M. G. Esbenshade

Secretary and Treasurer of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Reference: The Agricultural Trust Company of Lancaster, Pa.

[Illustration:

  B. L. JOHNSON
]


                             B. L. Johnson

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Reference: Penn Counties Trust Co.

[Illustration:

  JOSEPH SEITZ
]


                              Joseph Seitz

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company

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

Reference: Northern National Bank of Lancaster, Pa.

  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.

[Illustration:

  THOS. F. MILLER
]


                            Thomas F. Miller

Sales Manager of the Keystone Pecan Company

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.

Reference: Merchants National Bank.

[Illustration:

  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.

Reference: Georgia Bank and Trust Co., Cuthbert, Georgia.




 Our Vice President and Sales Manager Have Both Added to Their Holdings
                 on Our Plantation During the Past Year

                        Read Their Letters Below


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

                                   Murray Hill, N. J., Oct. 1st, 1919.

  _My Dear Mr. Hess_:

  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.

                                                     L. B. CODDINGTON.


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

                       968 Jackson St., Allentown, Pa., Dec. 29, 1919.

  _Dear Mr. Hess_:

  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.

                                                      THOS. F. MILLER.

[Illustration:

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




  William P. Bullard, Horticulturist on our Calhoun County Plantations


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.)

Reference: Georgia National Bank, Albany, Ga.

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.




                     Our Dougherty Co. Organization


[Illustration:

  R. C. SIMPSON, President of Simpson Nursery Company.
]


                             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.

Bank Reference: Bank of Monticello, Monticello, Florida.

[Illustration:

  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.

Bank Reference: Bank of Monticello, Monticello, Florida.




                    Our Mitchell County Organization


                     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.




                      Our Lee County Organization


[Illustration:

  ALEXANDER POPE VASON
]


                          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.

[Illustration:

  JAMES P. CHAMPION
]


                           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.




                      Our Lee County Organization


[Illustration:

  ALVA W. BARRETT
]


                            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.

[Illustration:

  C. C. McKNIGHT
]


                   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.

[Illustration:

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


                         Robert Craig Berckmans

Horticulturist and Fruit Grower

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.

President, American Association of Nurserymen for two years.

President, Southern Association of Nurserymen.

President, Ornamental Growers’ Association of America.

Vice President, American Pomological Society.

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

Member of many horticultural societies in Europe.

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

Member Executive Committee, National Nut Growers’ Association.

Author of many articles on horticulture.




                       No Investment Can Be Safer


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.

[Sidenote: Productive land—yielding needed food of highest value]

=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.

[Illustration:

  A 3½ YEAR OLD TREE ON OUR PLANTATIONS
]


                       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.”

=The 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.




             Who Should Invest In Keystone Pecan Orchards?


[Sidenote: The young man]

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.”




             Who Should Invest In Keystone Pecan Orchards?


[Sidenote: The man of middle age and above]

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.”

[Sidenote: Husbands and parents]

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.

[Sidenote: Business and professional people—all men and women with
           foresight]

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!

                 “For want and age save while you may,
                 No morning sun shines the whole day.”

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




                    Units Full Paid in Case of Death


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)




                    $10 Down Per Unit, $10 Per Month


[Sidenote: A discount of ten per cent. for full cash payment]

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.

[Sidenote: A home site on your units]

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.

[Sidenote: Units full paid in case of death]

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.”

[Illustration:

  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.
]

[Illustration]

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                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
 5. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
      character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
      curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.