ALMOND CULTURE LN CALLFORNLA. 337 



carry in the pocket, would save money by paying a little more 

 for paper-shells, to say nothing of convenience in cracking es- 

 pecially as a pocket nut. Those who buy them for children in- 

 clined to use their teeth as nut-crackers would save something 

 worth more than money. The child who disobeys and clandes- 

 tinely cracked his almonds that way would not be damaging his 

 teeth as much as if chewing a hard crust of bread or a dry toast. 

 On the other hand, many persons, after their attention has been 

 called to the subject, like, or think they like, the flavor of the 

 harder-shelled Standards and Languedocs better than of the 

 paper-shells ; and de gustibus non est disputandum. The writer 

 hereof has no preference. He never did eat almonds, nor any 

 other imported nuts except Brazil-nuts, when he could get the 

 native nuts of the Mississippi Valley. 



If this is due to early associations, the almond would by the 

 same token be the favorite nut of the younger generation of Cali- 

 fornia almond-growers. They had no eatable wild nuts, their na- 

 tive walnut tree, transplanted to their homes for its beauty, bear- 

 ing a worthless nut. The almond, of all their crops, was best 

 adapted to cultivate and felicitate home life. They harvested it 

 themselves, knocking the nuts off the tree in the daytime, husk- 

 ing what they could, and carrying the rest into the house to be 

 husked by all the nimble fingers of the large, old-fashioned fam- 

 ilies at night. Prices were high then, and every pound husked 

 meant twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty cents. With such 

 prices, never-failing crops, and little or no cash expense, it is no 

 wonder that almond-growing became popular, nor that the solid- 

 est farmers attribute their present comfortable circumstances to 

 almonds. Well may they turn from these degenerate dime-a- 

 pound seasons of more than occasional failure, when the inevi- 

 table Chinaman, whom the Exclusion Act has exalted into a grasp- 

 ing monopolist of labor, takes half the proceeds of the harvest, 

 and takes it before the producer gets the first penny of it into his 

 own fingers, back to those cheery days of old. 



Cured ready for market, the nuts are stored or shipped just 

 like barley, the same coarse gunny-sack being used. Its ca- 

 pacity is that of the cotton sacks used by Eastern farmers, by them 

 branded and kept on the farm. The California sack is also often 

 branded, but goes all the way to the final market and never comes 

 back. All grain is shipped from Pacific ports in that manner. 

 And, though the single sack costs but seven to ten cents, the 

 whole expense is a great burden estimated for the State at 

 $2,000,000 a year on the California producer. He can not escape 

 it, for there are no elevators. Where grain has to be handled 

 from five to ten times before reaching its consumer, the sack be- 

 comes a still more expensive crudity, shaving down the producer's 



VOL. XLI. 25 



