126.— Picker's ticket. 



556 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



perfected by Mr. Benedict, of Dundee, although the idea seems to 

 have originated with Uriah Hair, of the same place. 



There are various methods of keeping accounts with berry pickers. 

 Perhaps the commonest mode in large patches is a simple ticket, 

 like Fig. 126, which is given to the picker in exchange for the 



berries which are delivered. There are 

 tickets of various denominations, the 

 figures representing quarts, so that any 

 number of quarts can be represented by 

 combinations of tickets. These tickets 

 are so often lost that they may soon come 

 to be a nuisance. Several growers^ 

 therefore, have designed tickets which 

 can be tied to the person by a string, 

 which bear the picker's name, and in which the numbers are 

 cancelled by a punch. Two good styles are shown, full size, in Figs. 

 127 and 128. In the latter are two styles of punch marks, repre- 

 senting different foremen. Other growers abolish all ticket systems 

 outright, and keep a book account with each picker. The Yeo- 

 manses, at Walworth, do this, and what is better they pay by the 

 pound. A small flat-topped grocers' scale is taken to the shed in 

 the berry field. Each picker is numbered, and he picks in an eight- 

 pound Climax grape basket. As he comes to the shed, he slips his 

 number into the basket on a bit of card or splint, and he sees the 

 basket weighed and the credit given ; or, if the picker has no 

 suspicions, the foreman may gather the baskets from the field. 

 They pay 2 cents a quart, or 1.6 cent a pound (since a quart weighs 

 1^ pounds), but the price can be dropped to 1 cent a pound in Greggs. 

 A word may be said, in passing, about berry stands. The best 

 one which I know is the Dundee stand, shown in Fig. 129. This 

 holds six quart boxes. It is strong, and of handy shape ; but its 

 chief merit is the ease with which the stands can be stacked with- 

 out injuring the fruit. See the stack of them at the right in 

 Fig. 114. A commoner style is a six-basket stand on four legs, one 

 being shown in front of the man in Fig. 123. 



After all is said and done, how much of his crop shall the grower 

 evaporate ? Mr. Hair says that when the price of berries goes 

 below eight cents a quart, the berries go into the evaporator. Mr. 

 Yeomans puts them in the evaporator when they fail to net seven 

 cents a quart. An efficient evaporator upon any place, even though 



