244 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



still used in some parts of the west, but in most cases apples packed 

 in boxes are placed tier upon tier. This in expensive, but the cost 

 of grading is small compared with the cost of getting the fruit to mar- 

 ket, and the returns usually justify the outlay. The points to be noted 

 are that great distance from markets and high transportation charges 

 have forced the western fruit grower to grade more carefully than his 

 eastern competitor, and that the bushel, in which uniformity is im- 

 perative, has thus become the distinctive package. 



Another condition that has had some influence is the fact that 

 the soft woods predominate in the west, and the hardwoods in the east. 

 The barrel is a hardwood package; the box is a softwood package. 

 Some boxes are now being made in the east from poplar and yellow 

 pine, but they are decidedly inferior to the fir, spruce and white pine 

 boxes of the west, not only because they are heavier and more rigid,, 

 but also because they come in narrower widths. The bushel apple box 

 is the most logical and fitting package that the west could develop 

 out of the material at hand. In view of the rapid reduction of our 

 natural forests, we must expect to soon face the necessity of forest 

 tree culture. The soft woods, being more rapid in growth, will become 

 more and more cheaper than the hardwoods, hence the barrel will tend 

 to become more and more costly, as compared with the box. 



High Prices for Western Box Fruit. 



Eastern apple growers have been more or less nettled, and their 

 ambition stimulated, by the high prices received for western box fruit 

 in recent years. It is rather galling to eastern men to see a bushel 

 box of Washington or British Columbia apples selling for the same price 

 as his own three-bushel barrel. It relieves him somewhat to dilate 

 upon the superior "quality" and "flavor" of his own fruit, but the buyer 

 goes right on paying the same discriminating prices. The easterner 

 is apt to then lay the blame for his own low prices on the type of pack- 

 ages he uses. The truth, however, is that the high prices received for 

 western box fruit are due chiefly to superior grading, and very little 

 to superior quality or to a more convenient type of package. In other 

 words, the higher price is payment for the superior skill and enterprise 

 of the grower rather than for any special natural endowments of soil 

 and climate that have made it possible to produce unusually good fruit. 

 When a buyer pays $3 a box for Hood river Spitzenburgs, and $4 a barrel 

 for New York Spitzenburgs, he is paying, not necessarily for superior 

 quality of fruit, nor for a superior type of package, but for superior 

 grading. The comparison, therefore, is not so much between the box 

 and the barrel as a type of package, as between western grading and 

 eastern grading. 



It is as unwise for the eastern apple grower to adopt the package 

 of the western apple grower without careful consideration as it has 

 proved to be unwise for the west to adopt the varieties and cultural 

 methods of the east without change. In the past five years many of 



