YIELD OF THE VINE. 135 



larger than at others, but always a remunerating crop ; and a 

 ready market is always found for it. As to the market : the 

 first season the Concord went on the market, it was sold at ten 

 conts a pound ; the next at twelve and one-half cents ; the 

 third year, at a shilling ; the fourth, at twenty cents. The 

 earliest shipments to market this year brought thirty cents, and 

 the average price was twenty. But suppose your market to be 

 glutted — the alternative is wine-making. The wine-maker will 

 buy your grapes, and the price of grapes for wine-making is ten 

 cents a pound. At Hammondsport, two hundred miles west of 

 Albany, where they have a large vineyard, and make large 

 quantities of wine — having, indeed, an incorporated company — 

 the common price is ten cents a pound for wine-making. Let 

 us take this estimate. The Catawba yields, on Kelley's Island, 

 three and a half tons to the acre. They boast of it as a large 

 crop, and so it is, for that grape. Colonel Husmann, of Missouri, 

 fifty miles west of St. Louis, gets nearly nine tons to the acre. 

 Mr. Jode, of Burlington, Iowa, took 8,860 pounds from half an 

 acre — being the first crop, four years after planting. These 

 crops are constant, I suppose, because Mr. Husmann says, in his 

 book upon grape culture (which I recommend to you as one of 

 the best and most practical of all,) that he gets a thousand 

 gallons of wine to the acre, which implies about the same crop 

 I have named. In Massachusetts, we have taken seven tons to 

 the acre. This year, which has not been so favorable a grape 

 year as usual, I had five and a half tons to the acre. I have had 

 seven tons, and other parties, with smaller holdings, have had 

 crops at the same rate. These are crops so constant, that we 

 have come to count upon them. But suppose we take the esti- 

 mate of the Catawba, of three and a half tons to the acre. At 

 ten cents a pound, the wine-making price, you have $700 to the 

 acre. Three and a half tons, at ten cents a pound, would give 

 you more profit than any other crop known to our husbandry, 

 except, possibly, tobacco, a crop which can be grown only in 

 limited quantities, because, when the market is supplied, there 

 is only one use for it, and the price goes down. 



I have spoken of wine-making. I know it requires a little 

 courage to stand up against the prevailing opinion in opposition 

 to the use of wine of any kind, lest it injure the cause of tem- 

 perance. I have no such belief. I am as friendly to the cause of 



