V 



APPENDIX. 181 



papers and carefully packed in twenty-pound boxes, to the Chicago 

 market. The weather was warm in ^Moeit, they were delayed, and arrived 

 in bad condition, and were sold for a>v»ut the freiarht bill, commission, and 

 other charges. I made other ventures of this kind and learned in the dear 

 school of experience that the peach-plum did not carry well, and could not 

 be profitably shipped so far east. Our commission merchants tried many 

 such experiments, and 1 do not know that anyone ever made anything ship- 

 ])ing peach-plums east, and I do know there were many losses, and the busi- 

 ness was abandoned. 



Early in the seventy's I built the Acme Fruit Evaporator, bought a Lilly 

 pitter. which, by the way, pitted three thousand five hundred pounds in ten 

 hours, and, after the failure of my shipping scheme, dried the entire pro- 

 duct of my orchard. For some years, starting at sixteen cents per pound, 

 the business i^aid nicely, then prices dropped to fourteen, twelve, ten, and 

 down, until 1890 they were a drug in the market at six cents, unsalable, and 

 were held over, some for three years, and were then reprocessed and sold at 

 a loss. The fashion had changed, the fad was off. people were tired of 

 ])itted plums, the trade turned to prunes, the call now was for ])runes with 

 the pit in, as it was claimed to give the true prune taste, which the pit alone 

 could do. This was disastrous. What should I do with my plum orchard 

 Here was a condition serious. I was theorizing: " Was it possible to graft 

 new heads on these trees successfully V " This was questioned : orchardists 

 shook their heads and thought it too big an undertaking. Some advised 

 digging up the trees to set prunes. I was selling prunes at twelve and one- 

 half cents per pound in fifty-jKnmd boxes, faced. Our Italian prunes led the 

 market, and were readily salable at that figure. This was paying fairly 

 well: a legitimate business, so to speak. We were then possessed of the 

 idea that we had a little neck of the woods in Western Oregon and Wash- 

 ington — the only spot in this great continent that could grow successfully 

 the Italian prune. We were led to think this as they had failed in Cali- 

 fornia, the east, and other localities, and. presumably, they required a 

 heavy clay soil, and a cool, damp climate, and we didn't know of any other 

 such country, and we were growing them successfully, and we had the 

 verdict of the markets and all comers to that effect. 



In 1871 I secured an experienced top-grafter, started in April and grafted 

 twelve hundred twenty-year-old peach-plums into the Italian prune_ putting- 

 ten to thirty grafts in a tree. It looked destructive. Orchardists looked 

 wise and said it was an experiment ; some thought it would not succeed. I 

 had tried a few trees the year before with my own hands, and was hopeful. 

 It did succeed. Fully ninety-five per cent, of the grafts grew ; enough so 

 that no further grafting was necessary, while some trimming out was neces- 

 sary. I did not lose a tree — this at a cost of ten cents a tree. I trimmed 

 back the new wood annually, and in three years had a good bearing top, 

 which thereafter bore the largest, finest prunes grown in the vicinity. These 

 I wrapped, packed in twenty-pound boxes and shijiped east. They carried 

 well and gave very satisfactory returns. I shipped seven cars one season. 

 They averaged me $1.25 per box in the eastern market, leaving a nice profit. 

 Continuously every year after this gratifying result I thus worked over about 



