Appendix. 243 



late, they promise well to plant together to prolong the picking season. 

 The Ideal has one quality that I deem most important to the cannery 

 product — its superb color after it is canned. 



We tested the Ideal for color, flavor, and firmness before a committee 

 of the Salem Chamber of Commerce and growers, by emptying a can each 

 of the best California, the Hood River, and the best Wilson from the 

 Salem cannery, put up in the same weight of syrup — and the Ideal sur- 

 passed all the others. It grows perfectly on heavy land which Clark's 

 Seedling will not do with us. I do not speak of this to boast on other 

 varieties, but to emphasize the possibility of putting up in Western Oregon, 

 without irrigation, the best strawberry in the world — and that reputation 

 once established means millions of wealth annually for this section, and 

 employment for our people at a time of year when there is no other fruit 

 or grain crop on our hands. 



The strawberry, cherry, and other small fruit crops have already been 

 such a stimulus to the season in which they come to maturity that the 

 merchants say the dull season in earlj' summer has given way to the 

 greatest business activity, and in the same way the extension of this 

 industry will produce continuous prosperity, where as in the land of 

 Canaan the harvest shall extend into the vintage and the vintage into 

 the seedtime. 



Still the greatest revolution will come about in the strawberry industry 

 when we have produced the self-stemming variety, as we have already 

 several that leave the hulls on the stems when picked and come off per- 

 fectly clean like a raspberry. The Ideal variety does this. It may well 

 be called the Oregon Ideal, because here it has attained the highest per- 

 fection, and when perfectly ripe will pick off clean without hulls or stems. 

 Look at the importance of this improvement from a commercial stand- 

 point: 



(1) All the fruit would be of even quality of ripeness; (2) it would not 

 have to be stemmed at the cannery, saving half a cent a pound to the 

 grower; (3) it could be graded when picked by having a flat tray with a 

 partition so that the two sizes could be kept separate, saving another half 

 cent a pound for grading; (4) the fruit would not be mussed up from 

 handling at the cannery as it is by stemming and grading; (5) a canning 

 plant could quadruple its pack on such a strawberry, as now four or five 

 hands can cook and solder what it takes a hundred hands to stem and 

 grade; and (6) a vastly superior output in quality of canned berries. 

 This is not idle theorizing, as the shuckless strawberry is no longer a 

 novelty, but exists in a number of varieties. 



What has been done at Hood River, where land and labor are expensive, 

 can be done to much better advantage at Newberg, Salem, or any point 

 on the railroad in the Willamette valley, where with cheaper soil, more 

 available labor of families, no expense for irrigation, markets near by, 

 and north and south of us, everything favors this industry. 



For strawberry culture, we have most favorable environment and 

 indigenous conditions, a population in villages, towns, and cities, and for 



