Swnmer Meeting. 39 



there was an over supply of damaged berries. Had our Van Buren 

 friends picked the water-soaked berries and canned them, or made them 

 into pure berry juice, or lacking a factory had they dumped the berries 

 into the Arkansas river, the final results would have been better. The 

 later shipments paid satisfactory prices. 



Supply and demand should be considered in another light. It is 

 a mistake to have so large acreage as Van Buren, Salisaw and Sarcoxie 

 have cultivated for two or three years. It is difficult to get enough 

 pickers and many that are secured are undesirable help. When 10,000 

 pickers are required at one point, many characterless persons 

 swarm to these centers, thus restraining many worthy home people from 

 earning money, because they do not think it safe to work in company 

 with an army of strange men, women and children. If the 4,000 acres 

 at Van Buren, if the 1,500 acres at Sarcoxie were divided between six or 

 eight towns, the picking would be done largely by home people, by the 

 worthy poor who would welcome berry picking time as an annual festi- 

 val occasion. They would observe the rules of picking, would grade 

 the berries as they picked them, thus reducing the cost of marketing. 

 They would take a personal interest in the success of the growers. Van 

 Buren growers paid two cents a quart for picking — forty-eight cents a 

 crate. The ruling price in south Missouri is from one cent to one and a 

 quarter cents a quart. Sarcoxie pays one and one-half cents. Forty- 

 eight cents for picking is positively beyond reason and never would have 

 been paid but for the fear that the unreliable army of strangers would 

 desert or strike at a critical time. 



There is still another very important point to consider in this dis- 

 cussion — that of over-sized plantations. It is a mistake to plant the 

 whole farm to strawberries. At Fayetteville three gentlemen, practical 

 growers, have a farm of 290 acres in strawberries. At Salisaw on one 

 farm there are 350 acres in berries. The owner of this farm leased 

 portions of the place to neighboi-s. At Van Buren there are berry farms 

 of 275, 135, 125, 75, 60 and many of 50 acres. If there were no fields 

 larger than ten acres and the present acreage was thus distributed the 

 profits would be ten times as much as has been realized this year, be- 

 cause the berries would gi-ade higher. One third of the berries shipped 



