52 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Do not employ pickers who are not quite ready to attend to their work as a 

 business. 



The usual price paid for picking strawberries in Berrien county has been a 

 cent and a half a quart (the little universal "snide" measure referred to, 

 blushes, hangs its head and says "please don't call me a quart, say box"), and 

 any man used to sawing logs or following the plow, if compelled to pick berries 

 for a day, will tell you that it is cheap enough for the service. 



Do not expect or undertake to regulate the price of picking or transportation 

 by resolution. There is no sound reason why the price of cultivating, picking 

 or transporting strawberries should be contingent upon the state of the mar- 

 ket on South Water street, Chicago. 



The enterprise of running a strawberry patch is the grower's own. There 

 is no law compelling him to pursue it, and the only sensible business rule to be 

 followed in the case is to pay fair prices for all service rendered — from plowing 

 clear down to transportation — and then, if on that basis, the venture proves 

 unprofitable, quit. 



It will pay the grower who is extensively engaged in the business of raising 

 strawberries to have one trusty man to every twenty pickers, whose business it 

 is to see that the berries are picked clean — all the ripe ones and no green ones 

 — and that over-ripe ones are kept out of the boxes. Also that the plants 

 are not trodden down. Teach new pickers a lesson that they generally are in 

 need of — to let go their berries before the hand is so full that the juice runs 

 out between their fingers. 



Have the packing shed convenient to the patch. Furnish each picker with 

 two carriers holding four boxes each. The packing shed, or sheds, should be 

 under the charge of one (or more if the business requires it) competent and 

 trusty person, whose business it is to issue to the pickers tickets for their 

 berries as they are brought in, and to place the boxes into the crates and see 

 that they have not been filled wrong side up. 



Many large growers in Berrien county have found it satisfactory to erect 

 quarters for their pickers, where they " camp out" and do their own cooking- 

 during the berry season. Many of the pickers thus employed come from local- 

 ities where berry raising is not a leading industry. 



If you are not so fortunate as to belong to the Fruit Exchange, do the next 

 best thing and have your individual trade mark, and endeavor to build up a 

 reputation for straight packing. 



Your berries cannot always be fancy or No. 1, but whatever they are, if they 

 are John on top let them be John all the way through. 



Although it requires some moral courage to hide away an extra fine specimen 

 in the bottom of a package, endeavor to have the contents of the boxes uniform 

 and true to appearance. 



The boxes should not be "topped off" with finer specimens than the average, 

 for that is lying:, and of all crimes, great or small, lying is the meanest. 



A. G. Gulley : I agree with what Mr. Knisely says. I spend my whole time 

 keeping the pickers in place and seeing that they do their work properly. In 

 wide matted rows, especially with slow pickers or small boys, I often put two 

 on a row. I don't repack the fruit in the shed ; the man there only sees that 

 the boxes are full and puts them in the cases. The Crescent has doubled the 

 profits of the pickers, children less than twelve years old often earning sixty 

 cents in half a day. I pay once a week. 



