Miscellaneous. 403 



CANNING VERSUS CONSIGNING. 



The canning industry is competing very largely, with the commis- 

 sion merhcants. Truckers and growers all over the country are begin- 

 ning to realize that canneries offer a positive price for produce, and many 

 of them prefer to sell in this way rather than to take chances on consign- 

 ing their produce to some of the markets. — Country Gentleman. 



AMERICAN APPLES IN GERMANY. 



Consul-General Mason, at Berlin, in a recent report says : "Under 

 the familiar headline, 'Another American Danger,' the agrarian and con- 

 servative press in Germany is commenting somewhat demurely on the 

 unprecedented influx of American apples this season. There is not a fruit 

 store or hardly a market fruit stall or retail grocery shop in Berlin or its 

 suburbs that does not display as a prime attraction one or more barrels of 

 Baldwins, Pippins, or other standard varieties, surmounted by a placard 

 bearing the legend 'Echte Amerikaner.' Not only this, but wagons piled 

 with the same attractive merchandise patrol the outlying streets and peddle 

 the American fruit at the uncommonly low price of 20 pfennigs (5 cents) 

 per pound. This, at a time when ordinary cooking apples grown in Ger- 

 many and Austria retail for from 6 to 7 cents per pound. 



"American apples have generally arrived in excellent condition, show- 

 ing that American fruit growers and dealers have greatly improved their 

 niethods of picking and packing for export. The point is proven that, 

 given a good, sound apple crop in the United States, the standard varieties 

 can be exported with entire safety, in ordinary ventilated barrels, without 

 any of the elaborate and more or less costly paper wrappings that are used 

 in putting up apples of choice quality from France, Italy and the Tyrol. 

 Much is also doubtless due to shipping in properly cool and ventilated 

 steamers. 



"The general tenor of agrarian press comment on the present Yankee 

 apple invasion is that it proves the inadequacy both of the German home- 

 grown fruit supply and of the existing import duty rate to protect the 

 farmers of the Fatherland from this fatal competition. To this is usually 

 added the fervent hope that these colossal importations will not result in 

 filling the orchards of Germany with the San Jose scale. 



"Official statistics show that in 1900 Germany imported 124.874 tons 

 of fresh apples; in 1901, 118.233 tons, and in 1902, 112,635 tons, of which 



