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BETTER FBTTTT 



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The Apple as a Farm Product — History and Present Status 



[Editor's Note. — The following article is the 

 beginning of extracts from a thesis prepared 

 by A. Millard. .Jr., a young orchardist of Hood 

 River, who graduated from Cornell in horti- 

 culture in 1915. Following chapters will ap- 

 pear in future editions of "Better Fruil" dur- 

 ing the balance of the year. It contains much 

 valuable information and data, with many 

 original ideas in reference to the fruit indus- 

 try, the apple in particular, as obtained by 

 Mr. Millard through thorough research work 

 covering a long period. This is one of the 

 ablest and most thorough articles that has 

 ever appeared in print along the lines covered 

 and some good suggestions and sensible con- 

 clusions are drawn.] 



APPLES are mentioned in some of 

 man's earliest writings, and ap- 

 ples were planted by American 

 Indians before the middle of the ei.ah- 

 teenth century. (The writer has seen 

 a specimen of these early plantines at 

 Geneva, N. Y., which is said to be 125 to 

 150 years old.) We are, however, only 

 concerned with the developinent of the 

 commercial side of the apple industry 

 in the United States, and correspond- 

 in,!Jly with the history of the whole 

 fruit trade. 



One hundred years a.ijo practically no 

 fruit was imported into this country; 

 only an occasional cask of Mediterran- 

 ean prunes, raisins, or ,grapes found its 

 \^'ay across the four weeks of water as 

 a very great luxuiy through the agency 

 of the larger importing merchants of 

 the colonics, and later of the young re- 

 [jublic. Even the scasf)nal selling of 

 the fruit of nearby farmers in cities 

 was not practiced until early in the 

 nineteenth century, and once at this 

 point the trade stood still until about 

 1830. In 1832 a cargo of oranges ar- 

 rived from Sicily, and this shipment 

 was followed by a growing commerce 

 in Italian oranges and lemons for thirty 

 years, during which period these fruits 

 held full possession of the American 

 markets. About 1865 wholesale com- 

 mission fiiiit houses came into exist- 

 ence, and Italian fruit began to come, 

 consigned to these firms, but about 1880 

 branches of the Italian concerns were 

 one by one established in New York 

 and elsewhere, and these branch houses 

 have since controlled the ]Slediter- 

 lanean fruit trade here. 



There was practically no competition 

 b\- domestic fruit for the American 

 Iraile till 1807. Oranges and lemons, 

 grapes, raisins, currants, and prunes, 

 fresh, preserved and dried, found only 

 the Yankee apple as American-raised 

 fruit. Even West Indies bananas and 

 pineapples were not shipped in enough 

 (piantity to disturb the complete mo- 

 nopoly of the Mediterranean fruit. In 

 18(17 the first car of green fruit fiom 

 California reached New York, and from 

 then our domestic sub-tropic friiils 

 rapidly took over the I'nited Slates 

 markets. Lemons from Sicily still find 

 a strong market on account of their 

 flavor, and this, with the banana, 

 rapidly growing in consumption, will 

 always figure heavily in oui- fruit 

 imports. 



The phenomenal development of the 

 banana trade is worthy of some note 

 at this point. The schooner "Reynard" 



was the first West Indian "fruiter" 

 when it brought, in 1801, to New York 

 City the first thirty bunches delivered 

 there. Small quantities were subse- 

 quently imported, till in 1830 a man 

 named Pearsall landed 1500 bunches, 

 the first considerable shipment. Banana 

 imports grew quite slowly, till 1880, at 

 which date they were listed for the 

 first time separately in the imjjortation 

 reports. Since 1880 the growth of the 

 banana trade has been enormous, and 

 American growers feel the pressure of 

 this competition in more ways than 

 most of them realize. The banana is 

 the "poor man's fruit." In 1912 the 

 continental United States consumed 

 44,520,.530 bunches, or over 60 bananas 

 for each man, woman and child in the 

 Union. These bananas came from the 

 various small countries bordering the 

 Carribcan Sea; .Jamaica leading with 

 15,167,918 bunches of the above men- 

 tioned imports. Of the entire banana 

 crop of the world, the United States 

 consumes nearly all (85%) and the 

 remaining 15% is controlled and to a 

 large degree re-exported by the United 

 Fruit Company and a few other con- 

 cerns. European taste for the banana 

 is being developed, the area available 

 for the production is literally unlimited, 

 and the banana is a most important 

 competitor of any fruit produced in the 

 United States. 



Strangely enough at first thought, but 

 logically when we consider that we 

 were then the colonies of an empire 

 which expected to receive and not to 

 give the luxuries of food, we find 

 recoi'ds of fruit export earlier than of 

 import. This trade began with the 

 apple. There is record of apple ship- 

 ments to the West Indies in 1841, and 

 the trade probably existed for some time 

 previous to this date. Benjamin Frank- 

 lin, in London, was sent a package of 

 Newtown Pippins from the 1758 crop, 

 and the sight and taste of these resulted 

 in quite a trade. There is a letter on 

 file (the younger Collinson, writing to 

 ,Iohn Bartram, "Better Fruit"), written 

 in 1773, stating that the English apple 

 crop had failed and that the market was 

 being supplied by American apples. 

 This letter reads, "They (American 

 apples) are, notwithstanding, too ex- 

 pensive for common eating, being sold 

 for twopence, threepence, and even 

 fourpence an apple." The apple has 

 always been the commercially ranking 

 export fruit of this country. Shipments 

 of ice from the New England ports to 

 the West Indies, which began in 1805, 

 were accompanied by large <iuantities 

 of a|)ples, and soon after the extension 

 of the ice trade to India and China, 

 which occurred in 1830, apples could be 

 had in the ice ports of these countries. 

 Statistics do not exist prior to 1821, 

 when the Treasurer reported an ex])ort 

 of 68,143 bushels of apples, valued at 

 .•*39,966. 



In the "Transactions of the .Vmerican 

 Institute" it is said that Boston fruit 

 dealers had shipped apples and cran- 

 berries to Euroiie for many years. "In 



1845 Newton Pippins from the orchard 

 of Robci't L. Pell, of Ulster Co., N. Y., 

 which contained 20,000 trees, sold in 

 London for .$21.00 a barrel." Virginia 

 apples were also exported about this 

 time. The Eastern States still furnish 

 a large part of the apples exported, but 

 shipments from the great orchard dis- 

 tricts of the Mississippi Valley and of 

 the Pacific Coast now are a very large 

 factor. New York City has always held 

 the lead in apple exports of North 

 America, in 1812-13 the approximate 

 percentages of the barrels exported by 

 the various cities were: New York, 

 32%; Boston, 16% (some few Canadian 

 apples included); Portland, Me., 10%; 

 Halifax and St. Johns, 30%. Boxed 

 apples exported in this same year from 

 the Atlantic seaboard were appor- 

 tioned: New York, 93%.; Boston, 6%, 

 and Portland, Me., \%. The various 

 apple importing cities of Europe are 

 elsewhere taken up under foreign 

 markets. 



Apples comprise by far the greatest 

 amount of our fruit exportations, but 

 various other fruits — cranberries, 

 peaches, plums, prunes, pears, grape- 

 fruit, oranges, etc. — are also sent out. 

 The supply of all but the first fruit 

 comes in the main from California. In 

 1912 over two million pounds of apri- 

 cots and peaches, over ninety-one mil- 

 lion pounds of pears, and over six mil- 

 lion pounds of plums and prunes were 

 exported to England. Canada imports 

 considerable quantities of our lender 

 fruits, and most of the countries of 

 Europe, excepting Russia and those 

 bordering on the Mediterranean, im- 

 port some of our fruit. Dried fruits are 

 also exported in large (piantities (the 

 fruit-dryer was perfected between 1870 

 and 1875.) Belgium imported in 1912 

 $310,000 worth of our dried apples, 

 apricots and prunes, and Austria im- 

 ported about a million and a half 

 pounds of various dried fruits. France 

 imports much, but her orders depend 

 entirely on her own croi). Germany 

 imports a great deal; but Italy, Norway, 

 The Netherlands and Russia import but 

 little dried fruit. England imports in 

 quantity only prunes and plums, of 

 which in 1912 she took twenty-nine 

 million and a hundred and fourteen 

 million pounds resi)cctively. .Japan, 

 China and India import very little tlried 

 fruil, allhough there may be a limited 

 field for further exploitation there. 

 .\uslralia does lake some of our dried 

 apples, though litis conmionwcalth ex- 

 ports the first fruit in (|uanlity. There 

 is a very bright jiromise for increase in 

 the dried fruit trade with South 

 .•\merica. 



We have seen above that there was 

 no doincslic ((inipelilion for the fruit 

 trade in the Uniled Stales until after 

 the Civil War, except for the poorly 

 developed apple industry and the even 

 less developed small fruit trade from 

 I^ong Island, New .lersey and Dela- 

 ware. Exceptions to this condition 

 were occasional boatloads of water- 

 melons, etc., from the .South, .\fler this 



