126 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



DRIED PEARS AND OTHER THINGS. 



By Frank T. Swett, County Horticultural Commissioner, Martinez, Cal. 



After the comprehensive paper of Commissioner Stokes, my only ex- 

 cuse for further talk about pears is to use the pear situation as a peg on 

 which to hang suggestions that may be of use to growers of pears and 

 other dried products. 



We cut our pears, bleach them, dry them, some packer comes 

 along and we grudgingly accept the proffered price, our product 

 disappears from our ken, away off somewhere into that undiscovered 

 bourne from which no traveler returns to tell us what eventually became 

 of them. We start the round of another year's production, and spend 

 the money. The pears are gone, and "we should worry." 



I want to ask this assembly of growers this question : How many of 

 you use dried pears as a regular article of diet? Have you ever tried 

 them more than once ? How many of you really like them ? Who knows 

 how to cook them, or is fortunate enough to have a wife who knows how 

 to cook dried fruits? In an audience of 200 people only five raised 

 their hands. 



What I am getting at is this: If we in California, where we grow 

 these things, don't know what to do with our own products, how can we 

 expect the great consuming population east of the Rockies to know what 

 we do not know and buy what we do not buy? 



Yet somebody, somewhere, buys dried pears to the tune of about 

 3,000,000 pounds a year, or 1,500 tons a year, corresponding to 7,500 or 

 10,000 tons of fresh pears per year. The fact is, dried pears are used 

 by Europeans, either in Europe or by those who have come to this 

 country from Germany and Scandinavia. 



In spite of its comparatively diminutive size, a business of a quarter 

 of a million of dollars a year is not to be despised, especially as in most 

 cases the smaller and irregular pears and windfalls, fruit which would 

 not otherwise be utilized, is used. 



There may be possibilities of increased markets. Maybe our product 

 has enough food value and enough intrinsic merit to warrant some 

 systematic effort to really put it on the map. 



Unless markets for dried pears are broadened, some fine day we 

 are likely to wake up to a new situation. Today everybody and his 

 neighbor are busily engaged 1 with cheerful optimism in the hopeful job 

 of creating new pear orchards. Some day thousands of acres of new 

 pear orchards will come into bearing. Does anybody imagine that the 

 markets for fresh and for canned pears can be suddenly doubled without 

 a crash in prices? 



Dried pear production is a sort of safety valve. Whenever the pres- 

 sure on shipping and canning markets becomes excessive, off go a lot of 

 surplus pears, at a low price, to the dry yards. Safety valves are im- 

 portant things. 



What is the matter with our dried pear market? 



I think it is largely this: Northern Europeans like them, know how 

 lo use them, and cheerfully buy them. Americans have not learned. 



During the Exposition I asked over 100 Easterners about dried pears. 

 Only one family used them, and they were of German descent. 



