350 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
THE PROFITS OF GRAPE GROWING. 
MRS. S. IRWIN, EXCELSIOR. 
I have been wondering if our secretary intended to perpetrate a 
little bit of sarcasm when he chose such a topic for my essay; or if 
he is really as ignorant of the true state of our grape growing terri- 
tory asthe idea suggests. I tried to get him to change it a little— 
just a little—out of loving memory of a buried past, but my sugges- 
tion was ignored, and soif I must handle the subject I will try to 
do so tenderly and regretfully. 
If I might adopt the story style and be allowed to tell what I know 
of the fruit business, I should commence with ‘‘ once upon a time” 
and tell how Shepherd & Son decorated much of the district south 
of our street car magnates residence with the Philadelphia rasp- 
berry and sold the products at $6.00 per case and then had to limit 
their customers; or how O.H. Modlin retailed the same kind of 
fruit at forty-five cents per quart to the Hennepin avenue grocers 
and we heard nocomplaint of the high prices, snide boxes or mouldy 
berries; while other things too numerous to mention sold at similar 
prices. Those were halcyon days to fruit raisers, but, alas, we were 
not “in it,’ and unlike these pioneers we cannot boast of large 
margins, the legitimate result of our shrewdness and hard labor, 
tucked away in the bank of experience? So we will begin our grape 
talk by “Once upon a time” when all that portion of Minneapolis 
north of First Avenue North was either up on stilts or floating about 
among green-coated frog ponds we chanced to have a friend whose 
husband was dying with consumption locate about where the St. 
Louis depot now stands. Going over one morning fora call, she 
said, “Mr. Raymond was really hungry yesterday—hungry for 
grapes, so I started right down to the bridge square market to get 
some. ” 
“It is too bad,” I replied, “that you could only find those that had 
been tossing about the country until they were sour and mouldy. 
If we could only get some nice, fresh ones.” 
“I did get fresh ones,” she answered, “raised right here in Minne- 
sota at a lake about twenty miles from Minneapolis; see, here is the 
name—‘A. W. Latham, Minnetonka.” 
I hope my friend did not discover the doubt in my mind of sucha 
possibility, but I resolved to spy out the wonderful “Eschol” some- 
time and see if such a statement could be true, but passing time 
erased the thought until my next experience, which came about 
fifteen years ago. 
One day we were very much startled to see a large “bus’-looking 
wagon, with “Minnetonka Grapes” in big letters, drive into the yard, 
and one of my almost incorrigible Sabbath-school scholars spring 
from the seat. He had been out at the lake since early spring, 
“working ina vineyard,” he had written, but I had scarcely seen 
grapes growing in all my life, and my ideas of a vineyard were very 
vague. 
“What a queer looking load you have,” I said as we stood chatting 
in the yard; “what have you in all those baskets?” 
“Grapes,” he replied. 
