318 ANNUAL REPORT 



CHEAP CIDER. 



Apples aud pears were grown in the greatest abundance and 

 with but little care. Sixty years ago apples were the main crop 

 of the farmers of my native county, and in fact of that portion of 

 the state. The large majority of the trees were seedlings. The 

 apples were hauled to the mills and then ground and first made 

 into cider, which was afterward distilled and converted into 

 cider spirits. (I believe some of the wicked people of our day 

 call it Jersey lightning.) The standard price of apples in those 

 days was one barrel of cider for ten bushels of apples, or one 

 quart of cider spirits per bushel, or six and one-half cents per 

 bushel in money, payable after the spirits were made and sold. 

 In seasons when the crop was extra large apples were sometimes 

 as low as five cents per bushel. I have no recollection of any of 

 even the Ehode Island Greenings or Newtown Pippins being 

 carried t3 the New York market until 1840, although the dis- 

 tance was less than thirty miles. This may seem a very strange 

 statement, but it must be remembered that the amount of fruit 

 used per capita in those days was very small as compared with 

 to-day. Another reason was that the masses of the x)eople were 

 far from being as able to j)urchase anything beyond the barest 

 necessaries of life as they are to-day. Wages were very low and 

 money very scarce. But the days of the cider distilleries have 

 nearly passed away. There is at present but a single one stand- 

 ing in a district of country wherein my young days there were not 

 less than fifteen or twenty, and I think more than that. There 

 are not as many bushels of apples grown there as fifty years ago, 

 but they are of a much better quality and put to a better use, 

 bringing the owners much better compensation for growing them 

 and caring for their trees. 



PEDDLING PEARS. 



There are pear trees now in bearing on the home farm which 

 have rarely failed to yield their crop for one hundred years. In 

 my boyhood every one used all they chose, and the hogs had a 

 good time with the balance of them. The first sale of pears of 

 which I have any recollection, unless an occasional peck or 

 bushel to some one near home, was as follows. When I was a boy, 

 perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, my father loaded a wagon 

 with pears, and told me and a brother two years younger to take 

 them to Newark and peddle them out at private houses for the 



