28 THE STRAWBERRY IN NORTH AMERICA 



were hulled before they were marketed, and were sold 

 loose, by the quart, peck or bushel, as needed. 



This was an almost unbelievable quantity of straw- 

 berries, and should have made the "King" rich. But 

 the law of supply and demand seems to have been working 

 as smoothly then, as now, for K. J. Downing reports, 

 "The price received by the Cincinnati growers in 1847 

 was an average of six cents a quart — the largest and 

 cheapest supply known in any city of the world." ^ In 

 1848, according to Cist, "Prices opened at 20-25 cents 

 for a day or two, soon fell to 10-15 cents, and then to 3-4 

 cents. The season's sales will not average higher than 7 

 cents unless the season itself has proved unfavorable. 

 I know of no year in which strawberries have averaged 

 as high as 10 cents per quart." This has a familiar ring 

 to the berry growers of today. About one half of the 

 strawberries raised near Cincinnati at that time were 

 Early Hudson ; most of the remainder were Old Scarlet, 

 Necked Pine and Hovey. 



Near New York. — Notwithstanding the greater public- 

 ity given to strawberry production near Cincinnati, New 

 York, then a city of over 300,000, rapidly was becoming 

 the greatest strawberry market in the world, as it is today. 

 It no longer was obliged to depend upon the meager supply 

 of " Hackensacks, " brought twice a week in sailing sloops, 

 wind and tide permitting, or ferried across the river at 

 Hoboken. The era of railroad transportation had begun. 

 Strawberries now were coming from points in New Jersey 

 and New York which had been wholly inaccessible a few 

 years previous. On June 20, 1847, one train on the Erie 

 Railroad carried 26,667 quarts of strawberries into New 

 York. By 1849, " In 26 days, 4572 bushels of strawberries 

 1 The Horticulturist, 1848, p. 25. 



