42 THE STRAWBERRY IN NORTH AMERICA 



Boom Days. — The introduction of the Wilson immedi- 

 ately was followed by a revival of interest among amateurs, 

 and by a tremendous increase in commercial planting. 

 Nearly every fruit grown in North American has had at 

 least one great boom period, when, through some favoring 

 circumstance, the market demand far exceeded the 

 supply, and prices of both fruit and plantations went 

 skyrv^ard. It has been so with the prune, orange, pomelo 

 and apple ; it was so with the strawberry. The " Straw- 

 berry Fever," as it was called, swept the country between 

 1858 and 1870. It reached its climax about 1865 ; even 

 the exhausting Civil War did not distract the strawberry 

 enthusiasts of the North, where most of this planting 

 occurred. Strawberries commonly sold for thirty to 

 forty cents a quart, and profits of $1000 an acre were not 

 unusual. In 1861 Joseph Harris, editor of the Genesee 

 Farmer, visited Bloomington, Illinois, and found Wilson 

 strawberries selling at fifteen cents a quart, and corn at 

 eight cents a bushel.^ People who had never before grown 

 strawberries, or any other kind of fruit — merchants, 

 grain and stock farmers, professional men — rushed into 

 the strawberry business. The warning of Patrick Barry, 

 and other cool heads, "This planting spirit has appeared 

 to some as a sort of speculative mania, and the idea has 

 suggested itself that the country soon will be overstocked," 

 was disregarded. There were numerous discussions in the 

 various state horticultural societies as to whether straw- 

 berry growing was not being "overdone," but these pro- 

 duced no appreciable diminution in the planting. Ama- 

 teurs, as well as professionals, caught the craze. The 

 annual "Strawberry Festival," first held at Belmont, 

 Massachusetts, about 1858, spread over the country. 

 1 The Cultivator, 1861, p. 288. 



