THE RAISIN INDUSTRY. 205 



comforts of pedestrians and riders are always assured. The roads are 

 all sprinkled, and the dust is an unknown quantity except in by-lanes 

 and corners, where the sprinkler cannot reach. Riverside sprinkles 

 the whole of her business streets, and her Magnolia avenue effectively 

 and continually for about ten miles down the valley. Other places do 

 the same, perhaps only not to as liberal an extent. In many places 

 the tired pedestrian finds little wooden benches to rest on under a 

 shady tree, close to a fountain of drinking water, all placed there by 

 the kind society, W. C. T. U. Comparisons are not in place; but how 

 many times I have wished such a thing had been met with in some 

 other places I know of where the sun is just as hot, and where the dust 

 is just as deep. 



AN HOUR IN A PACKING-HOUSE. 



The following sketch of a Fresno packing-house, where already cured 

 raisins are bought and packed, may prove interesting to those of my 

 readers who have not had time or opportunity to visit any similar estab- 

 lishment. The same4dad_of ...work is going on in each packing-house, 

 whether it be large or small, except that the number of hands are 

 varied. In the two or three largest packing-houses in Fresno, as many 

 as four hundred hands are sometimes employed at one time when the 

 work is pressing ; as it slackens, less hands are used. These.large_ijy 

 packing-houses are all situated close to the railroad ; they buy the 

 raisins~already cured and dried from the colonists, who bring them in 

 sweatboxes to town. The time of the greatest activity is from the last 

 week in August to October i5th. The largest of these city packers are 

 Messrs. Cook & Langley , who own packing-houses both in Riverside and 

 Fresno ; Shacht, Lemcke & Steiner, successors to George W. Meade, 

 the oldest packing-house in Fresno, superintended! by H. W. Shram ; 

 Chas. Leslie & Co., Griffin & Skelley, etc. 



The pioneer packing company of Fresno, known as the Fresno Raisin 

 & Fruit Packing Company, is doing at this time a large business. Every 

 day five or six carloads of raisins are sent away, while a string of from 

 twenty to thirty, two and four horse, teams are waiting outside of the 

 weighing shed to have their raisins weighed and received. These raisins 

 come both from large and small vineyards from all over the country, but 

 principally from the colonies, where they are the products of twenty- 

 acre vineyards. Some of the best raisins in fact came from the smallest 

 vineyards, where they had the best care, and where the owner has 

 given the vineyard all his time. Mr. H. W. Shram, the superintendent 

 of this large and old packing-house, has had years of experience in the 

 packing business, and has followed the Fresno raisin business from its 

 infancy. As soon as the raisin boxes are unloaded they are immedi- 

 ately weighed. It takes eight men to attend to this part of the busi- 

 ness, one weighing and one clerk to keep accounts. The dried wine 

 grapes, such as Zinfandel, Malagas, and even Sultanas, are immediately 

 wheeled into the stemmer-house to be separated from the stems and 

 cleaned. This stemmer is one of the largest in the State, and the only 

 one of its kind as regards construction. It stems, cleans and assorts, 

 in from three to four different grades, sixty tons of raisins a day. Nine 



