MONEY IN TEEES 



FRENCH FARMERS WHO GROW CROPS OF CHESTNUTS FOR MARKET. 



THE French understand how to make 

 money out of trees. They ap- 

 preciate the value of the forests, 

 and have some of the largest and best in the 

 world. There are vast woodlands belong- 

 ing to the government and private holdings 

 in which the trees are as well cared for as 

 in our city parks. Only the ripe trees are 

 cut, and every piece of fallen wood is saved. 



The roads and streams and little canals 

 of France are lined with poplars. Some of 

 the trees are a hundred feet high. They 

 are bare of branches, with only a tassel left 

 on the top. Others are full limbed, and 

 others a^ just sprouting new growth on all 

 sides. These poplars are grown for their 

 branches, and are finally cut down for wood 

 or for furniture. The branches grow rapid- 

 ly. They are cut off year after year, put 

 up in bundles and sold tq the bakers to 

 make the hot fires necessary for the crisp 

 crust on the French bread. There is such 

 a demand for them that raising them is one 

 of the chief industries of France. The pop- 

 lars are planted in places which are good 

 for nothing else, and after five years each 

 will annually produce at least twenty cents. 

 Later on the trees are cut down and sold. 

 Willows are grown in the same way, their 

 sprouts being used for baskets. 



The French make money out of chestnuts. 

 They grow varieties which are from two to 

 three times as large as the American chest- 

 nut, and sell them to the fruit stands and 

 the groceries. The chestnuts are used to 

 dress turkeys, geese, chickens and game, 

 and they are also used for dessert. The 

 confectioners make candy of them, and the 

 best candied chestnuts being forty-five cents 

 per pound, or, if coated with chocolate, 

 fifty-two cents a pound. There are large 



establishments in France which do nothing 

 else, one at Lyons» handling 25,000,000 

 .pounds of chestnuts a year. 



The French chestnut trees are not culti- 

 vated. They are usually planted on poor 

 earth and in time are cut for their wood. 

 Some chestnuts are grafted, and there is o 

 doubt but that the French and Spanish 

 chestnut can be grafted on our native Am- 

 erican sprouts. There are men in Penn- 

 sylvania and New Jersey who are making 

 chestnut grafting commercially profitable, 

 and the same might be done in other parts 

 of the United States. 



In South France, Spain and Italy chest- 

 nuts are ground into a meal and used for 

 bread, and they command good prices in 

 such locaHties. In the United States they 

 are chiefly sold by fruit venders and by the 

 confectioners and bring $7 or $8 per bushel. 

 In France they sell by the kilogram for 2 or 

 3 cents a pound. 



The French have 1,000,000 acres devoted 

 to gardens and fruits, and in riding over 

 the country you pass fields of hotbeds and 

 see glass frames propped over plants out- 

 side the beds. In many places glass bells 

 are used to cover the individual plants, and 

 there are some sections which raise potatoes 

 under glass for export to London. 



The French have studied the soil, and the 

 sun, and they coax both to work. They 

 feed the crops rather than the land, and in 

 places get three crops a year, through in- 

 tensive cultivation. Near Cherbourg cab- 

 bage is raised early in February. After it 

 is taken off a crop of potatoes is planted, 

 and a third crop comes on in the autumn. 

 This is on land that has been used for gene- 

 rations. 



And still Americans talk of old Mother 



