THIRTEEXTH ANNUAL MEETING. 127 



was telling them they could get more pay somewhere else. 

 "Now," he says, "you strike for bigger wages, and you'll get 

 it." So one of the women, she says, "They're paying more 

 somewhere else than you are paying. Guess ^we won't come on 

 to-morrow." "All right !" I said, "I am ready to pay you." 

 I collared that little fellow. I said : "What have you been 

 doing ? You've been talking with that mouth of yours ! You've 

 been telling these folks something about getting more for pick- 

 ing somewhere else than here. You take your bundle ! and 

 go home ! Get right out of here ! I am paying all I can 

 afford." (Some of the pickers were making $2.50 to $3.00 a 

 day, and I said, "That's enough; that 's good pay.") And I 

 didn't hear anything more about it. I give a cent-and-a-half a 

 quart from beginning to end of the season. At the last end, if 

 the berries are getting scarce, and are worth picking, I will pay 

 by the day or hire by the hour, simply to get the gleanings. 

 I have thought sometimes I would have trouble, but somehow 

 the pickers come into the field like robins. The farmers and 

 their wives and children will come if they say they will. 



A Member : Do you pick more than one crop from your beds ? 



Mr. Race : No, sir. Something Avas said in the fore part of 

 this meeting yesterday, in one of the reports here, about the 

 crop of strawberries last fall, and I have been thinking about 

 that matter. I heard about it. I didn't see anything of it — 

 got as fine a bed as I ever set out. It must be that it was on 

 the old beds that they are trying to carry over, that must have 

 got an early growth, too early a growth. You know a straw- 

 berry never bears but once and then dies. The twig on your 

 apple tree never bears but once; a new one comes out — a new 

 bud. Now, these fellows had made their growth too early, 

 and the late fall moisture started them into bearing. They 

 will never bear again — that is laid down in the system of plant 

 life. 



President Gulley : Don't you attribute that to the fact that 

 the dry weather in May kept them from carrying out their 

 fruit in June? 



Mr. Race : I had no experience in the matter. 



A Member: On the old beds that bore pretty well in June 

 at the beginning of June — from the 3d of October to the 7th 

 of November I marketed berries. 



