418 THE EVOLUTION OF OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



which is placed in charge of an overseer, and each company has a 

 book-keeper. Each picker is assigned a strip about three feet 

 wide across the bog, and he is obliged to pick it clean as he goes.* 

 The pickers are paid by the measure, which is a broad six- 

 quart pail with ridges marking the quarts. Ten cents is paid 

 for a measure. There is wide variation in the quantity which a 

 picker will gather in a day, ranging all the way from ten measures 

 for a slow picker, to forty and even fifty for a rapid one ; and in 

 extra good picking, seventy -five measures have been secured. 



Various devices have been contrived for facilitating cran- 

 berry picking. The Cape Cod growers like the Lumbert picker 

 best.f This is essentially a mouse-trap-like box with a front lid 

 raising by a spiral spring. The operator thrusts the picker for- 

 ward into the vines, closes the lid by bearing down with his 

 thumb, and then draws the implement backwards so as to pull off 

 the berries. Perhaps a fourth of the pickers use the implement. 

 Children are not strong enough to handle it continuously, and 

 where the crop is thin it possesses little advantage. Baking off the 

 berries is rarely practiced in the Cape Cod region. It is a rough 

 operation, and it tears the vfties badly. Late in fall, if picking has 

 been delayed and frost is expected or pickers are scarce, the rake 

 is sometimes used. An ordinary steel garden rake is employed. 

 The berries are raked off the vines, and the bog may then be flooded 

 and the berries are carried to the flume, where they are secured. 



This picking time is a sort of a long and happy picnic all 

 the happier for being a busy one. The pickers look forward to it 

 from year to year. They are invigorated by the change and the 

 novelty, and they must come near to nature in the sweet and 

 mellow October days. Those of our readers who have cast their 

 lot with hop-pickers, or who have camped in the clearings in 

 blackberry time, or who have joined the excursions to huckleberry 

 swamps, can know something of the cranberry picker's experi- 

 ences. Yet I fancy that one must actually pick the cran- 

 berries in the drowsy Indian summer to know fully what 

 cranberry -picking is like. 



The berries must now be sorted or "screened." If there are 

 no unsound berries, the fruit can be fairly well cleaned by 



*Fig. 90, tFig. 83(9), "Principles of Fruit-Growing." 



