30 CAPE COD CRANBERRIES. 



is dressed in a costume of startling originality and of the 

 most unique description, the object being, not to see who 

 can dress and look the best, but who can be the best pro- 

 tected in, and provided for the labor before them. 



Upon arriving at the bog, each one has his or her 

 name entered on an account- book by the overseer, and is 

 given a pail, and a number by which the individual is to 

 be known so long as the bearer remains, so that each 

 one, upon coming up with a pail of berries to be emptied, 

 calls out the number to the overseer, who places the 

 proper credit against that number on his book. 



The pickers commence work as soon as the dew is off 

 of the bog, and work until noon, when they partake of 

 a luncheon, usually brought with them ; and after a short 

 rest resume work, and keep at it until night, when they 

 return home as they came. They keep this up, going 

 from bog to bog in the neighborhood, and picking while 

 the season lasts. In some instances, pickers comingfrom 

 a distance, will camp out in their tents, or erect rude 

 dwellings, and live in them until the season is over. 



To get the bog ready for the pickers, we first gather 

 the fruit for about eighteen inches around the margin of 

 the section where the pickers are to strike in, so that the 

 berries will not be crushed when the men who measurd 

 and stretch the lines for the pickers go around. It is best 

 to keep strings ahead over enough ground to accommodate 

 a gang of one hundred pickers, so that no confusion or 

 delay may occur in setting them to work. The strings 

 are stretched across the sections in parallel lines, some 

 six feet apart, and made fast to pegs set in the ground 

 at each end. Betwen these lines, the pickers are set at 

 work, from one to three in a row, whichever they prefer ; 

 but no one is allowed to leave his place and go elsewhere, 

 until his section is thoroughly and completely picked. 



Pickers oftentimes come from sixty miles away, whole 

 families of them, to the number of from one hundred 



