PACKING AND MARKETING FRUITS 55 



but always and everywhere one must foresee this 

 peculiar labor problem before he goes extensively 

 into the cultivation of strawberries. 



Help of the kind here discussed is naturally and 

 necessarily unsatisfactory. The wandering bands of 

 negroes who follow the picking season from South 

 Carolina to New Jersey are seldom the best men and 

 women of their color. In many towns it is the 

 accepted rule that special policemen must be put on 

 as soon as the strawberry pickers appear. The 

 Italians and Polanders who go about picking straw- 

 berries are only less nomadic and irresponsible than 

 the negroes. It has been found absolutely necessary 

 in many places to adopt the rule that no picker shall 

 be paid even a part of his or her wage until the end 

 of the picking season. If a grower should be so kind- 

 hearted or crazy as to pay his pickers on the first 

 Saturday night of the season many of them would 

 immediately get drunk on the money and all of them 

 would move on to some other place, leaving him 

 without any pickers on Monday morning. 



Intelligent girls of 16 to 60 years old are said 

 to make the best pickers, especially American or 

 French girls. Some growers regard proper picking 

 of so much importance that they take special pains 

 to select only the best pickers. Usually such men 

 pay wages somewhat higher than the average, or 

 offer other inducements. One grower of my ac- 

 quaintance, besides paying good wages, gives a big 

 strawberry supper at the end of the season, at which 

 his pickers are his guests. These strawberry suppers 

 are said to be a howling success, and a picker would 

 work a month in the rain rather than miss the sea- 

 son's fete. 



Picking is usually piece work, and pickers receive 

 from 1 to 2 cents a quart. The average is about 1J/2 



