PACKING AND MARKETING FRUITS 59 



a quart, or even less. The usual retail price in 

 northern markets is 10 to 15 cents a quart, and grow- 

 ers realize usually from 8 to 12 cents. 



Bush Fruits 



Raspberries and blackberries are somewhat ex- 

 tensively handled in our American markets, but 

 gooseberries and currants have nowhere nearly the 

 comparative importance that they have in foreign 

 markets. Raspberries and blackberries are usually 

 picked and handled much the same as strawberries. 

 They are almost always put up in quart boxes and 

 shipped in crates, exactly like strawberries. Pine red- 

 raspberries, however, are more frequently packed in 

 small say, 1-pint boxes, at least in the east. In- 

 deed, this is a favorite way of handling them. The 

 fruit, being rather soft, handles better in the small 

 packages, and being rather high in price sells better 

 in this way. Blackberries are never sold in these 

 pint cups, so far as the writer knows. 



The prices paid pickers for picking raspberries or 

 blackberries are usually a trifle less than for picking 

 strawberries. They run from one-half cent to one 

 and a half cents a quart. The pickers are managed 

 in the same way, and the accounts kept in like man- 

 ner, usually on a set of punch cards. 



Dewberries are handled in all ways like blackber- 

 ries. In fact, when they reach the consumer they are 

 blackberries. The retailers never call them dew- 

 berries. 



Gooseberries, when sent to market at all, are 

 usually shipped in the same quart boxes, put up in 

 crates, just as strawberries are. There is a very small 

 sale for gooseberries in this country, and it seems to 

 be growing proportionately smaller. In the old 

 world, where they grow gooseberries of a different 



