PROFITS OF THE GRAPE. Ill 



the statement,) is not greater than that of making a corn crop. 

 When you come to the harvest, your grapes may be picked by 

 invalids, old people, children, just as well as by strong men. 

 It costs you very little to harvest. After harvesting, if you 

 want to make your grapes into wine, you can make 600 gallons 

 in a week or so, going through all the processes, with an 

 ordinary press, like a portable cider press. If you send the 

 grapes to market, you would want them picked carefully, and 

 it would be more trouble. They have brought in the market, 

 when perfectly ripe, twenty cents a pound. The market broke 

 down this year, not with an over supply (because there was not 

 an over supply, nor so many as last year,) but because they 

 were really not fit to eat ; the season had spoiled them. 

 Persons who ate them found that, instead of being digestible, 

 healthful, comforting, they were the opposite, therefore they 

 would not buy them, and therefore the market broke down. 

 I have no idea that so low an average price as ten cents a 

 pound can ever be reached. I have no idea of it, because 

 I remember that, thirty years ago, the market price of ripe 

 Isabellas was but ten cents a pound, and now, with the abun- 

 dant supply that we have from the West, they sold, last year 

 and the year before, for ten and twelve cents a pound ; in 

 some rare instances, very perfect bunches sold for a shilling 

 and twenty cents a pound. Now, the Concord, or any other 

 grape, should ^e sent to market only in its best condition. 

 Your best and handsomest bunches are the profitable ones to 

 sell ; they will bring you the most money. The remainder you 

 should make into wine. There are many reasons why you 

 should do this, I think. In the first place, it saves you from all 

 loss from imperfect bunches ; they are turned into money, 

 through the wine. You want to sell the wine ; but if every 

 man makes his own wine, out of his own vineyard, from the 

 imperfect grapes which he cannot send to market, my word for 

 it, you will not drink those intoxicating drinks which it is the 

 habit of our people now to use, because, as I think, they do not 

 have these wholesome drinks of domestic manufacture. You 

 have had testimony to that effect from gentlemen who must be 

 accepted as authority in this matter. In the work I have 

 quoted, Denman's work, on " The Vine and its Uses," there 

 are abundant quotations from eminent travellers, physicians 



