18 MODERN FRUIT MARKETING 



nent roads where it may be transferred to the fruit 

 wagons. The spring wagon is not only necessary for 

 orchard work, but also for carrying the fruit from the 

 packing-house to the railway or shipping points. 



Managing Pickers. When one begins to offer sug- 

 gestions upon the management of help on a fruit farm 

 he is immediately piling upon himself criticisms from 

 various sources, because the labor question in connec- 

 tion with fruit growing is becoming one of the most 

 serious problems connected with the business. In sec- 

 tions of the country where large areas are devoted to 

 fruit, it is often exceedingly difficult to get competent 

 help for harvesting or handling the fruit. Often, in 

 small areas more or less isolated from the larger centers 

 of population, growers have to abandon their fruit be- 

 cause of the cost of labor or the lack of sufficient help. 



Tramp Labor. In the larger fruit sections of the 

 Western and Middle states, most of the day labor con- 

 sists of the great floating population which is popularly 

 known as "tramps or hobos." Such labor, although not 

 the best, is usually the class that has to be relied upon 

 in harvesting fruit crops. These floating laborers will 

 winter either in the South or in the big cities of the 

 East. In the spring they drift South and begin pick- 

 ing fruit at the opening of the season in the Southern 

 states and then gradually work north until the season 

 closes and they find themselves in the North as far as 

 the fruit industry extends ; drifting back to the South or 

 to the big cities to spend the winter. Much of this help 

 is unreliable and uncertain, and each fruit-producing sec- 

 tion has to work out the problem of harvesting its fruit 

 according to the needs of its own particular locality. 



