582 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



The packer, too, must have artificially refrigerated rooms for 

 handling and holding eggs. Indeed, it seems likely that, as the egg 

 and poultry industry develops, and we must give more attention to 

 the saving of the garnered foodstuffs, there will be numerous receiving 

 stations throughout the country, easy of access and artificially 

 refrigerated, that perishable products in general may be economically 

 handled at the source of production. 



The source of production. There is the starting-point for most of 

 the trouble in the handling of perishable produce, be it southern 

 cotton mishandled in the field before it is baled, or western corn that 

 is not well dried before it goes to the elevator, or eggs that are heated 

 or soiled or cracked on the farm. Not all the trouble is at the starting- 

 place, of course. Good handling must be everywhere from the pro- 

 ducer to the consumer if the maximum of quality and minimum of 

 loss are to be maintained. But even perfection of handling at the 

 market center cannot compensate for bad treatment at the source 

 of supply. 



183. THE INFLUENCE OF REFRIGERATED CARS AND STEAM- 

 BOATS ON THE FRUIT INDUSTRY 1 



BY WILLIAM A. TAYLOR 



The rapid development of commercial fruit culture has been one 

 of the remarkable features of the agricultural progress of the world 

 in the century just closed. From the position of an insignificant 

 industry at the beginning of the century it has risen to commanding 

 importance in many countries, and in some has become the dominant 

 feature of agriculture. Outside of the wine-producing regions of the 

 Old World there was comparatively little commercial fruit culture a 

 hundred years ago except in specially favored localities and for the 

 supply of local needs. In a few localities there was a considerable 

 production of fruit for sun drying, as in the prune districts of France 

 and the raisin districts of Spain and other Mediterranean countries. 

 Oranges and lemons were marketed to some extent from Sicily and 

 Spain in the ports of Western Europe, and occasional small lots found 

 their way across the Atlantic to the seaboard cities of America, but 

 without sufficient regularity to develop more than a speculative and 

 haphazard trade in fruits. It seems hardly possible that no longer 

 ago than 1871 there were but a half-dozen fruiterers in London, now 



1 Adapted from Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1900, pp. 561-78. 



