32 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 



tween the business of growing fruit and the business 

 of handling and marketing it. 



It may be stated as a general principle that the 

 commercial outlook is best in those fruits which 

 readily yield themselves to the greatest number of 

 .secondary or manufactured products, such as canned 

 or evaporated goods, jellies and sauces, liquors, oils, 

 or other commodities used in the arts. In these 

 fruits the grower is not dependent upon a single 

 outlet for his crop ; and it should be said that if 

 there is but a single important outlet for a fruit, 

 that outlet is usually the sale in the fresh state, 

 which is the most precarious disposition which can be 

 made of perishable products. This truth is well 

 illustrated in the eastern grape business. The grape 

 is consumed almost wholly as a dessert fruit, the 

 only other emphatic outlet being in wine -making, 

 which is comparatively unimportant in the east. 

 As a consequence, the grower is largely at the 

 mercy of the market, and this market may be defi- 

 nitely and easily overstocked. In the case of apples 

 and peaches, the grower has the alternative of can- 

 ning or drying the crop, and he may, therefore, 

 be comparatively independent of the contemporaneous 

 market. 



In years of heavy crops the returns from poor 

 fruit are the least, and it often happens that the 

 only good which comes from such yields is the lesson 

 upon the business and the morals of good grading 

 and packing; yet even this forceful lesson seems 

 either not to reach the major part of fruit -raisers. 



