HARVESTING AND MARKETING 131 



leeway in the matter of defective fruit. That 

 seems to me to establish a pretty poor stand- 

 ard of excellence and as a result we have never 

 labeled a single barrel of our fruit with the 

 "U. S." brand, feeling that our own standards 

 were so much higher that we could not afford 

 to enter the ninety per cent, class. 



The "New York Grade Law" is an improve- 

 ment in this respect, but no law will ever be a 

 success unless it is mandatory and covers all 

 fruit grown or sold in a given territory. There 

 should be some sort of a law to require that all 

 packed apples be of a definite grade and prop- 

 erly labeled. Such a law would force all defec- 

 tive stuff to be sold in bulk at a price commen- 

 surate with its value and would give the careful 

 grower a price that would justify him for the 

 care and money expended upon the crop. 



In the best modern packing houses the fruit 

 is poured on a grading table, usually an incline 

 or a moving belt leading to the sizing machines. 

 As the apples roll over the grading table they 

 are carefully examined by the graders, in most 

 cases girls or women, and all of the defective 

 fruit is thrown out. It is here that the varia- 

 tions in quality of the resulting grade develop 

 as the growers seldom agree on how far they 

 shall go in excluding certain defects from their 

 packs. Some years this lack of uniformity is 

 excused on the grounds that to exclude all de- 



