84 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



them in barrels and remove to the cellar. Cranberries are often 

 put into clean kegs or casks, which are afterwards filled -with 

 pure cold water, and made tight, and are then sent safely 

 through all climates, to the most distant markets. When the 

 fruit is raked from the vines, it may be kept for a time in the 

 chaff, and be winnowed and sorted late in the season, or at the 

 time of disposal. 



Selling- the Fruit. — This is an important part of the business. 

 Very often, the whole difference between very great and very 

 small profits, is the result of greater or less skill in selling. It 

 is useless, perhaps, to undertake to give directions in this, for 

 success consists principally in mere tact and ability to judge of 

 the proper time, place and mode of disposal. I will venture a 

 few hints, however. 



A man who grows nice cranberries and ripens them well, and 

 who invariably puts them up well assorted and clean, can easily 

 obtain from fifty cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents per 

 bushel more than one who is careless on these points. So, too, 

 a man who informs himself which are the best markets, will find 

 the best customers there, and so obtain better prices. 



Many cranberry growers are at present rather too much at 

 the mercy of shrewd cranberry dealers in Boston and elsewhere. 

 These buy up the crop in the fall, at their own prices, and ship 

 them off to various ports later in the season, making enormous 

 profits by the transfer. This may be borne, for in time more of 

 the fruit will be grown, and prices will become more equal as 

 the markets will be more numerous, and much more generally 

 known. But there is one imposition that should never be sub- 

 mitted to. It is that of selling to dealers, as some of them 

 demand, five pecks for a bushel. Four pecks of cranberries, 

 level measure, are one bushel. It is by this measure that the 

 dealers themselves sell them, except when charging an extra 

 price for heaped measure — which is not the legal one. 



Cranberry growers would do well to find a market for a large 

 portion of their fruit in Europe. If they would take the trouble 

 to find customers there, and would put up the fruit properly, 

 and ship it directly to them soon after being gathered, it would 

 be far more ])rofitable than to let it pass through a dozen hands, 

 as some of it does now. A more extensive introduction of our 



