STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 



IV. PRESERVES AND PICKLES. 



Home preserves, jellies and pickles is an industry seldom 

 found to any extent, and yet I know there is a large field open 

 here at good profit. There are hundreds of dollars worth of 

 fruit wasted which might be turned to profit. I have known 

 several women to start in this business and give it up. 



The trouble is, they try to compete with large factories in a 

 low-priced class of goods. The only way to make it pay is to 

 make a superior article and have private customers. 



Why, do you know how the cheap jellies are made? Such 

 ones as your grocer sells for ten cents a glass? 



Let me tell you. I have had the privilege of going through 

 one of the largest preserving houses in the country, where I 

 saw the jelly being made. In a large room on one of the upper 

 floors of the building were many bran sacks filled with the dried 

 skins and cores of apples from evaporating factories. It is 

 quite safe to conclude there might have been a little dirt on 

 some of the skins. However, they were dumped into an 

 immense iron kettle, water added, and they were then cooked 

 a certain length of time, and then the juice was drawn off at 

 the bottom and strained into a large tunnel and spout which 

 went through the floor down into other kettles in a room below. 

 Here sufficient glucose was added to make it the required sweet- 

 ness, and it was again boiled till it became jelly. Then it was 

 put into jellv tumblers, and after hardening, was sent to the 

 labeling room, where girls pasted on all kinds of heaiitiful 

 labels. The labels looked very attractive, with the names and 

 pictures of different kinds of fruits, but the jelly was all the 

 same, apl>Ic skins and glucose. Of course they made some bet- 

 ter jellies and pure articles, but you never see those except in 

 the high-priced fancy groceries. 



Of course the farmer's wife who uses only good fruit and pure 

 sugar, and buys glasses in small quantities, cannot compete with 

 that class of goods. But there is a call for the pure article put 

 up in an attractive package. 



A few years ago we had so many Red Astrachans that there 

 was no sale or give away for them, and I conceived the idea 

 of making them into jelly. I made it just as nice as I knew 

 how, and put it up in tall thin soda glasses, with paraffine wax 



