No. 4.] FRUITS FOR LOCAL MARKETS. 63 



the better. If they have to send to western New York, they 

 will do so ; if the}^ can't do that, they will buy the wine in 

 Italy or California. With no special ideas of temperance or 

 intemperance, those people are going to use, as a wholesome, 

 healthful food, — and make no misuse of it, — the juice of 

 the grape. You can go on your warm, sandy hillsides and 

 make a success of growing grapes to supply them. A few 

 of the best standard varieties can be profitably marketed as 

 a dessert fruit, but the demand for grapes in bulk, as I say, 

 for wine making, is increasing so rapidly that it is making a 

 large and profitable market for grapes that may be easily and 

 cheaply grown on many fields that are now otherwise practi- 

 cally worthless. You can grow from 5 to 8 tons of grapes 

 per acre, and sell them in your local town, if there are enough 

 foreigners there, as high as $50 a ton in bulk for wining. 

 And we buy coftee for 40 cents a pound ! While I am not 

 a drinking man, and believe in temperance, yet I say and 

 think they are doing better for their posterity and them- 

 selves than we who drink tea and coftee, and allow our chil- 

 dren to follow us. There is a big profit in this work now, 

 and it is growing all the time. 



The next profitable fruit is cherries. All or nearly all 

 the trees in Connecticut are dead or dying, and I expect 

 those of Massachusetts are also. Nobody on the farm has 

 cherries for the market. The people are crying for cherries. 

 As a whole, the consuming public cherishes the taste of 

 cherries, and is hungry for them, and wants you to grow 

 them. They will pay for them, and pay enormous prices, 

 too. There is a splendid chance to-day for the one who 

 first develops new orchards of moderate size to fill this want, 

 — sweet to eat, and sour for cooking. There is a profitable 

 market in Massachusetts to-day for the product of from 

 25,000 to 50,000 cherry trees. You say anybody can grow 

 sour cherries, but the "sweet cherries all die;" and it is 

 true. It is true because the nursery men have for years 

 been growing them on the imported stocks, which are easier 

 to grow, but not so hardy, and he wants the easiest. For 

 some reason or other they don't like our soil, and are dying 

 (Hit all over the northeastern part of the United States. 



