12 



might serve as a light American wine so cheap and wholesome as to be 

 usable by everybody, and as a secondary product from such fermented 

 cider a fine apple vinegar to displace the enormous quantities of chem- 

 ical vinegars which find sale in those States where their manufacture 

 and sale are not restricted by statute. 



The importance of utilizing our low-grade apples can only be appre- 

 ciated after realizing the probable quantity of this fruit produced in 

 the United States. 



QUANTITY OF APPLES PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES. 



It is impossible to present an accurate estimate of the apple crop of 

 the United States. The Census Bureau has not in the past gathered 

 statistics concerning this crop which can be said to cover this subject 

 with any degree of completeness; nor has the Department of Agri- 

 culture been able up to the present time to furnish the data desired. 

 The difficulties grow out of the nature of the crop itself. The apple 

 is a fruit grown almost over the entire cultivated area of the countiy, 

 but in many instances only in a haphazard manner and as a crop of 

 secondary importance; hence any attempt to deal with it accurately 

 from a statistical standpoint must of necessity fail because of the 

 immense labor involved and the lack of definite information among 

 the farmers themselves a,s to the amount of their crops. 



The growth, however, of commercial orcharding, along with the 

 practice of packing and handling the merchantable crop in barrels 

 and boxes, has made it possible to gather with some degree of accu- 

 racy statistics of the merchantable apples which enter into commerce. 

 These statistics have been collected by the Orange Judd Publishing 

 Company with perhaps more care than by any other concern in the 

 country, and from their tables a the following data are taken: 



The greatest crop ever recorded in this country appears to have been 

 that of 1896, and comprised 69,070,000 barrels. It also appears that 

 the average merchantable crop of the country is in round numbers 

 50,000,000 barrels, or about 140,000,000 bushels, annually. 



If this quantity enters into commerce through avenues sufficiently 

 definite to give it a place in the statistics of trade, how shall one esti- 

 mate the millions of bushels which are unmerchantable, or which enter 

 commerce untraced and unrecorded? 



It is, then, very evident that we have no means of estimating with 

 reasonable accuracy the grand total of our apple crop; but well-informed 

 persons will, I think, agree to the statement that, on the whole, not 

 more than about 60 per cent of the fruit actually grown in this country 

 finds its way into channels of commerce in such a manner as to appear 

 in general statistics. If this be a fair supposition, then nearly 

 100,000,000 bushels of this fruit are either consumed without having 



American Agriculturist, October 27, 1900, p. 398. 



