68 THE SUBURBANTIE'S HANDBOOK 



giving the shirkers and inefficient men immediate discharge. The 

 result was, as might have been expected, the union tried bluffing 

 and boycott, but it would not work, and the men finding they were 

 treated with strict justice and liberality, ignored the union. Good 

 men were favored and drones hunted; walking delegates were not 

 admitted to the works; the good men put in their best work, and 

 from laying only 400 bricks a day, as at the start, soon achieved the 

 laying of 900 bricks per day as the ordinary day's work. Let us 

 see now in what position the commercial orchardist stands to meet 

 the labor question, depending entirely on standard trees or substitut- 

 ing in whole or in part the dwarf trees. We have seen that a stand- 

 ard apple tree will average for 50 years 10 bushels a year, and the 

 cash returns will be less than an average of 50 cents a bushel, or $4 

 per tree ; 27 trees to the acre gives $108 per acre. With dwarf trees 

 we have 64 bushes or 96 cordons on 40 feet square of land that will 

 yield for 25 years an average of 96 to 144 bushels per year from 

 the same 40 feet square of land. While the standard apples averaged 

 40 cents a bushel, these dwarf apples, being so much superior in 

 appearance and quality will reach an average of $1.50 or more per 

 bushel, consequently will return $144 to $216 per 40 feet square, or 

 multiplied by 27, will net $3,888 to $5,892 per acre. Again strike 

 your own margin. With such a showing we could afford to give 

 our workmen a rate of wages beyond their wildest imagination, and 

 steal the labor union's thunder. The very best of men would be 

 tumbling over one another in competition to secure such employment, 

 and when they were lucky enough to obtain it would shrink from no 

 effort to retain it permanently. 



