RURAL MANUFACTURES 273 



The " drying " of fruit is an illustration. In the 

 early days the fruits were dried about the kitchen 

 stove on sieves and wooden lattice-shelves. The trays 

 Vvere set out-of-doors in sunny weather. Often the 

 halves and quarters of apples were run on strings by 

 means of a darning-needle, and the strings were hung 

 about the stove and ceiling; the sanitary results are 

 left to the imagination of the reader. In regions 

 of long absence of rain, as in California, the sun- 

 drying of fruit soon came to be a common and good 

 commercial practice. Later came the " evaporated " 

 fruit, when the prepared product was placed in a 

 tower or specially constructed building (an "evap- 

 orator") in which the moisture was driven off by 

 furnace-heat or steam-heat. Vegetables and many 

 other products are now preserved by " dessicating " 

 and " dehydrating," in which the mechanical 

 processes are still further perfected. All these classes 

 of industries have developed strongly in New York, 



The days of " home-spun " are past, and the farmer 

 now buys most of his supplies where other persons 

 buy them. The traveling craftsman has gone. The 

 farmer raises his products for sale rather than merely 

 to supply his own needs, and he is a heavy buyer as 

 well as a producer. Something of the picturesque- 

 ness of country life has left it with the passing of 

 the local tannery, grist-mill, wagon-shop, broom- 

 shop, barrel-factory, hand-loom, shoemaker's-shop 

 and cabinet-shop, but the rural people may the better 

 concentrate themselves on production. 



Attention in this chapter will not be confined to 



