PICKING AND MARKETING FRUITS. 



Packing Plants, Profits of Small Fruit Culture. 



HE question often arises, after all, do small' fruits pay ? 

 They pay some people well, and unless location, soil, or 

 climate are hopelessly against you, the degree of profit will 

 "■9'' depend upon your skill, judgment and industry. The 

 raising of small fruits is like other callings in which some are get- 

 ting rich, more earning a fair livelihood, and not a few failing. I 

 do not seek to mislead any one by rose-colored pictures. It is a 

 business in which there is jin abundance of sharp, keen competi- 

 tion, and ignorance, poor judgment, and shiftless, idle ways will 

 be as fatal as in* the work-shop, store, or office. 



Innumerable failures result from inexperience. I will give 

 one extreme example which mn}^ serve to illustrate the sanguine 

 mental condition of many who read of large returns in fruit cul- 

 ture. A } oung man, who had inherited a few hundred dollars, 

 wrote me that he could hire a. piece of land for a certain amount, 

 and wished to invest the balance — every cent — with me, for 

 plants, thus leaving himself no capital to continue operations, but 

 expecting that a speedy crop would lift him at once into a pros- 

 perous career. I wrote that under the circumstances I could not 

 supply him — that it would be about the same as robbery to do so, 

 and advised him to spend several years with a practical and suc- 

 cessful fruit-grower and learn the business. 



Most people enter upon this calling in the form of a wedge, 

 but only too many commence at the blunt end, investing largely 

 at once in everything, and therefore soon taper down to nothing. 



