CONDITIONS li;ading to organization. 445 



tively small figure; but to the small farmer with ten to fifty 

 acres of orchard or vineyard, this was not possible. The men 

 with whom he and his family must daily associate nmst be 

 decent men, and to keep such he must make their surround- 

 ings decent. Especially the non-resident owner must have 

 faithful men on his place, and house them comfortably. Nor 

 could he be continually discharging them, and taking on new 

 men. The succession of work is constant, and men must be 

 there to do it. In a bearing deciduous orchard, as soon as the 

 fruit is gathered, the pruning begins. In pruning full-grown 

 trees an average of twenty trees per day is a day's work, or 

 five days to the acre, or two hundred days of pruning to a 

 forty-acre orchard, with a month more in disposing of the 

 brush. The pruning over, the plowing and cultivation begin, 

 and continue every day until fruit pits begin to harden. 

 Then follows the thinning, often requiring three-fourths of 

 the fruit to be laboriously picked off by hand, and always 

 lasting until the earlier varieties begin to ripen. In the mean- 

 time there has been winter spraying with chemical insecticides 

 — a tedious and expensive process — and summer spraying with 

 other preparations for other classes of insects. When the 

 harvest begins, more help must be employed. The eastern 

 farmer finds it hard and expensive work to gather a burden of 

 two to five tons per acre of hay or grain, which he cuts and 

 handles by machinery; he would be appalled at the prospect 

 of gathering a product of ten to fifteen tons, in pieces of a few 

 ounces, each carefully picked by hand,* from the tops of trees, 

 and always handled several times over. The harvest over 

 the pruning begins again, and so on forever. The conflict 

 with insects and parasites is unceasing. If undisturbed, they 

 destroy the orchards, and there is a constant expense on their 

 account. The loss of trees is very large; bad planting or poor 

 cultivation impairs the vitality of many trees, and leaves 

 them ready to succumb to the first injury, usually not actualh- 

 dying, which would be desirable, but leading an unprofitable 

 and expensive existence for years ; sunburn destroys thou- 



* Except prunes, which are shaken from the tree and picked 



