DRIED FRUIT AND NUT ASSOCIATIONS. 471 



bears well, but is longer maturing than elsewhere in the state, 

 thereby obtaining a thicker and firmer flesh, but ripening 

 too late for profitable shipping, as the apricot, fresh, does not 

 sell well in competition with peaches, excellent varieties of 

 which are in the market from the earlier districts before the 

 Santa Clara apricots are ready. The peaches and pears, also, 

 from this district are said not to bear the long overland jour- 

 ney so well as fruit from interior districts. These conditions, 

 with the fact that the prune, whicli is almost exclusively a 

 drying fruit, was the largest fruit product of the valley, 

 naturally led to the drying or canning of the greater portion 

 of the crop. This business for some years proved very profit- 

 able, and the industry increased until large districts in the 

 valley were almost completely covered with orchards ranging 

 in size from five acres to three hundred acres, and San Jose 

 became by far the largest shipping-point in the state for dried 

 fruits; of prunes, especially, it supplied for some years almost 

 the entire output of the state, and while, with the enormous 

 increase of the industry elsewhere, its relative importance in 

 the trade has diminished, as late as 1893 there were shipped 

 from San Jose seventy-five per cent of the prunes and twenty- 

 five per cent of all the other dried fruits exported from 

 California. 



The fruit for drying — except prunes — is pitted, under sheds, 

 placed on shallow wooden trays usually three by eight feet, 

 bleached by exposure to sulphur fumes, and then dried in the 

 sun. Prunes, of course, are neither pitted nor bleached. To 

 secure uniformity in drying, prunes are graded by machinery 

 before drying, and other fruits either by machinery or by 

 hand. To handle the pitted fruits properly, a good deal of 

 extra labor is required, and a few days of unusually hot 

 weather coming on may require the picking and pitting force 

 to be suddenly doubled in order to save the fruit, and this 

 extra labor is ngt always available when needed. Considerable 

 vacant space must be left in the orchard for drying ground, 

 and on small farms this space was grudged from the orchard. 

 The investment in trays and machinery was consideral^le if 

 the fruit was to be properly cared for, ana the labor of feeding 



