l6o THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



grow where one grew before is eclipsed by the idea that success in agri- 

 ctilture is quite as much dependent on business management as on large 

 production. We need, then, in The Peaches of New York to set down as 

 precisely as possible, as a record of the times, the business side of peach- 

 growing. This we conceive, so far as the fruit-grower is concerned, consists 

 of matters having to do with growing, picking, grading, packing, cooling 

 and shipping, while the affairs of the several go-betweens from producer 

 to consumer belong to merchanting rather than orcharding. Not that the 

 grower is without interest in the selling of his products — far from it. 

 There is no better ballast to keep the fruit-dealer steady than knowledge 

 of all of his dealings on the part of the fruit-grower. 



Among Caucasians green peaches have a bad reputation. Adage, 

 prose and poetry bear witness that any curtailment of the sun's maturing 

 function in this fruit is going against nature and makes an altogether 

 unwholesome product. But in China and Japan the peach is habitually 

 eaten green and hard. Fungi play such havoc with peaches in Oriental 

 countries that the fruit must be devoured green or the crop is lost. A 

 green peach is quite as palatable, nutritious and wholesome as a green 

 olive. The ripe product of the one is just as superior to the green as is 

 the other. All this not to point a moral or adorn a tale but to bring 

 out the fact that the green peach is an edible fruit and that the annual 

 performance of health inspectors in all large markets in condemning car- 

 loads of green peaches as unfit for food while green olives, apples, pears, 

 plums, cherries and grapes pass muster, is an unjust discrimination against 

 the peach. The peach is, of cour.se, best when ripe, soft, melting and 

 luscious, but so are all other fruits and all should be accorded the same 

 treatment by consumers and health inspectors. 



The peach in western countries is picked for market when it has 

 attained full size and is passing from the hard state of the green peach to 

 the softer mature condition. The picker tells by eye and by pressure 

 of the peach between thumb and finger when a peach is ready for picking. 

 White-fleshed peaches are green in color when picked but turn to greenish- 

 white or yellowish-white as maturity proceeds; yellow-fleshed turn from 

 yellowish -green to lemon or orange-yellow. The full flavor of the ripe 

 peach develops only when the fruit ripens on the tree but ripe fruit cannot 

 be shipped and peaches are therefore picked at the stage in advance of 

 full maturity that will permit them to reach the market at maturity — one 

 or two days in New York, six or seven in California. Peach-picking is 



