Bureau of Ageicultuee 493 



XXX. The last is the best or fancy grade, that commands the 

 biggest price. The next grade is not so perfect, and we sell this at 

 a different price, of course. The poorest grade does not go into the 

 car at all. We have been fortunate in getting our growers to make 

 very good packs indeed. We have a grader in each car, and only 

 ship from one point. These berries are received on the car and 

 are opened. If they have 100 crates, the grader opens one or two 

 or three crates. If he finds them running up to standard, he grades 

 them accordingly. We have two ways of selling the berries. That 

 is, at home, on the track, or on consignment. Strawberries have to be 

 handled very quickly. Our idea is not merely to try to sell the straw- 

 berries only, but we are trying to make the product so good that 

 the buyers will wan1^ ours in preference to the other fellow's. Now, 

 we have the buyers on the ground. We have sometimes 12 to 15 

 of them on the ground at once. We get $2.25 a crate on track, and 

 do not cut the price until the season is more than half over. We 

 have been fortunate in selling these berries on track. 



We have laid down some rules in regard to the picking. We 

 all pay the same price for the pickers. We pay a fair price. There 

 is no class of labor in our county that is better paid than the straw- 

 berry pickers. We give 7c a gallon, that is, we pay them 6c a gallon 

 weekly, and if they stay till the end of the season, we pay a bonus 

 of Ic a gallon. Some of the pickers pick a few weeks and drop out. 

 If 25 of the pickers drop out, it is a very serious loss; so we use 

 this plan to keep them, and it works very well indeed. Any boy or 

 girl can make from $1.00 to $1.50 a day picking berries. Grown men 

 and women sometimes make an average of $2.00 a day. We had 

 one man in our fields who picked 90 gallons of strawberries in a day, 

 and- made $7.80, the rate then being higher than now. They earn 

 from 25c to $5.00 a day for picking berries. They have to pick 

 them well. We have a man who stays in the field who is constantly 

 going from one picker to another and watches the picking. The 

 berries on the top layer are perhaps a little better than underneath, 

 but the average box is about the same all the way through. We 

 try to give the buyers a square deal, and if for some reason some 

 grower gets past with some berries that are not quite up to standard, 

 so that the buyer complains, we satisfy him and repay him. Some- 

 times we pay back several hundred dollars at the end of the sea- 

 son. 



A year ago we sent our manager to the cities in which we sell — 

 fourteen of the big cities in the east — to get acquainted with the 

 trade. He spent several weeks in the east visiting these cities and 

 came back with a very encouraging report. The wholesalers said 

 to him: "Your berries are the most satisfactory we have ever 

 gotten," This is because they are standardized. 



Alt)out the profits. Like everything else, they vary a good deal. 



