18 MODERN FRUIT MARKETING 
nent roads where it may be transferred to the fruit 
wagons. The spring wagon is not only necessary for 
orchard work, but also for carrying the fruit from the 
packing-house to the railway or shipping points. 
Managing Pickers.—When one begins to offer sug- 
gestions upon the management of help on a fruit farm 
he is immediately piling upon himself criticisms from 
various sources, because the labor question in connec- 
tion with fruit growing is becoming one of the most 
serious problems connected with the business. In sec- 
tions of the country where large areas are devoted to 
fruit, it is often exceedingly difficult to get competent 
help for harvesting or handling the fruit. Often, in 
small areas more or less isolated from the larger centers 
of population, growers have to abandon their fruit be- 
cause of the cost of labor or the lack of sufficient help. 
Tramp Labor.—In the larger fruit sections of the 
Western and Middle states, most of the day labor con- 
sists of the great floating population which is popularly 
known as ‘‘tramps or hobos.’’ Such labor, although not 
the best, is usually the class that has to be relied upon 
in harvesting fruit crops. These floating laborers will 
winter either in the South or in the big cities of the 
East. In the spring they drift South and begin pick- 
ing fruit at the opening of the season in the Southern 
states and then gradually work north until the season 
closes and they find themselves in the North as far as 
the fruit industry extends; drifting back to the South or 
to the big cities to spend the winter. Much of this help 
is unreliable and uncertain; and each fruit-producing sec- 
tion has to work out the problem of harvesting its fruit 
according to the needs of its own particular locality. 
