igll 



BEITER FRUIT 



Page 87 



ROM ORCHARD TO DEPOT BY AUTO.— 

 V On a certain night last summer if a visitor to 

 Chicago had been in a hurry to get to the North 

 Side on a North State or a North Clark Street 

 surface car he would have had to take the Ele- 

 vated road. 



For two hours, and a half the writer watched 

 a tie-up on all North Side surface cars caused 

 by the fact that a trainload of peaches or some 

 other perishable fruit had arrived in town Satur- 

 day evening too late to be marketed. It was 

 being sold at "cut-throat" prices because it was 

 feared that the fruit would have been \vorth 

 nothing at all the following Monday morning. 

 Hundreds of struggling women were there buying 

 their winter preserves; hundreds of pack peddlers 

 were struggling to fill their baskets for distribu- 

 tion that evening, and scores of Greek wagon fruit 

 venders were gathered along the entire length of 

 South Water Street, shoving, pushing and scram- 

 bling in their effort to get something almost for 

 nothing. It was a view of bustling city life worth 

 going to see, but so common along 

 that street that no attention was 

 paid to it except by those whose 

 movements were hindered by the 

 congestion of traffic. 



Whether the farmer who grew 

 that fruit got a fair price for it 

 and the Chicago merchant lost, or 

 whether it was shipped on consigri- 

 ment and the burden of the sacri- 

 fice fell upon the farmer, the writer 

 does not know. But it looks to him 

 that if transportation had been just 

 a little swifter and the train bear- 

 ing that fruit had reached the city 

 early Saturday morning instead of 

 early Saturday evening, both the 

 merchant and the grower would have 

 realized fair profits. 



This is just one of the incidents 

 which show how completely trans- 

 portation can make or break a fruit 

 grower. 



To a great many people on the 

 farm transportation from the point 

 of view of speed does not begin 

 until the fruit reaches the depot. 

 The possibility of an earlier train, 

 or of making valuable connections, 

 is often overlooked because of the 

 inability to make any better time 

 between the farm and the freight 

 shed. To the more modern, how- 

 ever, that is to those who are quick- 

 est to grasp each new invention as 

 if it were made especially for their 

 convenience, the race against tim« 

 begins at the berry patch or at the 

 orchard. In this race, as in most 

 other races against time. Old Dob- 

 bin is not one of the entries. His 

 place has been taken by the motor- 

 driven vehicle. The long-drawn 

 battle between gasoline and oats 

 which has been waged in the cities 

 has spread to the country, and in 

 the last few years the high-wheeled 

 auto delivery wagon of the metro- 

 politan grocer and the metropolitan 

 laundryman has become the delivery 

 wagon of equally aggressive rural 

 dairymen and fruit growers. This 

 victory of mechanical power over 

 animal power was determined not 

 by sentiment, nor by the faddist, 

 but by the two cold, hard guiding 

 rules of Twentieth Century choice — 

 speed and economy. 



When the groceryman found that 

 he could save two-thirds of his deliv- 

 ery expenses by using a light auto 

 delivery wagon he forgot the many 

 centuries of equine faithfulness that 

 was back of the horse and installed 

 an auto delivery system. The same 

 thing is occurring in the country. 

 The horse is losing out, not because 

 he is not willing, but because he 

 cannot stand the pace. He lacks 

 the endurance of a machine run by 

 power. 



The writer, as a boy in a fruit- 

 growing country, remembers many a 

 pleasant evening drive to town after 

 a busy day in the field, but he also 

 remembers that he was never allowed 

 to use the horse which had worked 

 all day: and if he went for a drive 

 on Sunday he was forbidden to take 

 the horse which had worked all 

 week. In those days, before auto 

 buggies appeared on the farms, we 

 went to the village, two miles away, 

 on week nights, and to the city, 

 twelve miles away, on Saturdays. 

 This last was a big trip, something 

 like going abroad. Nowadays, in 

 that same region, farmers deliver a 

 load of fresh vegetables or freshly 

 picked fruit to that same city with 

 their auto wagons, and are back to 

 their farms before the regular day's 

 work begins. During the day it is 

 not an uncommon thing to take a 

 pleasant spin to the city, do a little 

 shopping, pay a few calls and get 

 a little excitement — all on the same 



car which made the early morning marketing trip 

 with the fruit and produce. And then, again, in 

 the evening a short trip is frequently made by the 

 younger members of the family. Formerly one 

 trip with a horse and buggy meant twenty-four 

 hours for the horse, which was considered a good 

 day's work. 



The opportunity which the possession of such 

 a car opens to the farmer's family for a social 

 life is revolutionizing the attitude of the farmer's 

 family toward living on the farm. It is doing 

 more than the rural telephone to drive away the 

 loneliness and the discontent which has always 

 been a part of the socially inclined woman's life 

 on a secluded farm. 



Of course, the horse was a dual purpose means 

 of transportation, useful in both business and 

 pleasure, as every farmer's son knows, but it had 

 its limitations. It required a lot of care, it must 

 be carefully fed and housed, it is not clean to 

 handle after you are all dressed up and it has 

 to be "put up" at night. Then there are certain 



weather conditions when it is cruel to take a horse 

 out at all. On the other hand, with an auto deliv- 

 ery wagon, whether you put the back seat on and 

 take the family to a party or whether you take 

 an hour off to make a quick delivery to some 

 early train of a half ton of fruit, the question of 

 weather does not enter into this. The fear of 

 overwork never arises, there is no morning feed, 

 no stables to clean and no harness to put on. 

 It needs no argument to show that the commercial 

 car, as a matter of convenience, has the advantage. 



In regard to speed the conditions are the san,ie. 

 The average high-wheeled auto wagon will ma'ke 

 from fifteen to twenty miles an hour. It will 

 climb any hill and bad roads do not liave to be 

 considered at all. Last winter, in Chicago, all 

 Michigan Avenue smiled when one blizzardy day 

 one of these cars was kept busy towing expensive, 

 high class pleasure cars and roadsters, that were 

 unable to make any headway against the storm. 



Fruit growers who have suffered through delay 

 or through missed trains are keen to take up the 



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