68 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



holds 120 boxes, two rows wide and six high. Front wheels 48 inches 

 diameter, hind wheels 54 inches. We use three horses abreast. Every 

 sixth box has cleats under it, and is stenciled in black, so it can be seen 

 anywhere, to enable the men to put these on the bottom of each tier, 

 so we can use a truck with a twelve-inch nose to convey six boxes at a 

 time from the wagon across the end gate (now used as a bridge) from 

 load to packing house floor. 



The elevator, the clamp truck, and the rustler, were all undesirable 

 features in equipment. We have cut out the elevator, by dropping the 

 floor of the house below the grading table twenty inches, so we feed on 

 to the sizer almost horizontally. When necessary to weigh, we empt}^ the 

 bins and use small platform scales. All our culls are carried to a bin 

 and reinspected by the foreman. I think I pay his wages out of the 

 cull bin. 



We use no brusher. If fruit is dirty, we grade it out and clean it. 

 If one child is sick, it is better to dose it. and not give medicine to the 

 entire family. We use Stebler's automatic dumper and sizer, which 

 eliminates the desire of the human dumper to shove the fruit down 

 with the edge of the box. We have a piece of canvas with a board 

 attached, so that it meets the box as it comes up and covers enough 

 of it to make the oranges crumble down inside the box, instead of 

 flying out. They fall on rubber hose, spaced apart, to let buttons, sticks, 

 etc., fall through at once; but clean picking has almost cut them out. 

 The hopper below the hose grating is smooth, hardwood board, as the 

 fruit does not fall on it. 



We use Praed canvas bins. When packed, the boxes are placed on 

 Alvey Ferguson ball-bearing roller conveyors, twenty-six inches high, 

 the height of the press. The most perfect press I know of is made by 

 Mr. Covey of Riverside. The fruit is clamped sideways — away from the 

 edge of the box before it is pressed down, and it seems to prevent injury 

 when carefully handled. When nailed, the boxes are shoved on the 

 conveyor, and run by gravity into the end of the car if needed, or ofl^ 

 to the side of the house to be stacked. 



Not all of the work in our house is adapted to all other houses, but 

 the determined growers, the intelligent manager, the picking crew, the 

 careful hauling and handling, are, after all, the best equipment for any 

 house, and when you have these, no device that can possibly injure fruit 

 will be tolerated. 



Let us pick and pack our fruit to save ourselves loss now that the 

 Department of Agriculture has spent $36,000 to show us how to min- 

 imize decay, knowing that the trade will pay us well if we save them 

 loss. When dealers find out that most decay is preventable, it will be 

 hard to sell fruit that has been carelessly handled. 



I presume "Packing House Equipment" was assigned to me because 

 the Commissioner thought there was something unusual in my house 

 in the way of ' ' equipment. ' ' There is little in it that is original ; it is 

 only the adaptation of other men's ideas, picked up here and there, 

 but always with the purpose of simplifying the work, and handling 

 fruit with care. We have coddled the lemon and abused the orange. 

 Having no lemons, we coddled what we had, and the oranges got the 

 easy handling. They have responded, as ]\Ir. Powell predicted they 



