CANNING THE SURPLUS 



77 



a fair price, perhaps about twenty-five or thirty cents for 

 every basket sold the dealers, and that extra five hundred 

 baskets would have gone to the cannery and would have 

 brought twenty-five cents. If that five hundred baskets had 

 been given to the factory and canned at a loss, the growers 

 would have been far ahead; for instead of selling all the to- 

 matoes in market for fifteen cents per basket, the price would 

 have stayed at twenty-five or thirty. 



I believe, though, that there will be no great rush of gard- 

 eners getting canning outfits ; for I think the most of us mar- 

 ket gardeners think the business is too small to putter with 

 and will take up too much of our time. 



A great many of us are like the philosopher I once heard 

 of. A certain tanner wished to get a suitable sign for his 

 tannery, so he bored a hole through the doorpost and stuck 

 a calf's tail into it with the tuft sticking on the outside. 

 Some time after, he saw a solemn faced man standing steadi- 

 ly gazing at the sign. So the tanner stepped to the door and 

 said, ''Good morning." ''Good morning." "Do you wish to 

 purchase some leather?" "No." "Do you wish to sell some 

 hides?" "No." "Are you a farmer?" "No." "What are 

 you then?" "Why," said the man, "I am a philosopher and 

 I have been standing here all this time trying to figure out 

 how that calf got through that hole." 



Now, that is the way with many market gardeners. They 

 spend more time trying to figure out how to crowd goods on 

 an oversupplied market than would be taken to can the quan- 

 titj^ on a good home canning outfit. 



Mr. Locke (Steuben County) : Have you experience with 

 spinach? 



Mr. Warford : I have canned some, but I have not canned 

 very much, because spinach is one of the crops we cannot 

 grow to advantage in our section, there is so much grit. 



Mr. Locke: We have a good opportunity to grow it and 

 want to know something about the expense and profit. I 

 would not want to can the spinach if I could get thirty cents 

 a bushel for it. Thirteen pounds is the legal weight in this 

 state. 



