115 



clean, and wholesome fruit, whereby we will find ready sales at living 

 prices; and our eastern friends will say to the Turkish prune, the Spanish 

 raisin, and, oh! the Grecian currant importers, " Thank you, we are done 

 buying dirt and trash; we will try for a change the California prunes, 

 raisins, currants, peaches, plums, nectarines, etc., and take less chance of 

 contracting some loathsome disease." 



Now, Mr. President, I have no doubt when I have finished reading this 

 poorly constructed essay, that I will be classed as an advocate of fruit dry- 

 ing exclusively; and yet, while I am directly interested in fruit canning, 

 I feel that fruit drying needs our most careful attention, as all growers are 

 driers more or less, while canning is conducted by a few individuals; and 

 fruit canners have studied and learned the wants of their consumers; hence 

 the reputation of California canned fruits. Why not make our dried fruits 

 gain as great a reputation, first, by making a good article, placing it on 

 the market, avoiding the usual two or three commission merchants as in 

 the past; second, by asking railroad companies to give us living freight 

 rates; there being no question as to our having fruit of the very best qual- 

 ity, and in great quantities. The question is, " Shall we can or dry our 

 fruits ? " My answer is, " The time is not far hence that drying of our 

 California fruits will be first on the list; for as sure as our eastern friends 

 find that they can get our dried fruits in quantity, at living prices, the 

 result will be, they will eat less pork and cabbage and more fruit and 

 fritters. 



DISCUSSION ON FRUIT DRYING. 



General Chipman: There is lamentable ignorance among fruit raisers 

 as to the best method of drying fruit, so that the interest itself is suffering 

 by reason of that ignorance, and it is also suffering by reason of unclean- 

 liness on the part of the Chinese who are engaged in the business of drying, 

 and some steps ought to be taken to protect the fruit interests of this State 

 against such a way of operating. In the neighborhood of Vina, near where 

 I reside, there are about two thousand acres leased to Chinamen, from ten 

 to one hundred and sixty acres to a company, and the way they do is to 

 get at about the average time of ripening of the whole fruit of a tree, instead 

 of pursuing the course of an intelligent grower, of taking the fruit as it 

 comes picking time — they take the average result of a tree and go with 

 sticks and knock off everything on to the ground into the dust, and then it 

 is gathered up, carried in a most slovenly and dirty way to dirty places, 

 where it is handled in a dirty manner, and green, ripe, and over-ripe all 

 mixed up, and comes to the market and is mixed with your fruit and 

 mine, and there is no way to identify that, and our fruit suffers in reputa- 

 tion by reason of that method. There ought to be some way to put a 

 brand upon that kind of fruit drying in this State; men who are engaged 

 in selling fruit ought not to take it and mingle it with the dried fruit of 

 Vaca Valley, or undertake to sell it as second or third rate with the Vaca 

 Valley fruit, or the Suisun fruit, or the Marysville or any other fruit, as is 

 done, for it does very great harm to the industry here. As to the best 

 method of drying fruit, there is great ignorance in my country. Most of 

 the fruit men are young in the business. The matter of bleaching was 

 unknown there until quite recently; it was looked upon at first as a mys- 

 tery, and many of them were not even told how to do it; they had to exper- 

 iment in that direction, and I hope some one will tell us, in a brief way, 

 the best way to pursue. 



Mr. Cooper: I will state that the fullest discussion of this subject was 

 held at the Santa Rosa convention, and is laid down in our third biennial 

 report; it is almost impossible, in my way of thinking, to improve upon it. 



