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sometimes as much as fifteen, aud then condemned the sulphur method as 

 not being beneficial to me, from the fact that my fruit was not bleached; 

 it would not retain its natural color, but showed oxidation. I said our 

 "climate is not adapted to the drying of fruit." In Suisun Valley now 

 we have no fog there, but there is moisture in the air which is observable 

 upon the fruit in the morning; so I went down to the city to a young man 

 named Morris, who had been drying at Winters, and who had made the 

 best sun-dried fruit I had seen up to that time, and wanted him to come 

 up and show the boys how to do the work; he says you are doing all right 

 enough, only you do not sulphur them long enough. Now, as I have before 

 said, it is immaterial to me what I have to do to fruit to make it sell at a 

 profit — that is, within reason; I don't want to poison anybody, but if they 

 want it painted green, yellow, or white, and will pay me better for putting 

 up my fruit that way, that is the way I want to have it. Now, what shall 

 we do — shall we send them fruit they do not want when we are able to 

 make it as they do want it? There may be a certain degree of bleaching 

 that would be deleterious ; that question as to how much will not be harm- 

 ful I hope will be solved, but until we do know that and until we can 

 appreciate that we have harmed the health of any one, and while they will 

 not pay but a small price for that that is not sulphured, I do not see what 

 we have got to do but to bleach to their taste. As I said before, I bleached 

 my Petite prunes this year -till they were, or nearly a golden yellow, and 

 they were sold at 10 cents a pound delivered in Chicago in fifty-pound 

 boxes, which is a pretty good price this year. The last two years I had 

 some Bartlett pears too small for shipping and cut them into quarters, re- 

 moving a little bit of the blossom end of the fruit and a little bit of the stem 

 end; I cut them into quarters with the seeds and cores, put them on trays 

 and bleached them. Last year I got 14 cents a pound for them in fifty- 

 pound boxes in Chicago, and this year 11 cents. This year the price on 

 all of our dried fruit is lower than usual unless possibly as to raisins. 



Mr. Block: Do you mean to say you did not peel the pears nor take out 

 the cores? 



Mr. Hatch: Neither one; in fact, as probably the ladies know, a pear is 

 better baked in that way than in any other, because the skin and the core is 

 there and gives a finer flavor in cooking. The dry pear with the skin and 

 core is better than one with the seeds and core taken from it, but whether 

 that is so or not they have paid more the last two years than they would if 

 sliced, and peeled, and cored. I do not know why, unless it may be that 

 they looked more like canned goods when they are cooked and put on a 

 plate when the skin is yellow and the pear white. Referring to prunes; in 

 the Granger's Bank in San Francisco I was shown by Mr. Montpellier some 

 put up by Mr. George Hendy, whose place is, I believe, in Santa Clara 

 County, between Los Gatos and Saratoga. They were simply magnificent 

 goods in size and appearance, and we compared them with a box of the 

 finest imported French prunes, and Mr. Montpellier, himself a Frenchman, 

 who would be prejudiced, if at all, in favor of his country's goods, said 

 that these were the finest goods of the two. They pursued a different plan 

 from what I used, and endeavored to make it appear like the French 

 goods, but he considered it the best fruit of the two; that shows we are mak- 

 ing some progress. 



Mr. Wilcox: Those prunes were processed in San Francisco. 



Mr. Hatch: There is a house in San Francisco, I understand, that buys 

 prunes and processes them, and I believe does so for others. There are 

 different sized trays used. I use three by three, and make the chest to fit 

 them. It don't matter what size they are as long as they fit into the chest, 



