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Mr. Wilcox: Last year Mr. Leib had his prunes on exhibition put up 

 in ten-pound cans, and beautifully labeled and marked one hundred to 

 the pound, and I believe that I said that these prunes sold on the principle 

 of Mr. Cooper's oil, and that they could sell one hundred carloads of those 

 prunes at 15 cents a pound. 



Mr. Varney: I came up from San Francisco with Mr. Leib a few days 

 ago and obtained a good deal of information from him, and I know that 

 in a general way we are not able to compete with Mr. Leib or Dr. Hendy. 

 Dr. Hendy 's prunes are put up in boxes weighing four and one quarter 

 pounds. He intended to have it five pounds, but the boxes were made a 

 little too small. They are all carefully selected and carefully graded. 

 Mr. Leib grades his into five grades; that is, they run from forty to forty- 

 five to the pound, from forty-five to fifty, fifty to fifty-five, and so on down 

 to seventy-five to eighty to the pound. They run strictly, and if you pick 

 up any grade you will find that they weigh that exactly. Those prunes — 

 thirty-five to forty — sold for 19 cents. And by the way, Mr. Leib's grader 

 cost him $500. There is no one else has as perfect a grader as his. It 

 might be gathered from the remarks made here that the best sun-dried 

 fruit that can be made would be better than any evaporated fruit. That 

 is not so, speaking from the dollar and cents point of view. If it could be 

 just the right stage of ripeness it will make a far nicer fruit by being evap- 

 orated than it would by putting it in the sun, but there are very few who 

 would take the pains or who could afford to do it. Still, from my expe- 

 rience as a merchant and drier, I say that evaporated fruit can be sold and 

 does sell higher than anything in the sun-dried line. 



Mr. George Husmann, of Napa: I would like to say a word on the sub- 

 ject of drying wine grapes. I take a great interest in that matter, because 

 I see that in that way a large outlet for a grape of which we have too 

 many; that is the Zinfandel. I think, if we could dry our grapes and 

 dispose of them at anything like the prices mentioned, we would work up 

 a large quantity which otherwise would have to be made into wine, and 

 bring down the wine prices so much as to make it unremunerative; but this 

 season there have been so many obstacles in the way of the weather with 

 that grape, and perhaps on that account they have not been used so largely 

 for that purpose as it would have been. We have had, as you are all 

 aware, very hot weather, which caused the stem of that grape to dry, and 

 consequently they have been very light and soft. They have said that the 

 grapes that are to be dried ought to contain 25 per cent of sugar, which 

 the Zinfandel did not reach. Another thing is the uneven ripening of that 

 grape; we know that generally there are a good many dried berries on a 

 bunch already when others are comparatively green and unripe, and they 

 would hardly make a good dried fruit in that condition. For those reasons 

 I think there have been but few grapes dried this season, especially as we 

 had very heavy rains in September, which made it very difficult. It has 

 been mentioned that they could be made into wine in Europe, or any other 

 place, as is evidently true, as every one that is familiar with wine making 

 knows that when grapes are dried, we simply dry out the water, while the 

 sugar, the flavor which constitutes the grape, remains; consequently, if they 

 are transported in their dried condition, and the water that has been dried 

 out by the sun or by an evaporator is added again, and they are fermented 

 with it, there is no reason why they should not make just as good wine as 

 they should now, and therefore if we can find an outlet in that way, it is a 

 very important thing for those who have grown the Zinfandel in such large 

 quantities. 



