6S 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



talking about care in handling, but the people we employ to do the 

 work do not use such care as experience has taught is necessary, and, as 

 I have been informed on remonstrating with a packer, "we are not con- 

 cerned about the grower." In a lifetime of experience in handling 

 practically every variety of fruit grown in this country, the orange is 

 the only fruit product in which the custom is to face the top of the box 

 and press the cover on rather than the bottom. 



The fact is, fruit does not carry nearly so well as it did ten or twenty 

 years ago, before the advent of the machinery packing-house, wherein 

 are concentrated large quantities of fruit, necessitating large gangs of 

 pickers and packers, with the natural hurrah attending such matters; 

 and before the use of the modern ventilator-refrigerator car, which as a 

 protection from frost in winter or refrigeration in summer is all right, 

 but as a ventilator car is a complete failure, since it must be in motion to 

 be a ventilator at all, and as most cars are twice as long in transit as 

 they were ten years ago it is evident they must stand still one half the 

 time. Consequently we are driven to refrigeration six weeks earlier 

 than we should be. 



In contrast to this we had a packing-house without machinery; thirty- 

 five to fifty boxes was a day's work for a packer, who wrapped the 

 bottom row as carefully as he did the top; it was not considered neces- 

 sary that the fruit should be packed two or more inches above the top 

 edge of the box, to be pressed down with the cover; two or three days 

 were required in getting the fruit from the tree to fill one car, instead of 

 loading two cars in one day, and when loaded even into an old combina- 

 tion stock car the fruit carried without complaint of it having been 

 received in bad condition. 



Is this difference in carrying quality due to difference in handling, or 

 is it possible that some constitutional difficulty has come to tree and 

 fruit, due to the growth of large quantities for a long time in one section, 

 as has attacked many other soil products when planted continuously on 

 the same plots ? 



We are frequently reading that there need be no fear of over-produc- 

 tion of good fruit, the writers of the articles imagining, I suppose, that in 

 their districts only could such fruit be produced. If so, there will 

 always be plenty of inferior fruit, which will largely make the price for 

 all, unless it should be the policy of the railroads to maintain such a 

 high freight rate that it would be impossible to send it to market except 

 at a loss; and this is not impossible, since a prominent railroad official 

 stated at the Interstate Commerce Commission investigation, that about 

 a 10,000-car crop was more profitable to the railroad companies than a 

 larger one. 



The cost of getting our fruit to the consumer is unreasonably high; 

 even according to the terms of the new merger the price charged is very 



