July, 1918 
WISCONSIN HORTICULTURE 
163 
more satisfactory poison and 
safer to use. Unless lime is add- 
ed to Paris green solution burning 
of the foliage is apt to result. With 
arsenate there is no danger. The 
arsenate docs not settle as quickly 
as Paris green and sticks better 
to the foliage. Arsenate of lead 
may be had at any drug store. 
The Wisconsin Apple Grading 
Lav/. 
By Dr. E. 1). Ball. 
Let us start out with the 
statement that the apple grad- 
ing law was made by and designed 
for the producer. The enforce- 
ment of the law has been put into 
the hands of the Department of 
Agriculture. Its work has been 
and is going to be in the interests 
of the grower, and if we do not 
enforce this law to your satisfac- 
tion, it is going to be your fault, 
because we expect to be your agents 
in the carrying out of its pro- 
visions. 
The enforcement of the apple 
grading law is with the idea of de- 
veloping more orchards and bet- 
ter orchards, and of producing a 
standard to which each man can 
work. I am going to ask this so- 
ciety to appoint a committee to fix 
the standard, and if with your as- 
sistance, we can produce a certain 
standard product for the state of 
Wisconsin, every single man in the 
state that produces that standard 
will be able to get more money for 
it than you are getting for those 
same apples not standardized. 
In travelling around in the state 
I find one man packing No. 1 and 
2, another packing A. and B. and 
a third packing X and XX, and 
all kinds and variations of these 
labels, but they mean absolutely 
nothing to anybody except to the 
man that packs, because there is no 
standard. One man may be pack- 
ing an entirely different thing for 
No. 1 from the man right across the 
street. So the law as I understand 
it is designed to provide a defi- 
nite, written and published stand- 
ard, and then provide an inspector 
to see that the classed package is 
designated with the proper stand- 
ard and the name of the man that 
packed it. 
To illustrate the working out of 
the law let us divide all apples 
into two classes on quality. Apples 
that are really fit for human food 
and have keeping quality; such ap- 
ples do not have worm holes, they 
do not have bad scab blotches, they 
are not deformed by scab or cur- 
culio or by puncture of any insect. 
Those are the essentials of quality, 
it does not make any difference 
how much color they have nor how 
much size they have. A ripe ap- 
ple regardless of its size is a food 
product. In fact, a medium small 
apple if often times a better food 
product than an over grown big 
one. 
In apple grading we must learn 
three grades: Wisconsin standard 
fancy apples, Wisconsin standard 
A, Wisconsin standard B. All 
those three grades presuppose 
quality, practically the same qual- 
ity as far as food value is concern- 
ed. Eliminated from them are 
wormy apples, badly scabbed ap- 
ples, deformed apples, bruised ap- 
ples, apples that are not fit for 
food. In these gi’adcs we only put 
apples that are good for human 
food and have power enough to 
keep, so that they will be fit for 
food when they reach the con- 
sumer. 
We devide these apples of qual- 
ity into fancy, if they have high 
color, standard A if they have one- 
half that much color and standard 
B if they have less than half color. 
The division is not on quality but 
on attractiveness. The extra fancy 
apple with the high color must not 
have anything that detracts from 
its attractiveness. It must not 
even have a worm sting that has 
been healed over and that has prac- 
tically nothing to do with the keep- 
ing quality or food value of the 
apple, but it does detract from its 
showiness. Standard A is an ap- 
ple that does not have quite t hat 
extraordinary excellence of finish, 
it may not have as high a color, it 
may have a little bit of a mark in 
the way of scab, it may have a lit- 
tle mar in the way of a sting, if 
that sting does not interfere with 
its quality. Standard B may have 
a little larger defect, not enough to 
interfere with the quality mater- 
ially, but just a little with the ap- 
pearance. This grading differs 
from the former in taking what 
you have put into two grades un- 
der the old grading system and 
made three grades of it. 
Size makes little difference in 
the value of an apple. That has 
been recognized in the western box 
apples, but it is equally well recog- 
nized that uniformity of size is of 
great value. If you take a large 
apple and a small apple and put 
them in the same package, they will 
sell on the size of the small apple 
and in comparison they will look 
inferior and you will get a small 
price. If you separate them out 
and put them into separate pack- 
ages of uniform size, it increases 
their attractiveness and sale price 
immediately. 
Grading for color must be done 
by hand. The law provides that 
in fancy grades you must sort for 
color. A fancy grade must be 
sized so that there will be no more 
( Continued on page 165 ) 
