crops they grow. It requires but a few 
years of carelessness or neglect, to ruin the 
best variety of corn or other crop, and de¬ 
prive it of all its distinctively good char¬ 
acteristics. We should breed our seeds as 
careful breeders have long bred their ani¬ 
mals, with an ideal standard in view to 
work to.—W. E. Farmer. 
Evaporating Fruit as a Business. 
The unusual profit attending the judicious 
management of this comparatively new in¬ 
dustry will continue. As long as the pres¬ 
ent enormous waste, and the low prices of 
fruits in the United States at gathering 
seasons continue on the one hand, and any¬ 
thing like the present demand and price for 
the evaporated article on the other, mill¬ 
ions of capital may and will find safe and 
profitable investment therein. 
It should be remembered that we have 
the markets of the world offering a profit¬ 
able margin over the cost of production, for 
all our fruits and berries, at steadily advan¬ 
cing prices. 
It should not be forgotten that at present, 
and for years to come, the annual produc¬ 
tion of common dried fruit, now largely in 
excess of the evaporated article, on the ac¬ 
cepted theory of the “survival of the fittest,” 
must necessarily first succumb. Practically, 
the evaporator’s mission is no less than to 
revolutionize and supplant an old method 
of uuiversal employment by a new. Noth¬ 
ing better yet known to the masses and 
defended by the prejudices of the millions, 
the fear of over-stocking the market with 
evaporators or their products, seems far 
sought, indeed. 
In no department of agricultural econ¬ 
omy do we find so much loss as in the fruits 
that waste under the trees and pass un¬ 
noticed, yet in the case of apples or peaches, 
properly evaporated, they are worth in the 
market to-day respectively, fifteen and 
twenty-five cents per pound. The same 
carelessness or extravagance on the part of 
a farmer, if it related to corn or wheat, 
would subject him to unpleasant criticisms 
in the entire neighborhood, yet the actual 
loss would in present markets be only two 
and three cents per pound* respectively. 
The price of all our fruits and berries is 
based upon their value as fresh ripe fruit, 
often a question of so many hours’ trans¬ 
portation alone, and not of supply and de¬ 
mand at all, except a local one. The mar¬ 
gin existing between an over-stocked local 
market in the harvest season, and the value 
of the evaporated product at home or 
abroad in the months of fruit famine, con¬ 
stitutes their true commercial value, and 
presents to view the evaporator’s oppor¬ 
tunity. 
We invite attention to the significant fact 
that in this era of low prices for all farm 
products, and food supplies, in fact almost 
everything*produced on the farm has de¬ 
clined to about one-half of its past average 
value, except evaporated fruits. True, 
evaporated apples, owing to the immense 
quantities of fresh apples on the market at 
unusually low prices, have shared in the 
depression common to everything else, to a 
considerable but not equal extent. However, 
with this single exception, all the rest stand 
out prominently and invite attention, and 
the investment of capital in their manufac¬ 
ture. At present prices, evaporating ap¬ 
ples pays better than growing wheat, corn, 
oats, potatoes or cotton, while peaches, 
cherries and berries have held their former 
prices. No better or more conclusive an¬ 
swer could be given to the question often 
asked in years past, “will not the business 
of evaporating fruit be overdone, &c.,” 
than that now, with wheat on the eastern 
seaboard at 75 to 85 cents per bushel, and 
other farm products in proportion, the 
evaporated fruits and berries, apples only 
excepted, (and that for reasons stated)^ are 
about the same as when wheat was $1.75 to 
$2.00 per bushel. 
The latest Philadelphia, quotations on 
farm products are about as follows: 
Corn, f cent a pound; oats, 1 cent; wheat, 
H cents; sugar, 6 cents; apples. 9 cents; 
cotton, 11 cents; wool, 20 cents; pared 
peaches, 28 cents; black raspberries, 30 cts' 
For properly doing the work the Amer¬ 
ican Evaporator has successfully estab¬ 
lished its claims as the Represen¬ 
tative Fruit Evaporator of America, and 
the following points of superior merit are al¬ 
lowed by general consent;. 
