1906. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
8i5 
AMONG THE GRAPE GROWERS. 
Tlie Grape Belt prints the following inter¬ 
esting notes: 
In a certain grape packing room, one day 
there was consternation. “What ails these 
grapes?” was the exclamation from one to 
the other of the workers—“Why see how 
they are cracked!” Up to that day all had 
been right. Grapes were sound and in fine 
order, why this trouble? Investigation at 
once began to locate the cause. It wasn’t- 
with the pickers; the same careful work, 
they so well knew how to do, had been done 
with this lot. It finally resolved itself into 
a case of the boy, the horse and the in¬ 
evitable whip. The slow walk bringing in 
the grapes from the field to which old 
Dobbin was used wasn’t quite enough on 
that . particular day for that full-of-life boy 
and he used tfce whip—was there ever a 
boy that sometime didn't when back of a 
horse—and the load of grapes came in over 
a not too smooth road with the horse on a 
trot. Now the Concord grapes has its good 
points, and also as every grower knows, its 
weaknesses. At a certain stage of its ripen¬ 
ing it will crack on the least provocation— 
The jar of the wagon on the rough road 
did the mischief that October day. 
Work in the packing room begins at seven 
sharp. When the “clock in the steeple" 
strikes that hour, a thousand swift fingers 
begin deftly putting away the purple clusters 
into the baskets preparatory to their making 
lheir long journey to Denver, to Minneapolis, 
sometimes crossing the continent to markets 
on the Pacific coast. Pleasant, wonderfully 
healthful as work among grapes always is, 
it has Its serious, even its difficult side. In 
the well ordered grape packing room no 
slambang process will for a moment pass 
muster. If in the regulation size eight-pound 
grape basket, now used in the Chautauqua 
district, there are to be eight pounds basket 
and all, the Concord must be packed. When 
filled the top of the basket must be even, 
just level full and no more. There are grape 
packers who will pack 100 baskets of Con¬ 
cord grapes making them weigh exactly 800 
pounds—time after time—so that there will 
be less than a pound variation for the 
total weight of the 100 baskets. 
On the authority of the weigher we have 
it, that a few years ago a two-horse load of 
grapes fell about 250 pounds the required 
weight. This wasn’t a case of grape pack¬ 
ing, it was simply a case—by far too com¬ 
mon—of “grape slinging.” No comment of 
the work of the grape packer can be com¬ 
plete and without injustice, if the work and 
duty of the grower, the employer, is omitted. 
If his demand is, not how well, but how 
many baskets shall be put up each day, 
then on his shoulders rest the consequences. 
Between the oppressive heat of Summer— 
the dog days period—and the ice and snow 
of November and December, there is carried 
on in the Chautauqua lake section a harvest 
—three quarters done by our sisters—which 
for all that makes life worth living in this 
workaday world, has no equal among the 
labors of the agriculturist and fruit-grower. 
And that just now-, both for employer and 
employee, it is pecuniarily profitable isn't 
all of the sunny side of the picture. 
A CALIFORNIA CANNERY. 
The California Fruit Grower prints the 
following bright story of a fruit canning 
factory by one who calls himself “Skinny.” 
It was printed in the Pioneer Express of 
Pembina. N. D. 
“It wasn’t a very busy day after all. There 
were only about 350 hands working, when they 
have room for 800. They were canning 
peaches, pears and plums, and the way some 
of those girls made their fingers and knives 
fly was certainly good for defective vision. 
Were you ever inside of a thrashing machine 
when it was going full tilt? Or the central 
figure of a swarm of bees? Well, these 
girls had ’em beat to a whisper. Aud clean 
—well, when the smelling committee gets 
through with the beef trust there won't be 
any job for ’em at this cannery. It’s clean 
from A to Izzard. No flies either. When 
the cannery starts up every fly in the 
country packs his suitcase and goes to the 
seashore for the season. ‘Everybody moves 
but Father’ is the California Summer song. 
The reason they were working short-handed 
was because they couldn't get any more help, j 
Some of these were college girls spending 
their vacations profitably. Cottages are pro¬ 
vided for them, or they can bring their tents 
and camp if they wish. There is a restau¬ 
rant and pavilion for entertainments when 
work is slack. 
“Everything is done by piecework, and to 
show you the difference in the way folks 
work, I got to see the wage sheet for the 
day before and it ranged from 50 cents to 
$4. They have a modest little woman ‘caged 
up’ where she can see what’s going on, that 
has the whole shebang under her finger tips, 
and they ain’t so big either. She seems to 
know every employee by their front handle 
and can tell you at six o’clock this morning 
what the cannery did the day before and 
what it cost to do it: What each girl did 
and what she made at it. Take her any 
can of fruit without a label and she’ll tell 
you what is in It, the grade of it and the 
girl’s name that packed It. 
“The fruit is mostly shipped In and comes 
in lug boxes (called so because they ‘lug’ 
the fruit around in them). It is weighed up 
and in the case of peaches and plums, put 
through a grader that sorts it out to a 
nicety aud dumps it in boxes according to 
size, when it is trucked in where the girls 
are. The first set cuts the peach In two 
and takes out the pit. Then the peelers go 
for them. It is all done by hand. There 
is dead oodles of fine fresh water all over 
the building and they ain’t afraid to use it. 
The fruit is then washed thoroughly and 
packed by another set. They can slap those 
half peaches into a can quieker'n you can 
say ‘Jack Robinson’ so they’ll land where 
they’re wanted and have the top pieces lock 
the other in. The empty cans are brought 
to them and the full ones carted away in 
iron basket trays holding 20 cans. They are 
then taken to the syrup machine, where a 
boy turns a wheel and it squirts through 20 
tubes about the size of a goose-quill and 
fills the whole bunch at once. 
“Then it is shoved along to the capper, 
who puts on the caps and puts each can in 
the soldering machine. The solderer does 
nothing but solder, but he works overtime at 
it. I was shown one geezer that had soldered 
the tops on 10,000 cans in 11 hours. By 
the time the cans reach him they are whirl¬ 
ing around like a spinning top and the caps 
are held in place. He has a soldering iron 
shaped like a G. Washington hatchet, and 
the solder comes to him over his shoulder 
in the form of a wire and all he has to do 
is to hold the iron in the crease and touch 
the wire to It and it’s done. There is still 
a little hole in the center of the cap. That’s 
to let the steam out. These baskets of cans 
are lowered into long vats of boiling water 
by means of an endless belt and when they 
get to the other end, they’ve been in four 
minutes—just long enough. They are taken 
out and these holes soldered up and that’s 
where the bullet comes from that you some¬ 
times swear at when you eat the fruit. 
Then they are doused in another tank and 
cooked from 5 to 40 minutes, according to 
kind and condition of fruit. 
“From here they go to the cooling room 
aud from there to the warehouse and are 
packed in coses. Such, in brief, are the 
travels of a peach. The poorer looking and 
small sizes find their way into cheaper grades 
and gallon pie fruit, while, strange to relate, 
the largest and finest looking peaches are sliced 
up by a machine that cuts up 100 a minute 
into accurate slices. Why? Well because 
the peaches are so big they couldn’t put 
more than four or five pieces into a can and 
you'd swear you were skinned on the deal 
if you only got that many.” 
TEXAS AFTER TWENTY YEARS. 
I have drifted down in this southwest 
country for a short term of railroad work. 
Probably if the Hope Farm man could sit 
on a brake wheel on top of a boxcar (no 
stone walls) and take a survey over these 
broad prairies, gently rising upward in everv 
direction to meet the horizon, it would bring 
back many a memory of his western days in 
Colorado. This is my first return to Texas 
soil in 23 years. ’Then plenty of buffalo 
roaming these same plains—now the whirling 
wlndwheels rising in occasional solitude at 
every point of the compass stand as mute 
beacons of the onward march of civilization, 
and the lonely settlers’ grim determination 
to turn those once staked plains to the wav¬ 
ing wheat fields, or the bountiful stock-feed¬ 
ing crops of Alfalfa, Kaffir corn, Milo maize 
or millet, for indeed it has been proven that 
this vast stretch of land will grow abundant 
crops, and the ranging stockman must move 
on or fence his herds, as the lands are be¬ 
ing rapidly bought up for general cropping, 
but especially wheat. Yesterday as I was 
strolling at the outskirts of the town. I 
came upon a little place of an acre or trifle 
more that the owner seemed to have made 
into a small experiment station of his own. 
I was interestedly looking over the fence at 
a fine patch of Alfalfa when the proprietor 
came out and invited me inside and kindly 
showed me about. He said he had made nine 
cuttings off the patch of Alfalfa and keeps 
his cow, pig and chickens in green feed 
all the season. The pig was an espe¬ 
cially fine-looking animal. I now know to 
a certainty that I have a chance seeding of 
Alfalfa on the railroad grounds at West 
Camp. Some four years ago a single plant 
appeared near my chicken house, which I 
first thought was a Sweet clover plant, but 
the blossoms came purple, which I thought 
possibly might be of the Alfalfa order, and 
so it has proven. This season the lot has 
a great many plants scattered around, and 
I made as many as five cuttings for the 
chicks, of which they were extremely fond. 
I shall try another season to get a small 
patch of the Alfalfa started. I presume this 
chance seeding must have come from litter 
that I gathered out of boxcars and took 
down to this particular henhouse for scratch¬ 
ing material. E. F. Y. 
Stratford. Texas. 
When to Cut Posts. —As I have seen 
many inquiries in The R. N.-Y. as to when 
to cut fence posts I will tell you my experi¬ 
ence. It has been that posts cut in October 
are much better than those cut at any other 
time of year, because the sap is all out 
then, and the timber is dry. I think it 
makes but little difference what kind of tim¬ 
ber you have, beech, maple, hemlock, bass¬ 
wood or any other. I have had a hard maple 
post set over 10 years. The tenth year it 
was perfectly sound. Be sure to cut them 
before the timber freezes. F. M. w. 
Sabinsville, Pa. 
Keeping Corn. —My experience in handling 
corn has confirmed my belief that there is 
nothing more satisfactory than the usual V- 
shaped slatted crib in general use in this 
section. AH corn that has heated or spoiled 
for me was in the middle of the crib when 
placed there damp or too green. When 
placed in receptacle with open bottom and 
one side closed the corn has heated on closed 
side and middle. If J. B. S. will let his corn 
ripen thoroughly, top or cut and place in 
shocks till cured, husk and crib when free 
from external moisture, it will not heat or 
spoil if placed in narrow slatted crib with 
good roof and floor. If his corn Is good 
the room he gives will be rather small for 
the crop from 10 acres, and hard to fill even 
though built so as to shovel from wagon on 
three sides. j. f. e. 
Easton, Pa. 
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Sole Manufacturers 
100 WILLIAM STREET, NEW YORK 
fit Makes a Big Difference 1 
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U C. CHSAM 
• 3. SEPARATOR i 
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j! 
m 
foi 
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Eighteen distributing warehouses centrally located in the United States and Canada. 454 
