f 1018 
try. Most of the vineyards have rooms in the pack- 
. ing house where the girls sleep and eat. A stove is 
provided for them to cook their own meals, and the 
farm provides milk, vegetables and fruit. They must 
buy their own meat and coffee, but this costs the 
picker only about a dollar a week. Some experts 
have made $75 in the season, which lasts only six 
weeks at best, and is shortened by rainy days. The 
pay averages one to 1J4 cent for picking the eight- 
pound basket. A good picker will do from 100 to 
125 baskets a day, and an expert as high as 250. The 
outfit is a pair of pointed shears, worth about 25 
cents, and a light turned frame which holds three 
baskets. It takes experience to fit the grapes into the 
basket so that they will come up to weight. The 
bunches are cut from the vines, all the imperfect 
grapes snipped off and the bunch pressed into place. 
It is easier to pick the three baskets at the same time, 
as it gives more opportunity to fit the grapes into 
place. Each basket as it is finished is marked with 
the special number of the grape picker and the num¬ 
ber of the basket she has picked. 
TRANSPORTATION.—The boys and men distrib¬ 
ute the empty baskets along the rows and haul the 
filled ones to the packing house on the grape wagon. 
This wagon is flat topped and can be turned inside 
its length. It will carry 100 baskets to the barn, 
where they are left for 24 hours to allow the grapes, 
which have been piled high, to wilt down to the level 
of the brim. The covers, already labeled with the 
name of the shipper, who either owns the vineyard 
or has bought the grapes on the vine, are put on and 
the great load of grape baskets hauled to the station. 
Each grape buyer and shipper has his set of scales, 
over which the wagon is drawn. After the grapes 
have been unloaded in the refrigerator car, where the 
baskets are packed in rows eight high, the wagon is 
again driven over the scales and the difference in 
weight noted. The driver is given a receipt for the 
number of tons, which is paid for at the end of the 
grape season. Some men will sell the grapes on a 
commission, but they are generally bought outright 
from the vineyardist and the buyer takes the risk of 
the market. There are about 155 of the 40-pound 
cartons on a wagon, and it takes four to make a car¬ 
load. When the ice gets scarce the cars are iced in 
transit, but as a rule they are well supplied before 
they leave the station. This' year 15,000 cars were 
sent out; this including the amount bought by the 
local grape juice factories, whose products now go 
all over the world. One of these firms alone con¬ 
tracted for 10,000 tons of specially picked grapes. 
PRICES.—The price this season went from $22 to 
$28 a ton. Vineyards which are not in such good con¬ 
dition are picked in crates, 40 pounds, and these 
grapes, called the “run of the vineyard,” are sold for 
wine stock. The Niagaras are generally put up in 
20-pound baskets and ripen before the Concords. The 
different sections of the country demand different¬ 
sized baskets, the larger ones going West and the 
smaller East and South. 
VARIETIES.—Of the grapes raised in the Lake 
Erie district, the Moore’s Early and Wordens come 
first. They are both blue grapes. After these come 
the Niagara, a white grape; the Delaware, a small 
red grape, and the Concord, which is blue. About 
90 per cent, of the grapes grown are Concord, and on 
this account there are four or five grape juice fac¬ 
tories in the section. It is not, however, a wine grape, 
but a great favorite for table use. It blossoms late 
in the Spring and so is not so apt to suffer from 
frost. It is fruitful, hardy and resists insects. It 
grows well in virgin soil. 
RETURNS.—The theory about this grape belt, 
which extends 63 miles between Erie and Buffalo and 
is three miles wide, is that the movement of air from 
the lake keeps the frost stirring and that the vine¬ 
yards do not suffer from extreme weather as the land 
farther from the lake does. Various averages as to 
the product from one acre are given. The most gen¬ 
eral for five years is $100 an acre. This year one 
acre of Wordens brought $114 and one of Niagaras 
$125. It was only in 1880 that the first table grapes 
were shipped, so the industry is still new, and the old 
vineyards are still in good condition. As they become 
worn out new methods will have to be introduced, 
but the land as a whole is practically in its first fresh¬ 
ness. HELEN ALEXANDER. 
“Patent fuel” provides a large industry in Wales. 
This is the dust from coal mines pressed into bricks. 
Some 106,000 tons were shipped last year. By one patent 
cornmeal is used to hold the dust together. 
The American brick industry is certainly a brick. Last 
year over 10,000,000,000 bricks were made in this country. 
New York came first with 1,143,726.000 bricks. The total 
value of clay products in this country for the year was 
$162,000. This means clay dug out of the ground, 
molded and baked in various forms. Compare this with 
the value of the potato crop, which also came out of the 
ground, and sold for $22,000,000. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
MONEY IN MASSACHUSETTS ONIONS. 
A PAYING CROP.—Several years ago a young 
man with a red handkerchief and a willingness to 
work came from Vermont to Sunderland, Massachu¬ 
setts. He started raising onions. The other day I 
sat in that man’s well-appointed office. Through the 
window I could see his various farms, and a number 
of barns and storage houses. On his desk lay two 
telegrams, orders for two and five carloads of onions. 
In his storage houses were three times that amount 
of onions from his own land alone, with the bigger 
part of the crop yet to be harvested. He is reputed 
to be worth somewhat over $25,000, beside his land. 
Such is the reward of onion raising in the Connecti¬ 
cut Valley. The big onion growing section lies in the 
river towns between Greenfield and Northampton— 
Sunderland, South Deerfield, Whately, Hatfield and 
Hadley being the principal producers. It is estimated 
that there are to-day in these towns about 3,500 acres 
planted to onions. Last year 200 fewer acres in the 
same vicinity produced 1,000,000 bushels of prime 
onions. 
SOIL AND PLANTING.—The value of the soil 
depends principally on its physical texture. Medium 
“heavy” soil is generally preferred, although light soil 
does the best in a wet season. Most of the soil is 
light and sandy, containing 50 per cent or more of 
fine sand and about 10 per cent of organic matter, 
the remainder consisting mainly of coarser sand and 
a little clay. The planting starts as soon as the land 
can be worked in the Spring, generally about the mid¬ 
dle of April. The “sets” are put in by hand, about 
six to the foot. The seeds are sown by machine, five 
pounds to the acre. In either case the rows are a 
foot apart. 
SEED AND SETS.—Most of the sets and seed are 
bought from the Woodruffs, one of Milford, the other 
of Orange, Connecticut. The sets are mainly received 
on Spring delivery, although some of the farmers 
set them in the Fall and keep them over. The sets 
cost about $1.75 a bushel for Fall, and $2.25 a bushel 
for Spring delivery. The seed costs around $1.35 a 
pound, varying with the quantity bought. 
CARE AND FERTILIZER.—The young onions 
when they begin to come up are weeded by hand from 
three to six times at intervals of about ten days. If 
the onions are healthy they will crowd out the weeds 
themselves in the latter part of the season. Where 
the onions are unusually weak, they will require, of 
course, more than the ordinary amount of weeding. 
The kind and amount of fertilizer varies greatly with 
the land, and more especially with the user. It is 
difficult to pin the farmers down to any definite state¬ 
ment as to fertilizer, except that they nearly all use 
the ready-mixed kinds. Perhaps most of it consists 
of sulphate of potash with four or five per cent of 
nitrogen. 
INSECT ENEMIES.—The only important insect 
enemy is the thrips. These small lice suck the juice 
from the stems, sapping the life and vigor of the 
plant, and stunting its growth. They hibernate over 
Winter in the grass at the edge of the field, and are 
thus most destructive around the border of the field. 
They do the most damage in a dry season, for when 
there is plentiful rain it not only washes off many 
of the thrips, but also promotes a vigorous growth of 
the plant, which renders it less susceptible to this 
injury. 
HARVESTING.—The sets are harvested from the 
middle of July to the middle of August, the seed 
onions closely following. A semi-circular piece of 
iron with a handle at each end is run through the 
ground under the onions, bringing them up. The tops 
are then cut off with shears. The weeds and tops are 
sorted out, and the onions piled up in windrows, ten 
rows of onions to the windrow. They are then shov¬ 
eled into baskets and put through the “screen.” The 
screen is a wooden framework mounted on uprights 
in such a way that the front end is a foot higher than 
the back, and is hung so that it will swing back and 
forth. The framework is bottomed with slats set an 
inch or so apart. Diagonally across half the lower 
end extends a board leading to an opening about a 
foot square, on the under side of which is hung the 
bag. The unions are dumped from the baskets onto 
the screen, which is shaken by a man standing at the 
lower end; the onions roll down the screen, the smaller 
ones, or “pickle onions,” falling through onto the 
ground and the larger ones rolling into the bag. The 
bags when full are weighed and sewed up. They are 
supposed to weigh 100 pounds. The yield varies from 
200 to 500 or more bushels an acre. 
MARKETING.—Some farmers sell their crop im¬ 
mediately, others store them. There is no fixed mar¬ 
ket. They go everywhere. Of the two orders for two 
and five carloads mentioned above, one was from 
Buffalo, the other from New Brunswick. Many, of 
course, go to Boston. The prices vary greatly. Last 
October 5, ' 
year sets sold in the Fall for $2 per 100 pounds or 
more. On account of this more people raised them 
this year, and as the crop is also better and there are 
many Texas and Bermuda onions on the market, they 
are starting this year at from $1.15 to $1.25. Seed 
onions sell for less, probably at an average of around 
seventy cents per 100 pounds one year with another. 
Storage onions sold in the middle of last Winter for 
$4 per 100 pounds, but that is exceptionally high. 
There are many large storage houses in the district, 
several of which will keep 100 carloads—50,000 bush¬ 
els—or more. Most handlers store in crates rather 
than in bins. They hold the onions only until they 
can make a good profit, although good bulbs will keep 
under good conditions till the next Spring. The 
shrinking varies from seven to 15 per cent, ordi¬ 
narily about eight to 10 per cent. 
SEED TESTING.—Many of the farmers have their 
seed tested at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. 
A sample of the seed is brought in and germinated. 
As soon as the seeds sprout, the number which germ¬ 
inate is counted. From 85 per cent up is considered 
good. At that percentage about five pounds or less to 
the acre is sown. It is also a good practice to have 
the seed “blown.” This removes the lightest seed, 
which even if it germinated would not produce strong 
plants. When this is done less seed is sown to the 
acre. 
LABOR.—Labor is, luckily, no hard problem to 
solve. The valley is full of Polanders, who are will¬ 
ing to work. Most of them are capable and industri¬ 
ous, so much so that many of them have bought some 
of the best farms in the valley, and are already in 
business for themselves, raising onions. 
EXPENSE OF THE CROP.—Gross expenses an 
acre per year amount to $150 to $250. Figure up 200 
bushels an acre at $1.50 per 100 pounds—52 pounds to 
the bushel, which is a very conservative estimate, and 
you will see why and how nearly all the farmers in 
Sunderland run automobiles and why land taxed af 
$5 an acre 15 or 20 years ago could not be bought for 
$500 an acre to-day. By renting land and starting in 
a small way, a man can break in with little capital, 
but if he wants to own his land at once he must have 
large financial backing, for land is high and hard to 
buy. Tools and other equipment are not great fac¬ 
tors financially, the capital being tied up mainly in 
land, of which $750,000 would be a conservative esti¬ 
mate for this district. dan t. waugh. 
SUGAR BEETS AND FERTILITY. 
Harper’s Weekly recently printed a very enthusias¬ 
tic article on sugar beet growing. The author claimed 
that wherever sugar beets have been introduced as a 
farm crop agriculture has been improved. He says 
the soil becomes more productive and all crops are 
increased. Then he goes on to tell why this is so. 
Better culture is responsible for part of it, while the 
beets dig deep into the soil and break up the sub-soil. 
Then the author suggests—he is careful not to say so 
directly—that the beets, somewhat like clover, obtain 
plant food from the air. Several readers have sent 
us this article, asking what there is to it. We ap¬ 
plied to the Department of Agriculture for the facts 
and received this letter: 
Observations made in connection with the soil survey 
work conducted by this Bureau has led me to believe 
that the introduction of the sugar beet industry has led 
to the improvement in the character of agriculture and 
in the productivity of the land. The beet sugar growing 
requires much soil manipulation and fertilization *and also 
rotation of crops. The introduction of sugar beet culture, 
therefore, is analogous to a more intensive agricultural 
occupation of the land. All of these factors aid, therefore, 
in the improvement of land which, before the introduc¬ 
tion of the beet culture, was used largely for the growing 
of crops under an extensive system of agriculture, usually 
with no fertilization of the land. 
The sugar beet itself does not penetrate to very great 
depths in the soil, and its loosening effect on subsoil con¬ 
ditions is probably very slight. In the matter of adding 
something to the soil the sugar beet can probably not 
be compared directly with the leguminous plants such as 
clover, which you mentioned. The leguminous plants 
through their nodules are able to fix the nitrogen of the 
air and thus increase, especially when plowed under, the 
nitrogen content of the soil. It is not known that the 
sugar beet plays any such part in the economy of the 
soil. It would seem, therefore, that the improvement 
by the sugar beet is due rather to the better cultivation 
and better system of farming which is introduced along 
with the beet. Mri/rox whitney. 
Chief of Bureau of Soils. 
We think that is a fair statement of the case. 
Most farmers have noticed how crops respond the 
year following a crop of onions or potatoes, or any 
crop that is well fed and thoroughly cultivated. On 
many farms the potato is the money crop, and most 
of the fertilizer is used with it and very clean cul¬ 
ture given. The seeding of wheat and grass follow¬ 
ing such a crop is often surprising. We have a corn¬ 
field this year through which'runs a streak of very 
superior corn. We could hardly account for it until 
we remembered that onions were on that strip last 
year—thoroughly worked. This thorough tillage ac¬ 
counts for most of the improvement following sugar 
beet culture. We doubt if much benefit results from 
the deep rooting, and of course the beet adds no plant 
food to the soil. 
