FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
229 
these questions this year: ‘‘What does 
it profit me to save my grapefruit tree 
from the citrus canker and then see the 
fruit it produces rot on the ground?” 
“What doth it avail me to pick and 
neatly pack my fruit and then have to 
pay the freight bill?” The answer is: 
Make and bottle pure unfermented 
grapefruit juice, and out of the resid¬ 
uum make desirable by-products, such 
as grapefruit marmalade, candied 
grapefruit peel, citric acid and possibly 
some essential oils. 
The first man to establish a grape 
juice bottling works found the vine¬ 
yards of New York in a dilapidated 
condition and rapidly degenerating. 
The vine-grower was either a bankrupt 
0." believed he soon would be. This 
first grape juice bottler is now rated as 
a millionaire. The vine-grower is, on 
the whole, prosperous, and the acreage 
of vineyards has largely increased since 
those dark days. 
One is almost justified in saying that 
the canner made the pineapple grower 
of Hawaii; certainly he made him. over 
into a very much better looking and 
more prosperous individual. 
It is sad to think what would become 
of many of the California fruit growers 
were the immense canning and preserv¬ 
ing establishments of the Pacific coast 
to permanently close their doors. 
Thousands of tons of fruit and vege¬ 
tables annually rot in Florida groves 
and fields, while other thousands of 
tons are imported, at enormous expense, 
to sustain life in the same people who 
stand helplessly by and watch the prod¬ 
uct of their own hands wither and de¬ 
cay. 
Perhaps some are saying, at this very 
minute, “Why worry? All these things 
will adjust themselves in the course of 
time.” To be sure they will. Christ¬ 
mas is coming, and time will, some day, 
be no more; but neither fact is a valid 
reason for sitting still, idly awaiting 
their approach. 
Perhaps some few are saying, “Who 
ever heard of grapefruit juice?” To 
those the writer will say that grape¬ 
fruit juice can be cheaply bottled, so 
that it will retain its natural flavor and 
appearance and may be kept indefinitely 
as long as the bottle remains sealed, 
and twenty-four to forty-eight hours 
after opening. The writer believes— 
and not without reasonable grounds— 
that grapefruit juice can be made one 
of the most popular temperance drinks 
in the United States, rivaling, if not 
surpassing, grape juice. Its health-giv¬ 
ing properties and pleasing taste can¬ 
not be excelled by that of any drink 
that goes down the gullet of man. 
Again, perhaps_the critics are saying: 
“Manufacturing is not the grower’s 
business, neither is it the purpose for 
which the Society, the League or the 
Exchange were founded.” The reply 
is that the Exchange is in the manufac¬ 
turing business—and the other two or¬ 
ganizations are giving it at least moral 
support. A packing house is a factory, 
though all factories are not packing 
houses. 
The cane-grower finds it necessary to 
become a manufacturer. The fruit¬ 
grower of Utah, almost universally, and 
