48 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
them to feel that their part of the work 
is absolutely essential, and when the in¬ 
spector brings in his report to me, as he 
goes over each man’s boxes he can give 
me a report of the number of clipper 
cuts, or long stems, for each man. He 
is interested, and interested in the re¬ 
sults, and if you can get your foreman 
and your inspector and your men inter¬ 
ested, you are going to win, and if you 
do not get them interested, you are going 
to lose. 
Mr. Temple has been a great disciple 
of this careful handling, and I have not 
the slightest doubt that he gave orders to 
the foremen in his groves that every care 
should be taken this year, and if their 
fruit was decayed, there was bad hand¬ 
ling in the field. That is the whole se¬ 
cret—get your men interested, get them 
to realize that careful handling on their 
part is the secret of the whole thing. 
I remember one experiment in a wash¬ 
ing machine at Largo here the depart¬ 
ment made an experiment. The washer 
rolled the tangerines until the pulp in¬ 
side was separated from the outside rind. 
You would think they would rot, but 
those tangerines kept a wonderfully long 
time. They were thoroughly dried af¬ 
ter they were washed, and I think that 
was the whole secret. 
Sometimes we do not know how 
things are going to turn out; something 
happens we don’t look for, but we do 
know that if we handle the fruit carefully, 
and exercise care through every process, 
we have every chance to win; but if we 
handle it roughly, we have every chance 
to lose. 
One or two experiments have been 
made this year, I think the first time ac¬ 
cidentally, in pre-cooling fruit in this 
State; that is, there was a car, iced, 
placed during the decay period; I mean, 
there was a good deal of ice remaining 
in .it that came down from the North; 
not especially placed as an ice car, but 
a refrigerator vent. The gentleman I 
speak of made up his mind to try an ex¬ 
periment, and put all the ice in the front 
bunker of that car and shipped it under 
ventilation, and he told me the best re¬ 
sults came from the fruit carrying in 
that pre-cooled car. I think if we pre¬ 
cool fruit in this State and get it out of 
the State in twenty-four hours, they 
generally by that time reach a tempera¬ 
ture that would keep it cool enough. Of 
course, this past season it was as warm 
in Washington as in Florida, almost, and 
the same conditions prevailed in both 
places. I was in Washington during 
the decay period in January. I was 
present when fruit was taken from the 
cars apparently perfectly sound. In twen¬ 
ty-four hours over half of that fruit had 
decayed, and in three days hardly any of 
it was left. Professor Ramsey told me 
he had gone to a store and bought a doz¬ 
en oranges, and before they could be 
eaten half of them were gone. I asked 
Professor Ramsey to come and look over 
with me the oranges which were arriving. 
We looked them over and found blue 
mold decay. j 
That comes back again to the fact that 
the fruit must be injured or mistreated; 
if not by us, by the people who open 
up the boxes in the North. 
I have made a good many experiments 
with this matter of drying, and have felt 
