126 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
ida, and the new planting from 1.908 to 
1912, inclusive, amounts to twenty-five 
thousand acres, making at the close of 
1912, eighty-five thousand acres of cit¬ 
rus fruits growing in Florida. Arrange¬ 
ments have already been made for the 
planting of fifteen thousand acres addi¬ 
tional in the year 1913, which should 
make at the close of 1913, one hundred 
thousand acres of citrus fruits in Flori¬ 
da, provided the present citrus tariff is 
not interfered with. 
It costs from six hundred dollars to 
one thousand dollars per acre to bring a 
citrus grove to bearing, the variation de¬ 
pending on the land selected, the price 
paid therefor and the cost of clearing 
it. Of this amount of from six hundred 
to one thousand dollars per acre, seventy 
per cent, represents labor. The value of 
the citrus groves in Florida, therefore, 
at the close of 1913 should be approxi¬ 
mately eighty-five million dollars, of 
which nearly sixty million dollars repre¬ 
sent the labor that has been put on them. 
These groves are owned by approximate¬ 
ly eight thousand growers, and allowing 
five persons to the family, makes forty 
thousand people dependent directly on 
the income from these groves for their 
living, as owners and members of own¬ 
ers’ families. In addition to this, the 
vast amount of labor required in hand¬ 
ling the groves, picking, hauling and 
packing the crop, selling the crop, the 
manufacture of crate material and oth¬ 
er packing material, will bring the total 
amount up to possibly one hundred 
thousand people, directly and indirectly 
dependent on the Florida citrus industry 
for their living. For data as to crops 
from year to year, see the Annual Re¬ 
port of the California State Board of 
Agriculture for 1911; also the various 
Biennial Bulletins of the Commissioner 
of Agriculture of the State of Florida. 
COST TO PRODUCE. 
Domestic — 
At the present time, the cost to bring 
a box of oranges to maturity averages 
in the State of Florida about fifty cents 
a box. Of this amount, sixty-five per 
cent., or thirty to thirty-five cents a box, 
is labor. The present bearing capacity, 
average per acre, of the groves in Flori¬ 
da is about one hundred boxes. This 
should be three hundred boxes per acre, 
and will be in a few years. Many of 
the older, better cared for groves show 
now in excess of three hundred boxes 
per acre, annual production. I have 
seen a grove with eleven hundred boxes 
to the acre, and I have seen a single tree 
with three hundred boxes of oranges on 
it in a single crop. In addition to the 
fifty cents a box cost to produce, (which 
fifty cents does not include interest on 
the grove nor any portion of the cost to 
bring the grove to bearing, nor the cost 
of the grove itself) the average cost of 
picking oranges is about nine cents a 
box, all of which is for labor. The av¬ 
erage cost to haul the oranges to the 
packing house from the groves is six 
cents per box, of which four cents a 
box is for labor, making a labor cost per 
box on fruit delivered on wagons at the 
packing house of forty-five cents a box. 
The cost of handling the fruit from the 
