Preparing Citrus Fruits for Market 
William Chase Temple. 
Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen : 
“Preparing Citrus Fruits for Market” 
reminds one very much of the famous old 
English recipe “How to Cook Hare,” 
which begins: “First catch your hare.” 
Preparing citrus fruit for market comes 
very much under this category; you must 
begin by getting your fruit, as to properly 
prepare citrus fruit for consumption be¬ 
gins with the planting of the seed that 
produces the tree which produces the fruit 
you wish to market, and while this paper 
will deal mainly with the handling of the 
ripened fruit from the tree to the cars 
which will take it to market, nevertheless, 
just as important as any of the steps de¬ 
tailed here are those preliminary steps in 
raising healthy stock, selection of proper 
varieties, caring for the young trees, and 
producing finally fruit that is fit in every 
way. 
When the Florida Citrus Exchange 
was organized the incorporators realized 
that in order to make the Florida orange 
come into its own there was something 
more necessary than even the splendid 
selling and distributing agency just form¬ 
ed. „ I had spent the three previous years 
in California, and had watched with 
close attention and great interest, not only 
the splendid marketing methods followed 
by the California growers, but also their 
manner of properly preparing fruit for 
market. 
I first observed the orange business in 
Florida in the seventies, and remember 
well the time when Florida oranges were 
simply pulled from the trees, thrown into 
second-hand flour barrels, unwrapped, the 
barrel headed up, and shipped to market 
by local freight, requiring from twelve to 
fifteen days for delivery. When I visit¬ 
ed the California houses and saw what 
was being done there in the matter of 
careful picking, sorting and hauling fruit 
to the packing houses on wagons with 
springs it was a revelation to me. The 
result of my studies and observations was 
that I decided that if Florida wished to 
compete with California for the citrus 
fruit market, then Florida must prepare 
her fruit for the market as well as Cali¬ 
fornia did. 
Returning to Florida I endeavored to 
get the growers to realize the necessity 
of carefully culling, handling, and honest¬ 
ly packing their fruit. Most of them 
were perfectly indifferent in this matter 
that seemed so essential. After vainly 
endeavoring to enlist the sympathy and 
financial support of other growers in the 
matter, I finally decided that if the Flori¬ 
da growers were ever to be taught to put 
their fruit into market properly they must 
have it demonstrated to them with their 
own fruit that the careful methods would 
pay in hard dollars. The citing of what 
California had done in getting higher 
prices for their inferior fruit; the show 
of the returns made the northwest apple 
growers, which enabled them to obtain 
four times as much money per bushel for 
