66 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
their apples as was received for the best 
apples grown in New York State, due 
entirely to* the careful culling, handling, 
grading and packing of their apples had 
no effect on the Florida grower of citrus 
fruits, who said that he was not shipping 
apples. 
I then determined to endeavor to dem¬ 
onstrate to our growers that the only 
reason Florida oranges were selling for 
less money than California’s, when every 
one knew that Florida raised the better 
fruit was because the Florida oranges 
were improperly prepared for the market. 
We then began planning for the best 
equipped packing house in the world by 
sending to California for the man who 
held the record in that State for sound 
delivery of fruit in the market, and had 
him come to Florida and lay out and 
equip in accordance with the most modern 
and up-to-date California methods, the 
Winter Park packing house. This man, 
Mr. R. S. Thompson, of Highland, Cali¬ 
fornia, held the record of having deliver¬ 
ed all the fruit from his packing house at 
destination for three solid years, with an 
average decay of less than one-quarter of 
one per cent. 
When the house was finally finished 
and running Mr. Thompson insisted that 
the method of picking and handling the 
fruit in the groves must be equal, at least, 
to the very best California practice. 
A picking crew should consist of 
twenty-one men; sixteen pickers, four in¬ 
spectors and a foreman. All the pickers 
and inspectors were obliged to wear white 
gloves while at work. The pickers were 
carefully instructed at the beginning that 
while the oranges were to be clipped close 
to the fruit, so that no long stems would 
be left, they were not to cut them close 
enough to injure the orange in the clip¬ 
ping, and all stems must be cut square 
across and never pointed. No picker was 
allowed to empty the oranges from his 
picking basket into the field crates. The 
picking baskets were of rattan wicker¬ 
work, lined with white canvas, which 
lining did not quite reach to the bottom 
of the basket. This prevents any possi¬ 
bility of bruising the oranges by coming 
in contact with the basket and the rattan 
is puncture-proof from the thorns on the 
orange trees. As soon as a picker fills 
his basket he carries it to the nearest field 
box and stands it along side of the field 
box. For each gang of four pickers 
there was an inspector whose duty it was 
to take the oranges from the picking 
basket, one by one, and examine each 
carefully before placing it in the field 
crate. The inspectors were furnished 
with books of blank forms which had 
spaces for entering the date of the pick¬ 
ing, the name of the grove in which the 
fruit was picked, the name of the owner 
of the grove, the name of the picker, a 
blank line for the clipper cut oranges 
found in the picker’s basket, another line 
for long stems found on oranges, and r 
finally, the signature of the inspector. 
Every orange that the inspector would 
find in the picker’s basket that was faulty 
in any respect, he would either cull in the 
grove, or if it had a long stem he would 
reclip it and enter on the ticket the total 
number of such imperfections found. 
When he had filled the field crate he 
would detach this ticket from his book 
and place it in the crate, in which it would 
go to the packing house. The field fore¬ 
man would of course keep a general over- 
